New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, Alina Habba, on Thursday said she would continue on in the position despite a judicial decision declining to extend her interim status and instead opting to replace her.

She doubled down in her first remarks since the decision, declaring that she is now the state’s acting U.S. attorney.

“Donald J. Trump is the 47th President. Pam Bondi is the Attorney General. And I am now the Acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey,” Habba said in a statement posted to the social platform X. “I don’t cower to pressure. I don’t answer to politics. This is a fight for justice. And I’m all in.”

A Justice Department official said that Trump withdrew her nomination to be the state’s U.S. attorney and she was appointed first assistant U.S. attorney, meaning she becomes acting U.S. attorney because the position is now vacant.

The announcement comes hours after Desiree Grace, the attorney tapped by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey judges to succeed Habba, said she was prepared to assume the role, elevating the standoff to new heights.

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Columbia University, in hopes of restoring hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen funding, has struck another deal with the Trump administration, the university announced.

The Ivy League school in New York City will pay a $200 million fine over three years to the government to settle allegations it violated federal civil rights laws and failed to protect members of its Jewish community from discrimination.

It will also jointly appoint an independent monitor to update the federal government on its compliance with new policies, and pay an additional $21 million fine to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The agreement marks the second major concession from the university in its protracted negotiations with the government. Despite the drawn-out talks, and many compromises on Columbia's part, the Trump administration has yet to reroute hundreds of millions of dollars back to the school.

The school previously agreed, among other things, to bolster campus law enforcement, appoint a new administrator to oversee its Middle Eastern studies department and retool its protest policies in an effort to assuage the White House.

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President Donald Trump is getting heat on social media for making a claim on Tuesday about cutting drug prices that’s essentially mathematically impossible.

Trump began promisingly enough with a complaint shared by Democrats and Republicans alike: the high cost of medication, and how much more Americans pay for some medications than patients in other countries.

He promised to reduce those costs ― but to a very unlikely degree.

“We’re gonna get the drug prices down. Not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re gonna get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%,” Trump said at a Republican dinner. “Numbers that are not even thought to be achievable.”

Critics quickly pointed out the reason those numbers are not thought to be achievable: reducing the price by 100% would make the drugs free. Reducing it by “1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%,” as Trump said, would make the cost negative dollars ― with the drug company essentially paying people to take the medication.

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A federal judge in Florida has denied the Justice Department’s request that grand jury transcripts from the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein be made public, hindering President Donald Trump’s efforts to tamp down criticism from his base about not releasing more files from the late financier’s sex-trafficking case.

U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg determined Monday that the request did not fall under any of the exceptions to requirements that grand jury material remain sealed. Grand jury transcripts are highly shielded to protect victims and witnesses, and it’s rare for a judge to make them public.

Despite that unlikelihood, Attorney General Pam Bondi made the request with the court last Friday. In her motion, she defended the Justice Department’s decision earlier this month not to release any more files but acknowledged there remains “extensive public interest” in how the Trump administration reached that conclusion. Releasing grand jury transcripts, the motion argued, could help address that.

Rosenberg rejected that.

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