Trump and Powell clash on camera over Federal Reserve renovation cost
Donald Trump just attempted to ambush Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, during his site visit to inspect the renovation of the central bank’s historic headquarters in Washington.
When Trump paused before reporters to make a statement, he beckoned Powell over to stand next to him on camera. The president then claimed that the total cost of the renovations to the Federal Reserve buildings was $3.1bn, a higher figure than had previously been reported.
As Trump made this claim, Powell nodded his head no, to signal his disagreement.
“I’m not aware of that,” Powell said. “I haven’t heard that from anybody at the Fed.”
Trump insisted that this new figure “just came out” and removed papers from his coat, as apparent proof, and handed them to Powell.
“This came from us?” Powell asked.
After Trump said that the new figures had come from his people, Powell discovered why the figure for the renovation was suddenly much larger. “You included a third building,” he said.
Trump insisted that the third building was part of the total cost of the renovation he has accused Powell of mismanaging in an effort to find some cause to remove the independent Fed chairman who has refused to lower interest rates at the president’s request.
The third building Trump suddenly claimed is part of the renovation, Powell explained, “was built five years ago. It’s not new.”
Trump was flanked by his staunch ally, Republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who also suggested that the renovations had gone too far over budget.
Powell, asked if they expected any further cost overruns, replied, “Don’t expect them” but said that the independent central bank was “ready for them” if necessary.
Trump then called on a friendly reporter, who asked him what, as a builder, he “would do with a project manager who is over budget”.
“Generally speaking, ”Trump said, “I’d fire him.”
As Trump, Powell and Scott stepped away from the media to continue the tour, Trump said that there is something that Powell could do to assuage his concerns about the cost of the renovations. “I’d love him to lower interest rates,” he said.
Powell has asserted, repeatedly, that the president does not have the power to fire him, as the head of an independent agency, and that decisions on interest rates must be immune to political pressure.
Key events
Trump called Epstein ‘THE GREATEST’ in handwritten note – report
As Donald Trump continues to insist that a letter and drawing attributed to him by the Wall Street Journal in leather-bound book of birthday greetings presented to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 is “fake”, the New York Times reports that Trump’s name appears in a list of contributors to the book it has reviewed.
The Times also published what it described as an image of the handwritten introduction to the book from Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who was later convicted of conspiring with him to recruit, groom and sexually abuse girls.
The Times also published an image of a signed note to Epstein, “To Jeff – You are the greatest!” as an inscription in a copy of Trump’s book Trump: the Art of the Comeback that belonged to Epstein. The note, written in Trump’s distinctive handwriting and black Sharpie, was dated “Oct 97”, the month Trump’s book was first published.
Trump wrote that book with Kate Bohner, a former investment banker and CNBC journalist who now runs a bespoke communications firm that lists “crisis management” as one of its specialities.
Epstein birthday book included messages from Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and dozens of others – report
A leather-bound book of birthday greetings presented to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 included messages from about 20 associates listed as “Friends”, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Alan Dershowitz, the Wall Street Journal reports.
According to the Journal, which is being sued by Trump over its initial report that he contributed a page with an imagined dialogue between “Donald” and “Jeffrey” and a sketch of a naked woman, about 60 people contributed to the birthday book, which had a table of contents that listed the contributions, organized into groups, including “Friends”, “Business”, “Science”, “Brooklyn” and “Family”.
Mark Epstein, the late sex offender’s brother, told the Journal that he recalled the book, which included a note from him, being assembled by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who was later convicted of conspiring with him to recruit, groom and sexually abuse girls.
Mark Epstein told the Guardian in an interview on Thursday that if he had the opportunity he would ask Maxwell “what she and Jeffrey might have known what the dirt was on Donald Trump”.
“Because Jeffrey said, he said he had dirt on Trump,” Mark Epstein added. “I don’t know what it was, but years ago he said he had dirt on Trump.”
In his federal lawsuit, Trump called the letter attributed to him “fake and nonexistent”.
“Several digital copies of the album have been created” the Journal reports. “Pages have been reviewed by justice department officials who investigated Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people familiar with the matter. The album is part of Epstein’s estate.”
Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, who is now the deputy attorney general, met with Maxwell in federal prison on Friday and plans to meet her again on Saturday. Maxwell is trying to have her conviction overturned.
Deputy attorney general says he met with Ghislaine Maxwell and will meet her again
Deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who was Donald Trump’s criminal defense lawyer just last year, wrote on social media that after meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, a former socialite who was convicted of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to recruit, groom and sexually abuse girls, he intends to spend more time interviewing her in federal prison on Friday.
“The Department of Justice will share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time,” Blanche added.
“We want to thank the deputy attorney general for being so professional with all of us and for taking the time to meet with us,” Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus told reporters after Thursday’s interview.
According to Markus, Blanche “spent the full day and asked a lot of questions, and Ms Maxwell answered every single one”.
Maxwell is seeking to have her conviction overturned.
Blanche’s meetings with Maxwell come as the Trump administration tries to contain outrage over its decision to not release files from the federal investigation of the late sex offender, who socialized with Trump for more than a decade.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a former federal prosecutor, called Blanche’s meeting with Maxwell “very weird”, and asked “is he really going as [deputy attorney general] or is he going de facto as Trump’s personal criminal attorney, Tom Hagen style?”
Tom Hagen was the family lawyer in the fictional Godfather series. In one memorable scene, he visited a former gangster in custody and convinced him to kill himself rather than testify against his former associates.
As Whitehouse pointed out earlier on Thursday, Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal for reporting that he contributed a bawdy birthday message to Epstein in 2003 for a leather-bound book of birthday greetings from his associates that Maxwell reportedly assembled.
“Maxwell is a likely witness in Trump’s lawsuit against the WSJ if she put the book together and obtained the Trump letter,” Whitehouse posted.
Just last year, after Blanche defended Trump in court on criminal charges of making secret payments to a porn star during his 2016 campaign, he was a guest on Markus’s podcast.
In an account of his first meeting with Trump, Blanche said: “We clicked. You know, he’s an enigma.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, just responded to the news that “Trump’s government”, as she put it in a post, “approved Paramount’s merger with Skydance”.
“Sure looks like they paid Donald Trump $36 MILLION for this merger,” the senator added. “Bribery is illegal no matter who is president.”
FCC approves sale of Paramount CBS to Skydance
Donald Trump’s hand-picked chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, just announced that “the FCC approved Skydance’s $8 billion acquisition of Paramount Global and its subsidiaries, including the ultimate parent company of the CBS network of owned and operated broadcast television stations, by granting a series of applications that transfer FCC licenses and authorizations.”
According to Carr, Skydance, whose founder is David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump tech billionaire Larry Ellison, “has made written commitments” to ensure that the new company’s news and entertainment programming will address conservative grievances that CBS News reporting is biased against them and the new owners will stop all efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
Skydance also agreed to appoint an ombudsman to “evaluate complaints of bias” who will report to the president of New Paramount and serve for at least two years.
“Approving this transaction will unleash the investment of $1.5 billion into Paramount, bolstering all aspects of its operations, including broadcast”, Carr added in his statement.
That is precisely the amount of money Paramount agreed to pay the creators of South Park earlier this week for global streaming rights over the next five years.
The first episode of the satirical animated series, broadcast on Wednesday and now streaming on the Paramount+ app, mocked Donald Trump as a whiny, would-be autocrat with small genitalia in bed with Satan. It also featured thinly veiled criticism of the company for paying Trump $16 million to drop his claim that the routine editing of CBS interview with Kamala Harris last year was unfair to him, and for canceling Trump critic Stephen Colbert’s late-night show.
The South Park episode ended by ridiculing reports that the new Paramount owners had agreed to give Trump $20 million of public service announcement and advertising for free. The episode concluded with a mock public service announcement, ostensibly in favor of Trump, that pictured him naked with a miniature, talking penis. “Trump, his penis is teeny-tiny”, a narrator intones, “but his love for us is large”.
US supreme court blocks North Dakota redistricting Native Americans call discriminatory
Sam Levine
The US supreme court temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that would have significantly limited the power of the Voting Rights Act and only allowed the Justice Department to file claims under the landmark civil rights law.
The decision arose from a dispute over state legislative districts in North Dakota. In 2022, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and the Spirit Lake Tribe, as well as individual members, sued the state, alleging they had diminished their voting power by “cracking and packing” them into a limited number of districts.
The lawsuit alleged that the redrawn districts would dilute the voting strength of Native Americans in the state in violation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, by giving them a chance to elect the candidate of their choice in just one district in northeastern North Dakota, instead of two.
A district court judge sided with the plaintiffs in 2023 and ordered new maps.
The US court of Appeals for the 8th circuit, which includes Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, overturned that ruling earlier this year. It said private parties – including individual voters and voting rights groups cannot bring claims under Section 2 of the law, which prohibits discriminatory voting practices. Such a ruling would essentially gut the law since private parties bring the vast majority of cases under Section 2.
The justices indicated in an unsigned order that they are likely to take up a federal appeals court ruling that would eliminate the most common path people and civil rights groups use to sue under a key provision of the 60-year-old Voting Rights Act.
The case could be argued as early as 2026 and decided by next summer.
Three of the court’s conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito, said they would have allowed the ruling from the 8th circuit to remain in effect.
“We are relieved that Native voters in North Dakota retain the ability to protect ourselves from discrimination at the polls. Our fight for the rights of our citizens continues. The map enacted by the North Dakota legislature unlawfully dilutes the votes of Native voters, and it cannot be allowed to stand”, Jamie Azure, chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, said in a statement.
It was long considered a settled matter that Congress gave private parties the ability to bring claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which was passed in 1965. But in a concurring opinion in 2021, Gorsuch invited litigants to bring a case to the court challenging that presumption.
“Our cases have assumed – without deciding – that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 furnishes an implied cause of action under §2,” he wrote in 2021. “Lower courts have treated this as an open question … Because no party argues that the plaintiffs lack a cause of action here, and because the existence (or not) of a cause of action does not go to a court’s subject-matter jurisdiction … this Court need not and does not address that issue today.”
Shortly after that decision, a judge in Arkansas dismissed a Section 2 case, saying that private plaintiffs could not bring section 2 claims.
The Campaign Legal Center, which filed the suit with the Native American Rights Fund and other partners, welcomed the stay for “leaving in place fair maps for Native American voters while the cases progresses before the supreme court.”
“To make this decision permanent, Campaign Legal Center will be filing a cert petition to formally request that the supreme court hear this case during their next term,” the nonpartisan, legal nonprofit wrote.
Trump calls Fed renovation ‘very luxurious’ but says he won’t fire Powell
Donald Trump, standing in a hard hat outside the headquarters of the Federal Reserve, just completed his tour of the renovations he has repeatedly claimed are too expensive, as he seeks an excuse to fire the head of the US central bank, Jerome Powell.
Trump, accompanied by Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina, met assembled reporters by a podium set up for his remarks. Powell, who has repeatedly asserted his independence and resisted Trump’s demands to lower interest rates, was not present.
During the tour, Powell took issue with Trump’s claim that the renovation cost $3.1bn, a higher figure than had previously been claimed, and pointed out that the president had added in the cost of another building that was not part of the renovation and had been completed five years ago.
“I see a very luxurious situation taking place,” Trump said.
“Too expensive,” Scott chimed in. The senator and the president then said that Powell’s refusal to lower interest rates was making it difficult for Americans to afford mortgages on their homes, and suggested that the central banker’s renovation of the bank’s headquarters at the same time was inappropriate.
Pressed by a reporter on why Trump does not speed up the lowering of interest rates on mortgages by firing Powell, Trump said he was not inclined to take that unprecedented step. “Because to do that is a big move and I just don’t think it’s necessary,” Trump said.
“And I believe that he’s going do the right thing. I believe that the chairman is going to do the right thing,” Trump said.
He then repeated his apparently false claim that, on his recent visit to Saudi Arabia, “the king of Saudi Arabia” told him that the United States is now “the hottest country anywhere in the world, and I thought you were dead one year ago”. Trump met the crown prince of Saudi Arabia on his visit in May. There are no published accounts that he met with the 89-year-old king, Salman, who has withdrawn from public life since last year following health concerns.
Trump and Powell clash on camera over Federal Reserve renovation cost
Donald Trump just attempted to ambush Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, during his site visit to inspect the renovation of the central bank’s historic headquarters in Washington.
When Trump paused before reporters to make a statement, he beckoned Powell over to stand next to him on camera. The president then claimed that the total cost of the renovations to the Federal Reserve buildings was $3.1bn, a higher figure than had previously been reported.
As Trump made this claim, Powell nodded his head no, to signal his disagreement.
“I’m not aware of that,” Powell said. “I haven’t heard that from anybody at the Fed.”
Trump insisted that this new figure “just came out” and removed papers from his coat, as apparent proof, and handed them to Powell.
“This came from us?” Powell asked.
After Trump said that the new figures had come from his people, Powell discovered why the figure for the renovation was suddenly much larger. “You included a third building,” he said.
Trump insisted that the third building was part of the total cost of the renovation he has accused Powell of mismanaging in an effort to find some cause to remove the independent Fed chairman who has refused to lower interest rates at the president’s request.
The third building Trump suddenly claimed is part of the renovation, Powell explained, “was built five years ago. It’s not new.”
Trump was flanked by his staunch ally, Republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who also suggested that the renovations had gone too far over budget.
Powell, asked if they expected any further cost overruns, replied, “Don’t expect them” but said that the independent central bank was “ready for them” if necessary.
Trump then called on a friendly reporter, who asked him what, as a builder, he “would do with a project manager who is over budget”.
“Generally speaking, ”Trump said, “I’d fire him.”
As Trump, Powell and Scott stepped away from the media to continue the tour, Trump said that there is something that Powell could do to assuage his concerns about the cost of the renovations. “I’d love him to lower interest rates,” he said.
Powell has asserted, repeatedly, that the president does not have the power to fire him, as the head of an independent agency, and that decisions on interest rates must be immune to political pressure.
Powell will be present for Federal Reserve tour, Trump says
Donald Trump has said that Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell will be present when he and other officials tour the Fed’s headquarters in Washington this afternoon.
“Getting ready to head over to the Fed to look at their, now, $3.1 Billion Dollar (PLUS!) construction project,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Trump administration sues New York City to block laws it says impede immigration enforcement
The US government has sued New York City, seeking to block enforcement of several local laws its says are designed to impede its ability to enforce federal immigration laws, Reuters reports.
In a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court, the Trump administration government said the city’s “sanctuary provisions” are unconstitutional, and preempted by laws giving it authority to regulate immigration.
Trump to sign order pushing cities and states to remove homeless people from streets
Donald Trump will today sign an executive order making it easier for cities and states to remove homeless people from the streets, USA Today reports.
Under the executive order, the president will direct attorney general Pam Bondi to “reverse judicial precedents and end consent decrees” that limit local and state governments’ ability to move homeless people from streets and encampments into treatment centers, according to a White House summary of the order reviewed by USA Today.
Trump’s order, dubbed “Ending Vagrancy and Restoring Order”, will redirect federal funds to ensure the homeless people impacted are transferred to rehabilitation, treatment and other facilities, the White House said, though it was not immediately clear how much money would be allocated.
It will require Bondi to work with the secretaries of health and human services, housing and urban development and transportation to prioritize federal grants to states and cities that “enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders”.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement that Trump is “delivering on his commitment to Make America Safe Again and end homelessness across America”.
“By removing vagrant criminals from our streets and redirecting resources toward substance abuse programs, the Trump Administration will ensure that Americans feel safe in their own communities and that individuals suffering from addiction or mental health struggles are able to get the help they need,” she said.
White House does not support GOP senators’ request for special counsel to investigate Obama administration over Russia probe – report
The White House does not support the request by Republican senators John Cornyn and Lindsey Graham for a special counsel to investigate what they call the “Russia collusion hoax,” NBC News is reporting, citing a source familiar with the matter.
“While we appreciate the shared goal of transparency and accountability, the president is confident in the Department of Justice to handle the investigation,” the source told NBC.
The Department of Justice announced last night that it was forming a “strike force” to to investigate (baseless) claims that the Obama administration carried out a “treasonous conspiracy” by using false intelligence to suggest Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.
A special counsel appointed during Trump’s first term already investigated the origins of the Russia probe.
Judge weighing disciplinary referral for DOJ lawyers in Venezuela deportations case
US district judge James Boasberg has said he may initiate disciplinary proceedings against justice department lawyers for their conduct in a lawsuit brought by Venezuelans challenging their removal to a Salvadoran prison in March.
Boasberg, a prominent Washington DC, judge who has drawn Donald Trump’s ire, said during a court hearing that a recent whistleblower complaint had strengthened the argument that Trump administration officials engaged in criminal contempt of court by failing to turn around deportation flights.
Boasberg also raised the prospect of referring DOJ lawyers to state bar associations, which have the authority to discipline unethical conduct by attorneys. He said:
I will certainly be assessing whether government counsel’s conduct and veracity to the court warrant a referral to state bars or our grievance committee, which determines lawyers’ fitness to practice in our court.
A justice department spokesperson declined to comment.
Boasberg has been hearing an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit brought on behalf of alleged Venezuelan gang members removed from the US under the rarely invoked 18th-century Alien Enemies Act. The detainees in the case were returned to Venezuela last week as part of a prisoner exchange, after spending four months in El Salvador’s Cecot prison.
The migrants’ lawyers have disputed the gang membership claims and said their clients were not given a chance to contest the government’s assertions.
Boasberg said in April that the Trump administration appeared to have acted “in bad faith” when it hurriedly assembled three deportation flights on 15 March at the same time that he was conducting emergency court proceedings to assess the legality of the effort.
In court filings, justice department lawyers have disputed that they disobeyed a court order, saying remarks Boasberg made from the bench were not legally binding.
In a 2-1 order, a federal appeals court in April temporarily paused Boasberg’s effort to further investigate whether the Trump administration engaged in criminal contempt.
Boasberg said during today’s hearing that the delay from the appeals court was frustrating for the plaintiffs, and that a whistleblower complaint from Erez Reuveni, a former DOJ attorney who was fired in April, strengthened the case for contempt.
Reuveni described three separate incidents when justice department leaders defied court orders related to the deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally.
Attorney general Pam Bondi, in a post on X, called Reuveni a “disgruntled employee” and a “leaker”.
US will not attend Israel-Palestine two-state conference at UN, state department says
The United States will not attend an upcoming UN conference on an Israel-Palestine two-state solution, state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters during a press briefing today.
The conference, which has already been rescheduled once, is due to take place next week at the United Nations.
The prospects for high-profile announcements on recognition of a Palestinian state had already been dealt a serious blow after it was reported that French president Emmanuel Macron was not expected to attend.
Venezuelans deported by Trump to El Salvador describe ‘horror movie’ mega-prison
Marina Dunbar
Venezuelan men who were deported by the US to the notorious Cecot prison in El Salvador without due process are speaking out about treatment they described as “hell” and like a “horror movie”, after arriving back home.
A total of 252 Venezuelan nationals were repatriated in the last week in a prisoner swap deal between the US and Venezuelan governments, with many able to reunite with family after their ordeal in El Salvador.
Carlos Uzcátegui tightly hugged his sobbing wife and stepdaughter on Wednesday morning in western Venezuela after he had been away for a year.
He was among the migrants being reunited with loved ones after spending four months imprisoned in El Salvador, where the US government had transferred them without due process, sparking uproar over Donald Trump’s harsh anti-immigration agenda. The US had accused all the men, on sometimes apparently flimsy evidence, of being members of a foreign gang living in the US illegally.
“Every day, we asked God for the blessing of freeing us from there so that we could be here with family, with my loved ones,” Uzcátegui, 33, said. “Every day, I woke up looking at the bars, wishing I wasn’t there.
“They beat us, they kicked us. I even have quite a few bruises on my stomach,” he added before later showing a bruised left abdomen.
Arturo Suárez, whose reggaeton songs surfaced on social media after he was sent to El Salvador, arrived at his family’s home in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on Tuesday. His sister hugged him after he emerged from a vehicle belonging to the country’s intelligence service.
“It is hell. We met a lot of innocent people,” Suárez told reporters, referring to the prison he was held in. “To all those who mistreated us, to all those who negotiated with our lives and our freedom, I have one thing to say, and scripture says it well: vengeance and justice is mine, and you are going to give an account to God [the] Father.”
Democrat cuts foreign aid deal to help advance Mike Waltz UN ambassador nomination to Senate floor
Former national security adviser (of Signalgate infamy) Mike Waltz’s nomination as US ambassador to the United Nations is back on track after a Democrat cut a deal to advance him out of committee, Politico reports, marking just the latest development in a rollercoaster day for Donald Trump’s nominee.
Despite Republican senator Rand Paul voting no (derailing plans for a committee vote yesterday), ranking member Jeanne Shaheen sided with the other Republicans on the foreign relations committee to vote to advance Waltz, narrowly by 12-10. Having cleared that key hurdle, Waltz now goes to the Senate, where he will likely be confirmed.
There was no immediate indication of when the full Senate might consider the nomination. A spokesperson for the chamber’s majority leader John Thune, said there were no scheduling updates.
Thune has indicated he might delay the Senate’s annual August recess if Democrats do not allow Republicans to confirm Trump nominees more quickly. In a recent post on his Truth Social platform, Trump urged the Senate to stay in Washington for votes on his nominees.
Politico notes: “The partisan swap reflected ideological divides around isolationism: Paul objected to Waltz’s vote to keep troops in Afghanistan, while Shaheen said in a statement that despite some concerns (including the aforementioned Signalgate, which in part cost him his job as national security adviser), she saw Waltz as a potential ‘moderating force’ against the likes of vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth and Elbridge Colby. Some Democrats also worried about who might replace Waltz if his nomination failed.”
Shaheen said she had worked out a deal with committee Republicans and the state department to unlock $75m in lifesaving foreign aid for Haiti and Nigeria, Axios reports.
However, Shaheen said she may not necessarily vote for Waltz’s confirmation.