Two GOP Senators Vow to Fight Trump’s Federal Reserve Takeover

At least two Republican senators plan to fight back after the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the weekend, vowing to block all of President Trump’s nominations to the central bank.

Senator Lisa Murkowski said Monday on X, “After speaking with Chair Powell this morning, it’s clear the administration’s investigation is nothing more than an attempt at coercion.

“If the Department of Justice believes an investigation into Chair Powell is warranted based on project cost overruns—which are not unusual—then Congress needs to investigate the Department of Justice. The stakes are too high to look the other way: if the Federal Reserve loses its independence, the stability of our markets and the broader economy will suffer,” Murkowski added. “My colleague, Senator Tillis, is right in blocking any Federal Reserve nominees until this is resolved.”

Thom Tillis, a member of the Senate Banking Committee who will retire at the end of his term this year, has vowed to block all of the Trump administration’s Fed nominees until the Department of Justice backs off from its investigation into Powell and other Fed officials.

“It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question. I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed—including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy—until this legal matter is fully resolved,” Tillis posted on X Sunday. The Senate Banking Committee has a narrow 13–11 advantage for Republicans, meaning that his opposition would stall any of Trump’s picks.

Powell sounded the alarm over the DOJ’s investigation into himself Sunday, saying that the independence of the financial body was at stake over “the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.” Now it seems that some Republicans agree. The question is whether Trump will back down or still try to strong-arm Powell and the Fed.

The Trump administration is giving its investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James another shot.

The president shared a New York Post report to his Truth Social page Sunday night, effectively affirming that federal prosecutors are working toward more potential charges against James.

This case seemingly accuses James of alleged campaign misconduct over a total of $36,000 that her campaign paid to Iyesata Marsh, her longtime hairdresser, between 2018 and 2019. Roughly $22,000 of the payments were intended as payment for James’s use of Marsh’s studio as a late-stage campaign office in the last quarter of the year, according to a 2019 Wall Street Journal report.

The New York Times reported that prosecutors sought to speak with Marsh about the payments after she herself was indicted and charged with bank fraud and identity theft regarding the purchase of a Land Rover several years ago.

New York’s top cop has become one of the president’s chief legal adversaries since Donald Trump’s bank fraud case, when James successfully proved Trump was guilty of lying to banks. He was ordered to cough up nearly half a billion dollars in 2024—but has yet to do so.

In April, the Trump administration launched an investigation into James’s personal finances, accusing the attorney general of lying on her bank statements in order to obtain better mortgage rates. At the time, Trump referred to James as a “totally corrupt politician” and a “wacky crook,” and accused New York’s first Black woman in statewide office of being “racist.”

But that case completely fell apart in November, when a judge ruled that the administration had improperly appointed the lead attorney, Lindsey Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience at all. Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Siebert, was squeezed out of his position overseeing the legal matters of the Eastern District of Virginia after he revealed he couldn’t find incriminating evidence to substantiate Trump’s case against James.

The Justice Department has since tried—and failed—two more times to prosecute James. But Trump’s latest efforts may be a dud thanks to the loud mouths of some of his own staff: In December, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles fessed to Vanity Fair that the president’s flimsy charges against James were his “one retribution,” an admission that would give James’s legal defense plenty of reason to toss his cases against her for eternity.

Federal immigration officers have started using Renee Good’s death to threaten more U.S. citizens.

A video posted to Reddit showed a screaming ICE agent repeatedly threatening to kill a man who was sitting in his car, asking how he didn’t “learn from what just happened.”

In the two-minute clip, a masked agent wearing a Minnesota Timberwolves hat approached the vehicle already furious, while the driver rolled down his window. “Stop fucking following us, you are impeding operations, this is the United States federal government,” the officer shouted.

“I live over here, I got to get to my house,” the driver replied calmly.

“This is your warning, alright? Go home to your kids, go home to your kids. This is your last warning. I won’t arrest you,” the officer threatened, before stomping away.

When the driver tried to engage another agent on the other side of his car, the agent urged him not to “make a bad decision.”

“I’m not making any bad decision, I’m peaceful. I serve the Lord, not a draft-dodging coward,” the driver said.

“You’re not gonna like the outcome of this, sir. I guarantee you that,” the first officer said, circling back. “I guarantee you’re not gonna like the outcome. Go home to your children. It’s Sunday. It is Sunday. You did not learn from what just happened?”

“Learn what?” the driver asked, but the officer did not elaborate, and the group of federal agents appeared to leave without arresting anyone.

It seems clear, however, that the agent was referring to Renee Good, the U.S. citizen who was shot multiple times by an ICE agent last week after federal officers surrounded her vehicle. While the Trump administration initially justified the deadly use of force by claiming Good was a “domestic terrorist,” President Donald Trump most recently claimed her death was the result of being “disrespectful” of law enforcement.

It’s evident that the driver in the latest video hadn’t done anything illegal because none of the agents made the slightest effort to detain him. In fact, the officer seemed to suggest that even if he could, he wouldn’t actually arrest him—he would just kill him.

This isn’t the only time that ICE agents have apparently invoked Good’s killing.

Another protester, who identified themself as a former U.S. Marine, claimed in an interview posted on X that federal officers had mocked Good while violently arresting them. “They said, ‘Have you not learned? This is why we killed that lesbian bitch!’” the protester said.

President Trump thinks the Civil Rights Movement—a series of laws and events that brought the country closer to realizing the full humanity of Black people, LGBTQ people, and women—was “reverse discrimination.”

“Do you believe … that the civil rights protections that Americans had, starting in the 1960s and so forth, resulted ultimately in the discrimination against white men?” The New York Times’ David E. Sanger asked the president in an interview released on Sunday.

“Well, I think that a lot of people were very badly treated. White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university or a college. So I would say in that way, I think it was unfair in certain cases,” Trump replied. “I think it was also, at the same time, it accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people—people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination.”

Arguing that increased equality somehow made white Americans worse off is rhetoric straight from the Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, and Nick Fuentes script. And the clumsiness of Trump’s explanation suggests that he’s just parroting their talking points rather than drawing his own conclusion on how exactly the Civil Rights Movement stopped white people from getting jobs and going to college. Either way, this argument is facetious and rooted in white supremacist ideology.

Trump then went on to brag about receiving the “Israel award” and claimed to not know Fuentes, despite having dinner with him and washed-up edgelord rapper Kanye West in 2016.

Read the full NYT interview here.

Donald Trump was glad to hear the news that one of his former advisers, Dina Powell McCormick, was named as Meta’s president and vice chair on Monday.

“Congratulations to DINA POWELL MCCORMICK, WHO HAS JUST BEEN NAMED THE NEW PRESIDENT OF META. A great choice by Mark Z!!” Trump posted on Truth Social, referring to Meta’s founder Mark Zuckerberg. “She is a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction. President DJT.”

McCormick, who served as deputy national security adviser in Trump’s first term, is now joining the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. Last year, McCormick briefly joined Meta’s board of directors before leaving in December. McCormick is married to Senator David McCormick of Pennsylvania, who was elected as a Republican to the Senate last year.

“She’ll be involved in all of Meta’s work, with a particular focus on partnering with governments and sovereigns to build, deploy, invest in, and finance Meta’s AI and infrastructure,” Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads Monday.

Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs used to have a frosty relationship with Trump, with Trump being banned from Facebook after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. But in Trump’s second term, Zuckerberg is on much better terms with the president, getting a front-row seat at Trump’s inauguration after donating $1 million to his inaugural fund.

Trump also threatened to raise tariffs against countries that levy taxes on digital services after Zuckerberg raised the issue at a White House meeting. For his part, Zuckerberg has changed the rules on Facebook to discourage fact-checking and ignore derogatory comments about immigrants, even taking down a popular Facebook page tracking ICE agents. Now it seems Trump will have another ally at the helm of Zuckerberg’s company.