AP

President Trump pulled out all the stops to welcome Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to the White House today for a glitzy visit, complete with cannons, a flyover, Saudi flags draped across the White House and a horse procession on the South Lawn.

This evening, the Trumps will host the crown prince for a formal black-tie dinner.

📹 Watch the splashy welcome

“We have an extremely well-respected man in the Oval Office today,” Trump said, lauding the crown prince as a “very good friend” whom he’s “very proud of."

“We inherited a mess. You actually told me you thought the country was in big trouble,” Trump said, describing the pair's meeting. “I’m not going to use the exact word you used. I refuse to say that you thought our country was dead a year-and-a-half, two years ago.” 

Trump’s goal: To sign economic and defense agreements with the Saudi leader. They’re also likely to discuss Israel’s war in Gaza, artificial intelligence and military ties.

The U.S.-Saudi relationship has come a long way the past several years: Former President Biden once called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” after Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

U.S. intelligence determined that the crown prince, known by his initials MBS, had approved the killing. Biden, in a push to aid bilateral relations, later greeted the crown prince with a fist-bump in Jeddah in a move widely criticized given Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

💬 Follow today’s live blog

Read more: ‘3 things to watch as Trump hosts Saudi’s crown prince at White House’

The Washington Post’s Laura Meckler and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel report the Trump administration is planning to announce that it will dismantle most of the Education Department.

Multiple offices within the department will be shifted elsewhere, sources told the Post.

Reminder: While Trump can effectively shutter the department through broad cuts to programs and staff, Congress would need to pass legislation to formally abolish it.

💡 More context: “President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March seeking to close the department and asked Education Secretary Linda McMahon to work with Congress to do so. The agency, which was created in 1979, has long been derided by conservatives as unnecessary and ineffective. But Congress has not acted on or seriously considered Trump’s request. McMahon has acknowledged that only Congress can eliminate the department but vowed to do everything in her power to dismantle it from within.” (The Washington Post)

A group of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse stood outside the U.S. Capitol this morning to pressure House lawmakers to vote to release the government’s files on the convicted sex offender.

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) joined the press conference.

Greene, who has been locked in a very public falling out with President Trump, took a jab at her former ally. “I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for five, no, actually, six years for, and I gave him my loyalty for free,” Greene said. 📹 Watch the clip

Massie urged for the release of the Epstein files, arguing that “a prince lost his title. The [British] ambassador to the United States lost his job. We need to see those same kind of consequences here.”

📸 Survivors held up photos of themselves as teenagers

Read more on today’s press conference: ‘Epstein accusers make 11th-hour push for Congress to release files’

Meanwhile: Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other House GOP leaders held their own press conference this morning with a very different message. There’s a 📸 poster in the room that lays out the “dangers of the discharge petition” that was used to force this vote.

Johnson said he would move this vote forward but slammed it as a vote for “political show.” “With so many pressing issues on our plate, just very frustratingly to us, the Democrats are delaying that work even further with a political show vote,” Johnson said.

The House is poised to pass a measure demanding the release of the Epstein files in a bipartisan vote today. And it will be doing so with Trump’s blessing, something that was unimaginable even a week ago.

This is a major step toward the files seeing the light of day, but it will still need to make it through the Senate, where Republican leaders have been largely quiet about how they will handle it.

The vote puts Senate GOP Leader John Thune (S.D.) in a tough spot. If the Senate manages to pass it, Trump says he will sign it.

But Trump’s sudden U-turn in supporting the file release after months of trying to kill it has raised some eyebrows. Some legal experts and critics wonder whether there's another plan to potentially block the file release. 

Last Friday, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democratic opponents’ ties to Epstein. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) thinks this new Department of Justice investigation could be a maneuver to stop the file release because they’re now part of an ongoing investigation. And legal experts that spoke with Time think this theory is plausible.

It's worth mentioning that Trump could — and still can — release the files on his own without congressional approval.

Read more: ‘Jeffrey Epstein disclosures face hurdles even with House poised to approve release of files’

A reporter repeatedly asked Trump about his name being mentioned in the Epstein files. Trump cut her off and said, “Quiet, piggy.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper called this “disgusting and completely unacceptable.”  

📆 See it here

And a related tidbit: House votes are now expected on Friday, Dec. 19.

“The Justice Department’s prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey is facing death by a thousand procedural errors,” reports The Hill’s Ella Lee.

How so?: “Federal judges overseeing the criminal case have increasingly raised concerns about the department’s efforts to investigate and indict the adversary of President Trump, from the evidence presented to grand jurors to the prosecutor who made the government’s case. Any one of the issues could do away with Comey’s charges before he’s ever put on trial.”

How this escalated this week: “In recent days, two judges signaled warning signs for the Justice Department’s case as Comey’s attorneys pursued various avenues of his defense against false statements and obstruction charges stemming from 2020 testimony he gave to Congress."

For what it’s worth: Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb told CNN that he thinks the case is dead.

Read Lee’s reporting: ‘Trump DOJ’s James Comey case faces widening judicial backlash’

— Senior citizens in the U.S. will be hit with a 10 percent increase in Medicare Part B costs in 2026.

— Roblox is upping its age verification system for users, including grouping young users into age-based chats.

The New York Times: Recycling Lead for U.S. Car Batteries Is Poisoning People

The Atlantic: Trump’s Eye-Popping Postelection Windfall

Op-ed in The Hill: Is this the end of Chuck Schumer?