One Democrat Joins GOP to Install Trump Puppet as New Fed Chair

Just one Democrat voted Wednesday to confirm Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve, handing President Donald Trump complete control over U.S. monetary policy.

The final vote for Warsh was 54–45, mostly along party lines. Only Senator John Fetterman broke ranks and voted alongside Republicans to confirm Warsh.

Warsh is everything Trump wants in an appointee. He’s handsome and wealthy—the richest Fed chair ever, in fact—but most of all, he’s willing to do whatever the president wants.

During his confirmation hearings last month, Warsh assured lawmakers that he would “take [his] responsibility to be an independent leader of the Federal Reserve very seriously,” and claimed the president had never “asked [him] to predetermine, commit, fix, [or] decide on any interest rate decision in any of our discussions, nor would I ever agree to do so.”

But that was a lie. Trump confirmed to The Wall Street Journal in December that he’d pressed Warsh on whether he could trust him to support interest rate cuts if he were chosen to lead the central bank. When Senator Ruben Gallego cornered him on this point during the confirmation hearing, Warsh complained about journalistic standards.

It’s no secret that Trump has been desperate for the Fed to lower interest rates, in the hopes of boosting his party’s chances in the midterm elections. He has repeatedly attacked outgoing Chair Jerome Powell for refusing to cut rates. And Trump has no qualms demanding loyalty from those he installs, such as the conservative Supreme Court justices he won’t stop harassing.

The confirmation of Trump’s newest sycophant signals the destruction of the Fed’s independence.

The Trump administration plans to withhold $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements from California, claiming that the state has not taken alleged fraud tied to its hospice and home health agencies “seriously.”

“These fraudulent health care providers are getting rich by giving people medications they don’t even need,” Vice President JD Vance announced at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “We want California to get serious about this fraud.”

Vance argued that states around the country were paying the cost of California’s allegedly blind eye, though California Governor Gavin Newsom vehemently denied that the administration’s attack had anything to do with fraud.

“We hate fraud. But that’s NOT what this is,” Newsom wrote in a statement on X. “Vance and Oz are attacking programs that keep seniors and people with disabilities OUT of nursing homes. Pretty sick.”

Newsom further claimed that rising costs related to California’s In-Home Supportive Services, or IHSS, which provides more than 730,000 low-income, disabled residents with home-based care, had ultimately saved the federal government money.

“Why has IHSS grown in California? It’s simple: Because California is keeping more people OUT of far more expensive nursing homes!” Newsom wrote.

The Trump admin has singled out California as the “ground zero” of health care fraud, as the government aims to strangle Medicaid funding around the nation. Vance’s announcement follows actions taken weeks prior by the federal administration that suspended the licenses of 447 hospice facilities and 23 home health agencies around the Los Angeles area, on suspicion of fraud.

Vance also said that his anti-fraud unit would “very aggressively encourage states to take Medicaid fraud more seriously” and would soon be issuing letters to all 50 states “that will require them to show that they are aggressively prosecuting Medicaid fraud in their states.”

“And if they don’t, we are going to turn off the money,” Vance noted.

This story has been updated.

Senator John Fetterman was the deciding vote Wednesday to dismiss the Democrats’ seventh attempt to advance a resolution under the War Powers Act to stop President Donald Trump’s disastrous military campaign in Iran.

It was the first time the Senate has voted on a measure to end the war in Iran since the conflict crossed the 60-day deadline. After that point, the War Powers Act requires the president to withdraw his forces unless Congress declares war or approves an extension. The motion failed by a single vote, at 49–50.

Three Republicans—Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Rand Paul—broke with party leadership to support the measure.

It should come as no surprise that Fetterman was the sole Democrat to vote against the measure, as he’s expressed outspoken support for acting against Iran, which he called “the real enemy, the real threat, the real danger.” But in siding with Republicans (and Israel), Fetterman is acting against not only the will of his party but the wills of his constituents. A March poll found that Pennsylvania voters held a -16 net disapproval rating of America’s recent military strikes in Iran.

Trump has reportedly ordered Republicans to attempt to sway Fetterman to switch parties to help retain the GOP’s fragile majority in the Senate. Fetterman claimed he’d make a “shitty Republican,” while Trump has called the Pennsylvania centrist his “favorite Democrat.”

The president’s retribution campaign is in full force inside the FBI.

The FBI now has a team of special agents willing to pursue political targets identified by the Trump administration, NOTUS reported Wednesday.

The unit is reportedly referred to internally as the “payback squad,” though a senior FBI official told NOTUS on background that no team had been created with that name. The official noted, however, that bureau personnel are most likely referring to a specific effort undertaken by a group titled the Director’s Advisory Team, which was created in 2025 to “[get] to the bottom of some abuses of power” that allegedly took place during previous presidential administrations.

One current government official told the outlet that the team has been tasked with building cases similar to the one developed against former FBI Director James Comey, who was indicted by a federal grand jury in April over an Instagram post that the White House interpreted to be a threat on Donald Trump’s life.

A current law enforcement official told NOTUS that the team is composed of people who “know what they’re signing up for” and have taken rotational shifts at an off-site location unaffiliated with established FBI field offices.

The senior FBI official said that the unit team was “detached” from the FBI’s Washington Field Office and has recently added more agents out of New York.

It’s not the only major shift taking place at the bureau in order to abet Trump’s aims: More than 6,000 FBI agents were diverted to handling “immigration-related matters” last year, effectively redefining the agency’s work in the process.

The immigration operation is similar to restructurings taking place at other major agencies as the Trump administration’s agenda supersedes and even undermines their long-term missions. The Department of Homeland Security has had to divert resources in order to abet Trump’s deportation plans, and the Department of Defense shifted billions of dollars to fund Trump’s border mission.

The Justice Department has also dropped thousands of criminal cases in an attempt to funnel its efforts—almost singularly—toward convicting immigration cases. Altogether, the chief law enforcement agency ended some 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of Trump’s term, including investigations into terrorism, white-collar crimes, and drugs, while prosecuting 32,000 new immigration cases.

The shift in priorities is an indication that “making America safe again” is not necessarily as much of a goal for the current administration as Trump has promised. At the president’s direction, federal authorities have arrested thousands of noncriminal immigrants across the country, despite repeated pledges that the deportation purge is focused on the “worst of the worst”—such as “murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and terrorists.” Meanwhile, America’s law enforcement authorities are being tasked with persecuting his political enemies.

The secretary of the interior should presumably know how solar power generation works. On Wednesday, Doug Burgum showed that he does not.

Burgum was testifying before the House Natural Resources Committee, and exposed himself under questioning from Democratic Representative Jared Huffman, who brought up energy projects in Nevada.

“All of these projects you’re describing in Nevada have one thing in common—when the sun goes down, they produce zero electricity,” Burgum said, going on to say that other forms of electricity generation would still be needed with solar power and that it is unreliable. Huffman then made a cheeky remark to the committee chair, Republican Representative Bruce Westerman.

“Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to enter in the record this amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of: It’s a battery. China’s figured it out. That’s why they’re cleaning our clock on clean energy. But I want to enter that into the record,” Huffman said, to a smirk from Westerman.

Burgum replied that China being the world’s largest emitter should be part of that submission, to which Huffman replied that China produced “far more clean energy.” Westerman then intervened to end the repartee.

Burgum, formerly the governor of North Dakota, has extensive ties to the oil and gas industry. He shares President Trump’s hostility to cleaner forms of energy, and doesn’t publicly object to Trump’s contention that climate change is a “con job.” But at the very least, Burgum should know that solar energy is aided considerably by battery storage.