By JOSH FUNK

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — New data the Agriculture Department released Friday created serious doubts about whether China will really buy millions of bushels of American soybeans like the Trump administration touted last month after a high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The USDA report released after the government reopened showed only two Chinese purchases of American soybeans since the summit in South Korea that totaled 332,000 metric tons. That’s well short of the 12 million metric tons that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said China agreed to purchase by January and nowhere near the 25 million metric tons she said they would buy in each of the next three years.

American farmers were hopeful that their biggest customer would resume buying their crops. But CoBank’s Tanner Ehmke, who is its lead economist for grains and oilseed, said there isn’t much incentive for China to buy from America right now because they have plenty of soybeans on hand that they have bought from Brazil and other South American countries this year, and the remaining tariffs ensure that U.S. soybeans remain more expensive than Brazilian beans.

“We are still not even close to what has been advertised from the U.S. in terms of what the agreement would have been,” Ehmke said.

Beijing has yet to confirm any detailed soybean purchase agreement but only that the two sides have reached “consensus” on expanding trade in farm products. Ehmke said that even if China did promise to buy American soybeans it may have only agreed to buy them if the price was attractive.

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the lack of Chinese purchases and whether farmers can still expect a significant aid package like Trump promised earlier.

The Chinese tariff on American beans remains high at about 24%, despite a 10-percentage-point reduction following the summit.

Soybean prices fell sharply by 23 cents to $11.24 per bushel Friday. Ehmke said “that’s the market being shocked by the lack of Chinese demand that was confirmed in USDA data today.” Prices are still higher than they were before the agreement when they were selling for $10.60 per bushel, but the price may continue to drop unless there are significant new purchases.

Before the trade agreement, Trump had said farmers would receive an aid package to help them survive the trade war with China. That was put on hold during the shutdown, and now it’s not clear whether the administration will offer farmers aid like Trump did in his first administration.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins, right, films a social media post on a combine with farm owner Tyler Everett during a farm tour in Lebanon, Ind., Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

American farmers have been through this before after Trump’s first trade war with China. The trade agreement China signed with the United States in 2020 promised massive purchases of U.S. crops. But the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted trade between the two nations just as the agreement went into effect. In 2022, U.S. farm exports to China hit a record, but then fell.

Soybean prices are actually still a little higher than they were a year ago even without China’s normal purchases of roughly one-quarter of the U.S. crop. That’s because this year’s soybean crop is a little smaller while domestic demand remained strong with the continued growth in biodiesel production.

But farmers are dealing with the soaring cost of fertilizer, seed, equipment and labor this year, and that is hurting their profits. The Kentucky farmer who is president of the American Soybean Association, Caleb Ragland, has said he worries that thousands of farmers could go out of business this year without significant Chinese purchases or government aid.

Ragland said he’s still optimistic that China will follow through on the purchases, but it’s hard to be confident in that right now with so few sales reported.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins, right, speaks during a farm tour in Lebanon, Ind., Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

“We don’t want to assume they won’t. But it’s going to be a wonderful day when we actually deliver those soybeans, and when there’s my money in hand and so forth and the transaction’s complete,” Ragland said.

China is the world’s largest buyer of soybeans. China bought more than $12.5 billion worth of the nearly $24.5 billion worth of U.S. soybeans that were exported last year.

But China quit buying American soybeans this year after Trump imposed his tariffs and continued to shift more of their purchases over to South America. Even before the trade war, Brazilian beans accounted for more than 70% of China’s imports last year, while the U.S. share fell to 21%, World Bank data shows.

Ragland said that every vender he talks to has told him they are increasing their prices for next year, which will continue to put pressure on farmers.

“We’re still looking at sharp losses and the red ink as we figure budgets for 26 is still very much in play,” he said.

AP Writer Didi Tang contributed to this report from Washington.

Julie K. Brown and Emily Goodin, Miami Herald

President Donald Trump is mentioned in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails over 1,000 times — the most cited person in the tranche released this week by the House Oversight Committee.

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Despite all the questions the emails have raised about his relationship with Epstein, Trump on Friday continued to fan the flames of the scandal. On his social media platform “Truth Social,” Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate some of the influential figures named in the emails.

“I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” Trump wrote.

But no one is named more in the Epstein emails than Trump himself, revealing that years after his friendship with Epstein had waned, Trump remained front and center in Epstein’s emails as a figure whom he could use as currency in his conversations with journalists, world leaders, academics and wealthy men.

As Congress debates whether to force the release of DOJ’s files, the Miami Herald has reviewed many of the documents that are part of a trove of communications held by Epstein’s estate. In recent months, Epstein’s calendars have also been released by Democrats on the Oversight Committee and, like his emails, they reveal Epstein’s continued association with influential people in the years after he pleaded guilty in Florida to sex charges involving a minor.

The messages about Trump were among more than 20,000 documents released by the committee Wednesday. They were obtained from Epstein’s estate pursuant to a subpoena — and are separate from “the Epstein files” that members of Congress are trying to pry out of the Department of Justice and the FBI.

The Herald searched the most recent trove for documents containing Epstein’s e-mail address and variations on Trump’s name, isolating unique pages to avoid counting duplicate files twice. Other names were also searched, including former presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden. No one was mentioned more than Trump.

Emails show that the late financier and convicted sex offender tried to cast himself as a Trump expert and led his friends, girlfriends and political acquaintances to believe he had the inside track on Trump — for everything from who was being nominated to his cabinet to where the president was spending Thanksgiving.

More than once, Epstein suggests that he has compromising information on Trump, both before and after his first term as president.

The emails span a decade, from about 2009 to Epstein’s arrest in July 2019. Part of that period includes December 2018 — right as Epstein was once again under scrutiny. On Nov. 28, 2018, the Miami Herald published an investigation, Perversion of Justice, which examined how Epstein received an unusual federal immunity deal even though the FBI had evidence that he had raped and sexually abused dozens of girls in his Palm Beach mansion. The series went viral and led to public outrage and demands in Congress to reopen the investigation.

Several emails, written just days after the Herald’s series, suggest that the financier was weighing what to do in response to the renewed scrutiny of his case.

An unknown writer, whose name is redacted from the email, tries to console Epstein on Dec. 3, 2018, saying “It will all blow over! They’re really just trying to take down Trump and doing whatever they can to do that…!”

Epstein replies: “yes. thx. it’s wild. because i am the one able to take him down.”

None of the documents directly implicate Trump in Epstein’s sex crimes and Trump has adamantly denied he was involved in any wrongdoing. Still, Epstein, in an email two months later, makes it clear that Trump knew about “the girls.”

Writing to author Michael Wolff, he says: “trump said he asked me to resign. never a member ever. of course he knew about the girls he asked ghislaine to stop…”

The exchange seems to reference Trump’s statement that he had kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, where Maxwell had been recruiting girls for massages.

The messages also reveal that Epstein tried to leverage his association with Trump with world leaders.

In one message, Epstein suggests that Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov should use him to get “insight” on Trump before their first meeting in Helsinki in 2018.

“I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on (Trump) talking to me,” Epstein wrote to former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland in a June 2018 email in advance of Trump’s meeting with Putin.

The emails also show Epstein’s preoccupation with Trump’s money and power, as he tallies how much of Trump’s worth is what Epstein’s accountant described as “nonsense” — and how much of Trump’s empire is the result of smoke and mirrors.

Trump “represents his ‘income’ as the GROSS receipts of his clubs,” means a nothing at all ZERO. no income as we no it,” Epstein wrote in January 2019 to Kathryn Ruemmler, former president Barack Obama’s White House counsel with whom Epstein shared many emails. “He lists his ‘assets,’ and their VALUE — but not the corresponding loans, against it. so no net number, hence meaningless.”

The emails don’t show any messages between Trump and Epstein — or between Epstein and Trump’s White House staff or cabinet members.

It’s unclear if this is because most of his contact with Trump was prior to 2009, or because Trump didn’t use email to communicate with Epstein — or because Epstein was making it all up.

Trump has said in the past that he doesn’t like to use email.

“I’m not an email person myself. I don’t believe in it,” he said in his first term as president. “I think it can be hacked, for one thing. When I send an email, I mean, if I send one, I send one almost never. I’m just not a believer in email. A lot of people have taught me that, including Hillary (Clinton). But, honestly, it could be maybe attacked. Who knows.”

The president is famous for working the phone, often dialing directly from his cell phone instead of going through the White House switchboard. During his presidency, he has been criticized for using a personal, less secure iPhone for communications.

Epstein doesn’t say in his communications that he has spoken directly with Trump. In fact, they reflect how much he keeps details about the president to himself, walking a fine line between boasting of his inside knowledge and distancing himself from a man whom he considered to be of lesser intelligence.

“i have met some very bad people, none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body,” Epstein wrote to Lawrence H. Summers, former President Obama’s treasury secretary and president emeritus of Harvard University.

The massive file release also contained many bizarre details — like when Epstein sent Trump a truck filled with $10,000 in baby food as payment for a bet concerning Trump’s former wife Marla Maples and her pregnancy.

In one interesting message to Maxwell, Epstein describes Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked,” adding that one of the sex trafficking victims “spent hours at my house with him… he has never once been mentioned.” But the victim, whose name is redacted from the email, is the late Virginia Giuffre — who before her death wrote that she had no knowledge of Trump being involved in Epstein’s crimes.

Despite this and other notable blank spots — the president is unlikely to put the scandal behind him anytime soon. The White House continues to characterize the Epstein controversy as a Democratic “hoax.”

The new email dump, which came as Democrats were divided over ending the longest government shutdown in history, was described by White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt as nothing more than a political “smear.”

But the emails are being scrutinized by the public and by influencers on social media, many of whom — both on the left and the right — are inaccurately decoding them. The emails are addressed to a variety of people and sometimes only Epstein’s side of the conversation is shown. None of them are in chronological order, making them hard to read and decipher.

“If anything they raise a lot more new questions than they answer,” acknowledged Matthew Dallek, a political science professor at George Washington University. “They just whet people’s appetite for more.”

Trump has stoked some of the public’s scrutiny with reports that he lobbied Republican representatives Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert to take their signatures off a petition that would force a vote in the House on a bill requiring the Justice Department to release all its Epstein files.

The lawmakers — who were critical to the petition’s success — declined to be swayed.

The petition successfully garnered the necessary 218 signatures. And the House will vote on it next week, Speaker Mike Johnson said. While it is expected to pass the House, it faces long odds in the Senate. Then it must clear one final obstacle before it becomes law: Trump would have to sign it — or veto it.

sStaff writers Claire Healy, Ben Weider and Shirsho Dasgupta contributed to this story.

©2025 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Authorities have identified a newborn girl found in 1983 on the side of Main Street in Blaine and say the then-teenage mother will not be prosecuted because investigators cannot determine if the baby was born alive.

The girl dubbed Rachel Marie Doe was found on Jan. 21, 1983 on Main Street between Minnesota 65 and Radisson Road by a motorist, according to the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office. The placenta was still attached.

The baby’s death was investigated by the Blaine Police Department and the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office but detectives were unable to identify the newborn or discover how she had died.

After the initial investigation and autopsy, a community funeral was held, and the newborn was buried at a local church cemetery.

The investigation into the newborn’s identity stemmed from the implementation of the sheriff’s office cold case unit in 2024.

“We are fortunate for the advancements in technology as well as the continuing efforts of law enforcement in bringing this case to a closure,” Blaine Police Chief Brian Podany said in a release on the identification. “Our Blaine community was greatly affected by this case and our hearts remain with Baby Rachel Doe and all those affected by this case.”

DNA analysis by Othram, a forensic laboratory specializing in difficult DNA cases, led investigators to the mother, who was a teenager at the time of the baby’s birth.

She told police she gave birth while alone at her parents’ home and, because the baby was unresponsive, she believed it was stillborn. Panicking, she left the baby on the side of the road saying she hoped a passerby would discover it.

The woman told authorities that until then she’d never told anyone about the pregnancy or what happened to the baby.

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When detectives spoke with the father, he was unaware of the pregnancy or birth. People close to the mother and father were interviewed and said they were also unaware of the mother’s pregnancy or the birth.

A current forensic pathologist from the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office re-examined the 1983 autopsy results and agreed with the initial findings: they could not determine if the baby was stillborn or a live birth.

The Anoka County Attorney’s Office conducted a review of potential charges, officials said, and concluded that because there wasn’t any evidence showing a homicide was committed, no charges will be filed against the mother.

“Many law enforcement professionals throughout these decades have worked to bring answers to this sad situation, and we are proud to give all who were affected by this story some closure,” said Anoka County Sheriff Brad Wise.

Anoka County authorities ask anyone with knowledge to share about any cold case to submit their tip to ACSOColdCases@anokacountymn.gov.

EUGENE, Ore. — The Gophers come out of the bye week a healthier football team, with running back Darius Taylor in line to return from a one-game absence against No. 8 Oregon on Friday night at Autzen Stadium.

Taylor, who has 354 rushing yards on 80 carries this season, is not listed on the unavailability report, indicating he will be able to play.

The junior from Detroit missed the 23-30 overtime win over Michigan State on Nov. 1 with an undisclosed injury. He was hurt during practice going into the Iowa game on Oct. 25 and was limited to three snaps in the 41-3 loss to the Hawkeyes.

Three other Gophers also appear likely to return against the Ducks: receiver Logan Loya, linebacker Jeff Roberson and cornerback Mike Gerald.

ZaQuan Bryan, who injured his shoulder in warmups against the Spartans and didn’t play, was not listed on the unavailable list.

Meanwhile, key defensive tackle Rushawn Lawrence is listed as questionable to play.

Linebacker Joe Gerlach is out for the season, the U said Friday. The redshirt junior from Woodbury limped off the field against the Spartans; he had 11 tackles in nine games.

On Friday, the U will also be without receiver Kenric Lanier, defensive tackle Simon Seidel and defensive tackle Theo Randle.