What happened
Bill Gates yesterday told the House Oversight Committee he made a “grave error in judgment” by ever meeting with Jeffrey Epstein but “never witnessed nor had any indication” of his “ongoing criminal conduct,” according to a copy of his opening statement. As Gates met for his closed-door testimony, The New York Times published new details on the White House’s “freakout over the Epstein files.”

Who said what
Gates said he interacted with Epstein between 2011 and 2014 to discuss raising money for global health, and later discovered he “was working to use information about my infidelities — in addition to many lies that he layered on top — to pressure me to re-engage with him.” Gates said his extramarital affairs had “nothing to do with my interactions with Epstein,” but the “unsuccessful” blackmail effort “shows some of the ways he tried to leverage his interactions with me to further his agenda.” 

The Epstein scandal “consumed and often paralyzed the highest levels of the Trump administration” last summer, the Times said. President Donald Trump “wanted the whole thing buried,” but Vice President JD Vance “wanted to release all the files,” including “nipple-related documents” and other “unsubstantiated material” about Trump. 

What next?
Following the Times report, the White House is “abuzz over the leak about leak control,” said Axios. 

What happened
Consumer prices rose 4.2% last month from a year earlier, the highest inflation reading since April 2023, the Commerce Department said yesterday. Most of the increase was due to rising fuel prices. But the “higher energy costs are rippling through the food supply chain,” affecting beef, coffee and produce, The Washington Post said. Asked about the rising cost of living, President Donald Trump “took a surprisingly optimistic tack,” The Associated Press said. “I love the inflation,” he told reporters. 

Who said what
Trump’s take was “unexpected” given that voters rank the economy “as a top concern — and have given Trump low marks on that issue” after he’d pledged in 2024 to “quickly vanquish inflation,” the AP said. “His argument now is that higher prices are solely a function of the Iran war” and that “relief is already on its way” because of a “secret mission” that he said had already moved 100 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. “As soon as this war is over,” he told reporters, prices will drop “like a rock.”

What next?
Despite Trump’s claims, efforts to reopen the strait “have so far stalled” and oil disruptions are already baked in through 2026, Reuters said.

Authorities in China have blacklisted a prize-winning movie because nationalists and the manosphere “resented its portrayal of their country,” said The Economist. The prison drama “Her Heart Beats in Its Cage” is centered on Zhao Xiaohong, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for intentionally killing her husband in 2009 with a fruit knife during a domestic argument that turned violent.

Zhao was preparing for her release from jail when Xiaoyu Qin, a film director, discovered her. During a visit to the prison, he was surprised to find “marginalized individuals full of personality and complexity, intense clashes between notions of good and evil” and “deeply conflicted stories,” he said to China Newsweek.

When the film was shown at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain last year, it “made headlines back home in China,” said The Times of London. It was criticized online for allegedly whitewashing a convicted killer, wtih some arguing that the movie was “condoning violence” and “rewarding a criminal,” while others “questioned whether she was a victim of domestic violence at all,” noting that the judge “rejected” Zhao’s claim of self-defense.

China is undergoing its own “version” of the “West’s culture wars,” said The Times, with feminists “calling out the patriarchy and sexual harassment,” while men, particularly young men, are “crying foul.” But “more informed online debate” about the movie has focused on reforms to the justice system. The law has been changed to allow judges assessing a self-defense claim to take into account any previous history of domestic violence.