Trump Baselessly Accuses Obama of ‘Treason,’ and Transgender Clinics Close

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From the New York Times, it's the headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Wednesday, July 23rd.

Here's what we're covering.

In Washington, the Epstein drama is not going away.

And President Trump and Republican lawmakers are pulling out new tactics to try and shut down the conversation.

At the Capitol.

What we refuse to do is participate in another one of the Democrats' political games.

This is a serious matter.

We are not going to let them use this as a political battering ram.

Speaker Mike Johnson announced yesterday that he's sending lawmakers home early, cutting the session short, even though they were still considering legislation.

He explicitly said he's doing it to avoid votes calling for the release of more files related to the government's investigation of Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking allegations.

Democrats have been trying to push the issue to a vote, but Johnson's abrupt move spared Republicans from having to take a public stance on the issue.

Recently, they've been caught between President Trump, who's been telling people to move on from the Epstein case, and some of their constituents, particularly from the hard right, who've been outraged about what they see as a lack of transparency from the administration.

Meanwhile, at the White House.

The witch hot that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold.

President Trump made his own new and dramatic push to deflect from the Epstein story by accusing former President Barack Obama of trying to lead a coup with Hillary Clinton.

It's there, he's guilty.

The Trump administration has recently rolled out a series of reports reaching back to the 2016 presidential election that claim the Obama administration tried to undermine Trump's campaign.

The new reports contradict years-long investigations into the election by U.S.

intelligence agencies and bipartisan Senate committees.

In a rare statement responding to Trump's allegation, a spokesman for President Obama called the claim bizarre and ridiculous.

Now, two other quick updates on the Trump administration.

The Times has learned that the Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a plan that would end the federal government's ability to fight climate change.

The plan centers on a crucial rule from 2009, in which the EPA officially established that greenhouse gases endanger human lives.

That gave the government the authority to regulate emissions from vehicles and power plants and other sources that are dangerously heating the planet.

According to two people familiar with the Trump administration's plans, they're now moving to eliminate that rule, which would erase all current federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

And we worked on it long and hard, and it's a great deal for everybody.

I always say it has to be great for everybody.

It's a great deal.

Yesterday, President Trump announced he struck a trade deal with Japan, backing down from some of the highest tariffs that he'd threatened the country with.

The U.S.

is currently negotiating with dozens of countries to try and reach deals after the president upended global trade with his sweeping tariff plan.

And in some corners of the economy, the toll of those tariffs is becoming clear.

This week, two of the biggest automakers in the U.S.

both announced major losses.

General Motors said the tariffs cost the company more than a billion dollars.

And Stellantis, which owns Chrysler Jeep and Ram, also said its revenue fell significantly, in part because of the surcharges.

In Los Angeles yesterday, one of the country's oldest and largest clinics providing care to transgender youth shut its doors.

In a letter to staff, officials from Children's Hospital Los Angeles had said they didn't want to close the clinic, but they felt they had no choice under pressure from the Trump administration, which had threatened to strip the hospital of its federal funding.

I've been talking to patients and their parents, as well as a few clinicians here in California.

And what I've been hearing is that everyone felt like they were supported.

These patients, these kids were happy.

And now,

even in California, they're afraid that they're no longer going to be able to access essential medical care.

Jill Cowan covers California for the Times.

She says what happened in LA is happening across the country as similar clinics from Chicago to DC to Pittsburgh limit the care they offer or close altogether.

Many families have been caught by surprise.

They thought seeking care in blue cities or blue states would shield them from the administration's crackdown on gender care for minors.

The White House has said it's trying to prevent children from making potentially irreversible medical decisions, though Jill says that many of the families and medical experts she interviewed see the care as critical for trans kids.

Families are scrambling to find new doctors, get backup appointments at other institutions where this care is still offered.

So much of transition treatment is time-based.

Puberty blockers have to be administered on the right timeline.

Doctors need to be able to carefully monitor how patients are doing.

And these moves by these hospitals are really throwing people into uncertainty.

As one 16-year-old transgender girl told me, she has been able to access puberty blocker injections, which last for several months.

She had an appointment to get an implant, which lasts for more than a year, and that appointment was canceled.

And she feels like, right now, the prospect of experiencing male puberty, feeling her body changing to be further away from her perception of herself, made her feel like her own body was a ticking time bomb.

Meanwhile, an executive order signed by President Trump earlier this year aimed at banning transgender women from sports led the U.S.

Olympic and Paralympic Committee to quietly change its rules this week.

The organization now says that transgender women will not be able to compete in any Olympic women's sports for Team USA.

That decision had previously been left up to the governing body of each sport.

In Iran, every day for more than two weeks, fires have been breaking out at apartment complexes, oil refineries, a road outside a major airport, even a shoe factory.

In public, Iranian officials have tried to brush off the incidents as accidents or aging infrastructure.

But in private, multiple Iranian officials tell the Times they believe these are acts of sabotage.

The country has been on edge since its 12-day war with Israel last month.

and though there's now a ceasefire, tensions are still high.

Officials suspect the fires could be a secret campaign by Israel, though they did not provide any evidence.

Israeli officials declined to comment, but the two countries have waged covert attacks on each other for years, and Israel's intelligence agency recently said it would continue with that effort in Iran.

Just last month, the head of the agency promised,

we will be there, just as we have been up to now.

And finally,

Ozzy Osborne, who helped invent heavy metal music and transformed reality TV, died yesterday at 76.

Born in Birmingham, England, he had some false starts.

He worked in a slaughterhouse and then had a brief stint as a burglar before he joined the band that would become Black Sabbath in 1968.

The volume was ear-splitting, the tempo was grinding, and Osborne screamed and yowled about doom.

Critics hated it, but Black Sabbath's early albums went platinum, unleashing anthem after anthem for young people angry at the world.

As he grew famous, Osborne's behavior reached extremes.

He said in his autobiography, he did more drugs than he could even list, and he was eventually fired from Black Sabbath for sleeping through a concert.

But

he went on to become a bigger star than ever as a solo act.

On stage, he dialed up the satanic imagery, and his behavior was wild, sometimes violent.

He pelted audiences with raw meat and bit the head off a dead bat during a concert in Des Moines.

He once told the Times, though, that all of that craziness was an act, and he had a very different life at home, saying, quote, I am not the Antichrist.

I am a family man.

Go to school right now.

Okay,

go to school.

The world got to see that for itself in 2002 when the reality show The Osborns premiered, showing the loving but often bleeped-out family home life of Ozzie, his wife Sharon, and their teenage kids.

I'm begging of you, Sharon.

I'm begging you, no more animals.

Please, boo.

It was the most popular TV show MTV had ever aired, and it inspired dozens of other celebrities to open up their homes to cameras and launch their own shows.

Over the years, Osborne dealt with a growing list of health issues, and he was diagnosed with a variant of Parkinson's.

But just a few weeks ago, he rallied to perform a final concert.

He reunited with Black Sabbath in his hometown of Birmingham, and he sat on stage in a black throne as people screamed and cheered.

Before his death, Osborne said he knew exactly how he would be remembered.

Ozzy Osborne, born 1948, died whenever.

He bit the head off a bat.

Those are the headlines.

Today on the daily.

I've come forward because the Trump administration has put civil servants in this impossible position of fealty to the president and the agenda or fealty to uphold the rule of law.

A former employee at the Justice Department who became a whistleblower explains why he's speaking out.

That's next in the New York Times audio app where you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

We'll be back tomorrow.