By JAKE OFFENHARTZ and JAIMIE DING

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Women who say they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein are feeling skeptical and anxious about the Justice Department’s handling of records related to the convicted sex offender, with some backing more public disclosures as an overdue measure of transparency, and others expressing concerns about their privacy and the Trump administration’s motivations.

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In letters addressed to federal judges in New York this week, several victims or their attorneys said they would support the public release of grand jury testimony that led to criminal indictments against Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell — if the government agreed to allow them to review the material and redact sensitive information.

The Justice Department has asked the court to take the rare step of unsealing transcripts of that secret testimony, in part to placate people who believe that the government has hidden some things it knows about Epstein’s wrongdoing.

Other victims, meanwhile, accused President Donald Trump of sidelining victims as he seeks to shift the focus from Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he habitually sexually abused underage girls. Some expressed concern that the administration — in its eagerness to make the scandal go away — might give Maxwell clemency, immunity from future prosecution or better living conditions in prison as part of a deal to get her to testify before Congress.

“I am not some pawn in your political warfare,” one alleged victim wrote in a letter submitted to the court by her lawyer this week. “What you have done and continue to do is eating at me day after day as you help to perpetuate this story indefinitely.”

FILE – Virginia Giuffre speaks during a news conference outside a Manhattan court in New York, Aug. 27, 2019. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

Added another victim, in a letter submitted anonymously on Wednesday: “This is all very exhausting.”

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. A top Justice Department official, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, interviewed Maxwell for nine hours late last month, saying he wanted to hear anything she had to say about misdeeds committed by Epstein or others. After that interview, Maxwell was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a low-security prison camp in Texas.

Alicia Arden, who said Epstein sexually assaulted her in the late 1990s, held a news conference on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She said she would support the release of additional material related to the case, including a transcript of Maxwell’s interview with Blanche.

But she also expressed outrage at the possibility that Maxwell could receive clemency or other special treatment through the process, adding that the Justice Department’s approach had been “very upsetting” so far.

The Trump administration has faced weeks of furor from some segments of the president’s political base, which have demanded public disclosure of files related to Epstein. Epstein has long been the subject of conspiracy theories because of his friendships with the rich and powerful, including Trump himself, Britain’s Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton.

Last month, the Justice Department announced it would not release additional files related to the Epstein sex trafficking investigation.

Prosecutors later asked to unseal the grand jury transcripts, though they’ve told the court they contain little information that hasn’t already been made public. Two judges who will decide whether to release the transcripts then asked victims to share their views on the matter.

In a letter submitted to the court Tuesday, attorneys Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, who represent numerous Epstein victims, wrote: “For survivors who bravely testified, the perception that Ms. Maxwell is being legitimized in public discourse has already resulted in re-traumatization.”

An attorney for Maxwell, David Oscar Markus, said this week that she opposed the release of the grand jury transcripts.

“Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not,” he wrote. “Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable, and her due process rights remain.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the victims’ statements.

By JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump unexpectedly summoned reporters to the Oval Office on Thursday to present them with charts that he says show the U.S. economy is solid following a jobs report last week that raised red flags and led to the Republican firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Joining Trump to talk about the economy was Stephen Moore, a senior visiting fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and the co-author of the 2018 book “ Trumponomics.”

Flipping through a series of charts on an easel, Moore sought to elevate Trump’s performance as president and diminish the economic track record of former President Joe Biden. Trump stood next to Moore and interjected with approvals.

The moment in the Oval Office spoke to the president’s hopes to reset the narrative of the U.S. economy. While the stock market has been solid, job growth has turned sluggish and inflationary pressures have risen in the wake of Trump imposing a vast set of new tariffs, which are taxes on imports.

Moore said he phoned Trump because he put together some data that shows he was correct to dismiss Erika McEntarfer as the head of the BLS. He noted that’s because reports from the BLS had overestimated the number of jobs created during the last two years of Biden’s term by 1.5 million.

“I think they did it purposely,” said Trump, who has yet to offer statistical evidence backing his theory. Revisions are a standard component of jobs reports and tend to be larger during periods of economic disruption.

The economy has seldom conformed to the whims of any president, often presenting pictures that are far more mixed and nuanced than what can easily be sold to voters. Through the first seven months of this year, employers have added 597,000 jobs, down roughly 44% from the gains during the same period in 2024.

The July jobs report showed that just 73,000 jobs were added last month, while the May and June totals were revised downward by 258,000.

While Biden did face downward revisions on his job numbers, the economy added 2 million jobs in 2024 and 2.6 million in 2023.

The fundamental challenge in Biden’s economy was the jolt of inflation as the annual rate of the consumer price index hit a four-decade high in June 2022. That level of inflation left many households feeling as though groceries, gasoline, housing and other essentials were unaffordable, a sentiment that helped to return Trump to the White House in the 2024 election.

There are signs of inflation heating back up under Trump because of his tariffs. On Thursday, Goldman Sachs estimated that the upcoming inflation report for July will show that consumer prices rose 3% over the past 12 months, which would be up from a 2.3% reading in April.

Trump promised that he could galvanize a boom. And when nonpartisan data has indicated something closer to a muddle, he found an advocate in Moore, whom he nominated to serve as a Federal Reserve governor during his first term. Moore withdrew his name after facing pushback in the Senate.

Moore said that through the first five months of Trump’s second term in office that “the average median household income adjusted for inflation and for the average family in America, is already up $1,174.” Moore said his numbers are based on unpublished Census Bureau data, which can make them difficult to independently verify.

“That’s an incredible number,” Trump said. “If I would have said this, nobody would have believed it.”

By JULIE CARR SMYTH

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Vice President JD Vance’s security detail had an Ohio river’s water level raised last weekend to accommodate a kayaking trip he and his family took to celebrate his 41st birthday.

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The U.S. Secret Service said it requested the increased waterflow for the Little Miami River, first reported by The Guardian, to ensure motorized watercraft and emergency personnel “could operate safely” while protecting the Republican vice president, whose home is in Cincinnati.

But critics immediately blasted the action as a sign of the vice president’s entitlement, particularly given the administration Trump administration’s focus on slashing government spending.

Richard W. Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said on X that “it’s outrageous for the Army corps of engineers to spend taxpayer money to increase water flow in a river so @VP can go canoeing when budget cuts to the National Park Service have severely impacted family vacations for everyone else.”

The Corps of Engineers declined to address any financial impact of raising the river. Spokesman Gene Pawlik said the agency’s Louisville District temporarily increased outflows from the Caesar Creek Lake in southwest Ohio into the Little Miami “to support safe navigation of U.S. Secret Service personnel.” He said the move met operational criteria and fell within normal practice.

“It was determined that the operations would not adversely affect downstream or upstream water levels,” he said in a statement. “Downstream stakeholders were notified in advance of the slight outflow increase, which occurred August 1, 2025.” Vance’s birthday was on Aug. 2.

Vance spokesman Parker Magid said the vice president was unaware the river had been raised.

“The Secret Service often employs protective measures without the knowledge of the Vice President or his staff, as was the case last weekend,” he said via text.

The Little Miami River flows in Oregonia, Ohio, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)

The sprawling 2,830-acre Caesar Creek Lake has an unlimited horsepower designation and five launch ramps, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources website. A marina, campground and lodge are also located on site. The department provided two natural resources officers to assist the Secret Service with the Vance event, spokesperson Karina Cheung said.

The Vance family has already become accustomed to certain accommodations being made as they move about the world. During a recent trip to Italy, the Roman Colosseum was closed to the public so that his wife, Usha, and their children could take a tour, sparking anger among some tourists. The Taj Mahal also was closed to visitors during the Vance family’s visit to India.

Such special treatment isn’t reserved for one political party.

When Democratic Vice President Al Gore, then a presidential candidate, paddled down the Connecticut River for a photo opportunity in 1999, utility officials had opened a dam and released 4 billion gallons of water to raise the river’s level. That request, too, came after a review of the area by the Secret Service — and Gore also experienced political pushback.

Gore’s campaign said at the time that he did not ask for the water to be released.

By BARBARA ORTUTAY

Roblox, the online gaming platform wildly popular with children and teenagers, is rolling out an open-source version of an artificial intelligence system it says can help preemptively detect predatory language in game chats.

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The move comes as the company faces lawsuits and criticism accusing it of not doing enough to protect children from predators. For instance, a lawsuit filed last month in Iowa alleges that a 13-year-old girl was introduced to an adult predator on Roblox, then kidnapped and trafficked across multiple states and raped. The suit, filed in Iowa District Court in Polk County, claims that Roblox’s design features make children who use it “easy prey for pedophiles.”

Roblox says it strives to make its systems as safe as possible by default but notes that “no system is perfect, and one of the biggest challenges in the industry is to detect critical harms like potential child endangerment.”

The AI system, called Sentinel, helps detect early signs of possible child endangerment, such as sexually exploitative language. Roblox says the system has led the company to submit 1,200 reports of potential attempts at child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the first half of 2025. The company is now in the process of open-sourcing it so other platforms can use it too.

Preemptively detecting possible dangers to kids can be tricky for AI systems — and humans, too — because conversations can seem innocuous at first. Questions like “how old are you?” or “where are you from?” wouldn’t necessarily raise red flags on their own, but when put in context over the course of a longer conversation, they can take on a different meaning.

Roblox, which has more than 111 million monthly users, doesn’t allow users to share videos or images in chats and tries to block any personal information such as phone numbers, though — as with most moderation rules — people constantly find ways to get around such safeguards.

It also doesn’t allow kids under 13 to chat with other users outside of games unless they have explicit parental permission — and unlike many other platforms, it does not encrypt private chat conversations, so it can monitor and moderate them.

“We’ve had filters in place all along, but those filters tend to focus on what is said in a single line of text or within just a few lines of text. And that’s really good for doing things like blocking profanity and blocking different types of abusive language and things like that,” said Matt Kaufman, chief safety officer at Roblox. “But when you’re thinking about things related to child endangerment or grooming, the types of behaviors you’re looking at manifest over a very long period of time.”

Sentinel captures one-minute snapshots of chats across Roblox — about 6 billion messages per day — and analyzes them for potential harms. To do this, Roblox says it developed two indexes — one made up of benign messages and, the other, chats that were determined to contain child endangerment violations. Roblox says this lets the system recognize harmful patterns that go beyond simply flagging certain words or phrases, taking the entire conversation into context.

“That index gets better as we detect more bad actors, we just continuously update that index. Then we have another sample of what does a normal, regular user do?” said Naren Koneru, vice president of engineering for trust and safety at Roblox.

As users are chatting, the system keeps score — are they closer to the positive cluster or the negative cluster?

“It doesn’t happen on one message because you just send one message, but it happens because of all of your days’ interactions are leading towards one of these two,” Koneru said. “Then we say, okay, maybe this user is somebody who we need to take a much closer look at, and then we go pull all of their other conversations, other friends, and the games that they played, and all of those things.”

Humans review risky interactions and flag to law enforcement accordingly.