Month: November 2025

• Donald Trump signed a bill that will release the DOJ’s files on Jeffrey Epstein.
• It’s the latest in a long line of Epstein documents that have been released.
• But this one stands to be different. Here’s how.

More than six years after his death in jail, Jeffrey Epstein is still alive and well in the public discourse.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act after months of pressure from members of Congress, including some in his own party.

The law requires one of the most radical acts of transparency in the Justice Department’s history, requiring it to make public its records related to Epstein, the notorious and well-connected pedophile financier who killed himself while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

The department has 30 days to comply, setting a deadline of Saturday, December 19.

Epstein counted Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and other titans of finance, law, politics, and science among his acquaintances. His alleged victims and other members of the public hope the files will shed light on those relationships and law enforcement’s handling of the case.

Here’s what sets this release apart:

Haven’t we already seen a whole lot of ‘Epstein files’?

In recent months, the House Oversight Committee has made public Epstein-related documents it obtained through subpoenas, including emails provided by his estate.

Other documents have been made public through the federal prosecution of Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty of sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Civil lawsuits involving Epstein, Maxwell, banks affiliated with Epstein, and the US Virgin Islands government have shaken loose even more records about his life. Various drips and drabs have also entered the public domain through Freedom of Information Act requests, government reports, and an inquiry from the Senate Finance Committee.

All of that may pale in comparison to what the Justice Department has in its possession.

OK, so what’s new here?

The Epstein Files Transparency Act requires the Justice Department to publish “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” about Epstein and Maxwell.

Those could include more emails and text messages, as well as internal prosecutorial records. The Justice Department has overseen two different criminal investigations into Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls. The first took place in Florida and led to a widely criticized deal where Epstein pleaded guilty to a single sex offense in 2008. The second was the Manhattan-based investigation, which led to Epstein’s 2019 arrest and Maxwell’s prosecution.

During Epstein’s 2019 arrest, the FBI searched his Manhattan townhouse and his home in the US Virgin Islands. In the process, they obtained more than 70 computers, iPads, and hard drives, along with financial documents and binders full of CDs.

Those seized materials form the heart of the “Epstein files,” which could shed even more light on the deepest, darkest secrets of the notorious pedophile. According to The New York Times, the FBI had already prepared 100,000 pages for public release before the Justice Department decided to keep them secret earlier this year.

That’s pretty wild. Is there anything else the Justice Department might release?

Yes! A whole bunch of stuff, including:

• Any deals between the government and Epstein associates, including non-prosecution agreements and sealed settlements.
• Records tied to Epstein’s death in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, such as transcripts of interviews with people in neighboring cells the night he died.
• Records into what has widely been criticized as a “sweetheart deal” for Epstein by Southern District of Florida prosecutors.
• Material surrounding calls victims say they made to the FBI as early as the 1990s about Epstein’s conduct, which did not lead to any known law enforcement investigation.
• Additional flight records from Epstein’s private jets.

That’s a lot? Is there anything the government isn’t releasing?

While the law requires the Justice Department to make its records publicly available, other federal agencies are off the hook.

The Treasury Department, for example, is in possession of more exhaustive records related to Epstein’s finances, including Suspicious Activity Reports some banks filed about his fund transfers. A separate bill proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden would force more transparency there.

The Federal Aviation Administration possesses flight records that it has so far kept from the public. And to the degree that intelligence agencies like the CIA or National Security Agency have anything, the bill doesn’t cover them.

Doesn’t the DOJ have loopholes to keep this stuff secret?

The Epstein Files Transparency Act permits the Justice Department to redact or withhold documents for victim privacy and for national security purposes.

‘National security’? That sounds fuzzy.

Well, sure, but there are limits.

Four people who have had access to the seized material previously told Business Insider that nothing in them indicated Epstein had any kind of domestic or foreign intelligence role. Nothing in the discovery process or court proceedings for Maxwell’s criminal case, which involved those records, indicated that there was anything of national security importance.

Furthermore, the Epstein Files Transparency Act requires all redactions to be accompanied by a written justification submitted to Congress.

The law specifically prohibits the Justice Department from withholding, delaying, or redacting any documents “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.” It also requires the department to produce material “concerning the destruction, deletion, alteration, misplacement, or concealment” of Epstein-related records — meaning Congress wants to know if there are signs of a cover-up.

What about that new investigation I heard about?

A provision in the law allows the Justice Department to withhold records that “would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution.”

Days before the bill’s passage, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into the links between Epstein and JPMorgan Chase, as well as a slew of perceived political enemies. Bondi handed the investigation over to the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

But even if the Justice Department withholds any of those records from the public, it’s still required to hand them over to the House Oversight Committee, which subpoenaed them.

Any perceived attempts by the Justice Department to use this investigation as a shield could lead to backlash from both Congress and members of the public. A number of Epstein’s victims have pushed for the release of the files, seeking to understand more about the circumstances of their own abuse and the Justice Department’s handling of the case.

• Market watchers can’t get enough of Michael Burry’s crusade against the AI giants.
• Nvidia’s stock reversal on Thursday sparked memes featuring the investor of “The Big Short” fame.
• Burry, a vocal skeptic of the AI boom, has bet against Nvidia and Palantir in recent months.

Michael Burry is officially a meme.

The investor of “The Big Short” fame is lighting up social media after he bet against Nvidia and called out the chipmaker and other AI companies on X, which may have contributed to the stock market’s slump on Thursday.

Why Michael Burry is having a moment

Burry is best known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the mid-2000s US housing bubble. His massive, contrarian wager was immortalized in the book “The Big Short” and a movie adaptation starring Christian Bale as Burry.

Known for his dire warnings of crashes and recessions, Burry goes by “Cassandra” on X — a reference to the priestess from Greek mythology who was cursed to speak true prophecies but never to be believed.

He burst back onto X in late October after more than two years of silence, and wasted no time firing off several warnings about a dangerous bubble in AI stocks.

His hedge fund, Scion Asset Management, revealed days later that at the end of September it held bearish put options on Nvidia and Palantir with a combined notional value of $1.1 billion.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp called the bets “batshit crazy” in a televised interview, spurring Burry to fire back that the AI company’s boss couldn’t “crack a simple 13F.”

In later posts, Burry said that he wasn’t short and had exited the Palantir puts in October. He also terminated Scion’s SEC registration, closing it to outside cash.

Most recently, he took aim at Nvidia after its third-quarter earnings beat on Wednesday. He questioned the longevity of its chips, its “give-and-take deals” with other AI companies, and its stock dilution.

Some market watchers rushed to ridicule his bearish stance on the AI boom after Nvidia shares popped more than 5% following its earnings beat.

Other commenters poked fun at Burry’s defiance, and his willingness to go up against technology titans and the dominant market narrative.

Still others have defended Burry, saying he’s many things but foolish isn’t one of them.

Shares of Nvidia opened higher on Thursday but swung to a 3% decline by the market’s close, and fell another 1% on Friday.

Nvidia is the world’s most valuable public company with a market capitalization above $4 trillion, so its sudden downswing dragged the entire stock market lower on Thursday.

The S&P 500 gave up a 1.9% gain to close 1.6% lower, while the Nasdaq Composite went from a 2.6% rise to a 2.2% fall, marking the indexes’ largest intraday swing since April. Both closed less than 1% higher on Friday.

The reversal led some market watchers to rally behind Burry, celebrating his surprise comeback and suggesting he may have been right to be skeptical.

They also gave him kudos for cashing in on the chaos, even though Burry hasn’t said whether he holds Nvidia puts or profited from Thursday’s selloff.

Burry also received praise for his Palantir bet, as the AI stock has tanked 25% since November 3, when it reported earnings and Burry disclosed his puts.

By no means was Burry solely responsible for the market slump. Investors also soured on Nvidia after analysts flagged increases in inventories and deferred revenues, raising concerns the company’s growth may have been frontloaded and could slow in future quarters. Moreover, delayed economic data showed US unemployment rose to an almost four-year high of 4.4% in September.

Burry is yet to post about the online furor surrounding his crusade against the AI giants. But his followers may hear more from him very soon, as his X bio reads: “‘Unchained’ coming maybe sooner than Nov 25th.”

• Staying active with daily walks may help prevent symptoms of Alzheimer’s as you age, research suggests.
• Cognitive decline and memory loss happen as we age if certain proteins build up in the brain.
• Walking just 3,000 – 5,000 steps a day helps to stave off these toxins and keep the brain healthy.

Every weekday afternoon, Harvard neurologist Jasmeer Chhatwal gets up from his desk, heads out of the office, and walks about three-quarters of a mile to get a cup of coffee from a neighborhood cafe.

There’s a perfectly good coffee maker in the office, but the afternoon ritual isn’t (just) about caffeine. The 20-minute stroll is helping to stave off symptoms of brain aging like memory loss, according to Chhatwal’s research.

His latest study, published November 3 in Nature Medicine, helps pinpoint how little movement you can get away with and still see benefits for the brain.

The goal? 5,000 steps a day — around two miles.

“People don’t need to run marathons,” Chhatwal told Business Insider. “In terms of things that you can do for yourself and your brain, this is a pretty easy one.”

Here’s why walking may help to make your mind more resilient to aging, and how to get the most out of your daily steps.

Why walking is linked to better brain health

Your risk of cognitive decline as you age can be influenced by your lifestyle, your genetics, and even the environment around you.

But increasingly, researchers are finding that a higher risk doesn’t make Alzheimer’s inevitable — and small lifestyle changes may have a huge impact.

The latest study, led by Chhatwal and colleagues from Harvard Medical School and Mass General Brigham, looked at nearly 300 cognitively healthy adults between the ages of 50 and 90.

To understand how their brains changed over time, the researchers scanned for key markers of Alzheimer’s risk, including deposits of amyloid and tau proteins, which can accumulate over time and disrupt nerve cells.

Amyloid tends to show up in the brain first, sometimes many years before symptoms develop. Tau, which appears later, has been linked to the development of memory loss, behavioral changes, and cognitive decline.

Using brain scans, they found that people who got between 5,000 and 7,000 steps a day had a healthier, better-functioning brain over time, and a slower build-up of disease-causing tau protein, compared with people who were more sedentary.

That was true even for people who started the study with higher levels of amyloid plaque build-up in their brains already.

For this high-risk group, even a little activity paid off, with benefits starting around 3,000 steps per day (roughly a mile and a quarter).

While previous research has linked exercise to lower Alzheimer’s risk, this study stands out because it followed participants for up to 14 years to see how changes in their brains slowly developed.

Chhatwal is excited to move this research along, to refine the benefits even more — especially for people who are at high risk for Alzheimer’s.

But, for now, he is keen to spread the word that this study suggests it’s not too late to get more active for a healthier brain, and every little bit counts.