Warren says DoJ only dropped ‘bogus’ investigation of Powell to ‘clear the path’ for Warsh confirmation
Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee responded to the news that the justice department is dropping its “bogus” investigation into Jerome Powell.
“This is just an attempt to clear the path for Senate Republicans to install President Trump’s sock puppet Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair,” Warren said in a statement.
The Massachusetts Democrat also noted that Jeanine Pirro threatened to restart the inquiry at any time, and has yet to drop the investigation into Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve Governor whose attempted firing has made its way to the supreme court.
“Anyone who believes Donald Trump’s corrupt scheme to take over the Fed is over is fooling themselves. The Senate should not proceed with the nomination of Kevin Warsh,” Warren added.
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“This decision puts an end to the inhumane Trump policy of sending people, including families with little children, back to horrific danger without even a hearing,” Lee Gelernt, who argued the appeal for the ACLU, said. “The court made clear that the president does not have the unilateral power to wipe away all of the asylum laws enacted by Congress.”
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“The circuit court reaffirmed our conviction that a president cannot unilaterally eliminate the right to seek asylum by executive order. We hope that the U.S. government remembers its obligation to consider applications for refugee protections and recommits to upholding the basic rights of people fleeing persecution,” Keren Zwick of the National Immigrant Justice Center said.
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“Since January of last year, the government has used the proclamation to implement a near-total shutdown of asylum processing, slamming the door on vulnerable families, children, and adults seeking refuge,” Melissa Crow of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies said. “As the court rightly concluded, U.S. law is clear: People seeking safety have a legal right to apply for asylum. The government cannot wield racist, baseless claims of an ‘invasion’ to override Congress and deprive them of that right.”
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As Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, points out, Donald Trump “is once again refusing to call the effort by the Ottoman Empire to annihilate Armenians what it was – genocide,” in his presidential statement on the start of the genocide on this day in 1915.
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Schiff went on to call Trump’s statement “a tragic retreat from U.S. recognition of the genocide during the prior administration”.
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Unlike Trump, and Barack Obama, during his presidency Joe Biden did refer explicitly to “the Armenian genocide” in his statements on the anniversary from 2021-2024, casting aside concerns about angering Turkey’s government.
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Biden, of course, is held responsible by many Americans for not only failing to call Israel’s US-backed assault on the Palestinian population of Gaza a genocide, but also enabling it by providing arms and diplomatic support.
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Trump’s reversal of Biden’s precedent also enraged the Armenian National Committee of America.
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“President Trump is doubling down on his disgraceful surrender to Turkish threats – continuing, now for the sixth time, enforcing Ankara’s gag-rule against honest American remembrance of this crime – despite recognition by the White House, Congress, all fifty states, and more than a dozen NATO allies,” the ANCA’s director, Aram Hamparian, said in a statement.
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Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will travel to Isalamabad, Pakistan tomorrow for further talks with Iran. The press secretary added that vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio will be waiting here in the US for updates. They will be on standby and will be prepared to dispatch to Pakistan if necessary.
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Donald Trump’s disapproval rating has hit the highest level of his second term, according to a polling average from the New York Times. Fifty-eight per cent of Americans disapprove of the president’s performance, while only 39% approve according to a collation of polls from the Times.
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The US justice department announced on Friday that it is taking steps to “strengthen the federal death penalty”, including bringing back firing squads and readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump administration. The justice department also said that it is “streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases”. In addition, the justice department said that it has “rescinded” the Biden-era moratorium on federal executions and has “authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants”.
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Tim Scott, the Republican chair of the Senate banking committee, said that despite the justice department’s decision to close the criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the “American people deserve answers about the unacceptable cost overruns at the Federal Reserve”.
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Scott has invited the inspector general of the central bank to present the banking committee with findings of a Fed renovation review in the next 90 days.
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“These serious concerns warrant scrutiny, and l’m pleased this matter is continuing to receive it,” the GOP senator said.
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In response to the news that the justice department has dropped the criminal investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, Karoline Leavitt said that the inquiry “still continues” under the Office of the Inspector General.
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The White House also urged Thom Tillis, the Republican senator who was blocking any nomination from moving forward, to confirm Kevin Warsh – the president’s pick to lead the central bank – as “speedily as possible”.
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Tillis had threatened to stall Warsh taking over until the investigation into Powell was closed.
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Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner with travel to Isalamabad, Pakistan tomorrow for further talks with Iran.
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The press secretary added that vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio will be waiting here in the US for updates. They will be on standby and will be prepared to dispatch to Pakistan if necessary.
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King Charles is expected to meet New York mayor Zohran Mamdani during his visit to the US next week, according to a report moments ago.
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The British monarch is traveling to the States to visit Donald Trump at a highly sensitive time, amid a fragile ceasefire in what many view as the US president’s elective US-Israel war on Iran that had spread across the Middle East, a war that has sent energy and other prices surging globally.
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Politico reported that His Majesty will meet with the highest-profile mayor in America right now, Mamdani, New York’s first Muslim mayor.
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Mamdani’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reports.
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Mamdani in New York last year.”,”caption”:”Zohran Mamdani in New York last year.
“,”credit”:”Photograph: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1777048043000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”12.27 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1777049284000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”12.48 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1777048257000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”12.30 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”12.30″,”title”:”King Charles expected to meet New York mayor Mamdani – report”,”contributors”:[{“name”:”Joanna Walters”,”imageUrl”:”https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2022/12/13/Joanna_Walters.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=9753f493de414f16f919e3a73fb7a3fc”,”largeImageUrl”:”https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2022/12/13/Joanna_Walters_Next_Gen.png?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=ce789e61f5c53125de905d4e32561cae”}],”primaryDateLine”:”Fri 24 Apr 2026 16.56 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Fri 24 Apr 2026 06.00 EDT”},{“id”:”69eb94b28f08d9ffbf2f6688″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
Hello again, US politics live blog readers, it’s been a hopping spring day in Washington, DC so far and there’s more news to come. Donald Trump is expected to leave the White House mid-afternoon to go to Mar-a-Lago and he’ll be there and back again for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in the nation’s capital tomorrow evening. We’ll bring you all the developments as they happen.
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Here’s where things stand:
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Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, said the news that the justice department is dropping its “bogus” investigation into Jerome Powell is “just an attempt to clear the path for Senate Republicans to install President Trump’s sock puppet Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair”.
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The justice department is ending its criminal investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, and his management of ongoing renovations to the central bank. Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said that she was directing her office to close the inquiry. The inspector general for the Federal Reserve, an independent watchdog, has been tasked to “scrutinize the building costs overruns” instead.
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The Trump administration is vowing to crack down on foreign tech companies’ exploitation of US artificial intelligence models, singling out China at a time that country is narrowing the gap with the US in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race.
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A majority of Americans blame Donald Trump for surging gasoline prices, which is weighing on his Republican party ahead of November’s congressional midterm elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Some 77% of registered voters in the poll said Trump bears at least a fair amount of responsibility sparked by his decision to launch the US-Israel war on Iran.
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The US Justice Department’s internal watchdog will review the agency’s handling of records related to financier Jeffrey Epstein, including whether all relevant documents were disclosed and properly redacted. William Blier, acting head of the department’s Office of Inspector General, said the inquiry will examine compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
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Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee responded to the news that the justice department is dropping its “bogus” investigation into Jerome Powell.
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“This is just an attempt to clear the path for Senate Republicans to install President Trump’s sock puppet Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair,” Warren said in a statement.
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The Massachusetts Democrat also noted that Jeanine Pirro threatened to restart the inquiry at any time, and has yet to drop the investigation into Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve Governor whose attempted firing has made its way to the supreme court.
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“Anyone who believes Donald Trump’s corrupt scheme to take over the Fed is over is fooling themselves. The Senate should not proceed with the nomination of Kevin Warsh,” Warren added.
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The justice department is ending its criminal investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, and his management of ongoing renovations to the central bank.
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Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said that she was directing her office to close the probe as the inspector general for the Federal Reserve, an independent watchdog, has been tasked to “scrutinize the building costs overruns – in the billions of dollars – that have been borne by taxpayers”.
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However, she said she would “not hesitate” to restart the investigation “should the facts warrant doing so”.
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US defense secretary Pete Hegseth opens the press conference in much the same style as his previous ones: by trumpeting America’s military success in Iran and saying Iran has an opportunity to strike a “good deal”.
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He says the blockade in the strait of Hormuz is “growing” and has “gone global”, referring to the seizure of two Iranian dark fleet vessels.
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“We are in control; nothing in, nothing out,” he says. He adds that 34 ships have been turned away from the strait so far.
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Hegseth is now repeating the exact same lines from previous press conferences, speaking about the Iranian navy “sitting at the bottom of the sea” and praising president Donald Trump’s “fortitude”.
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The Trump administration is vowing to crack down on foreign tech companies’ exploitation of US artificial intelligence models, singling out China at a time that country is narrowing the gap with the US in the AI race.
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In a Thursday memo, Michael Kratsios, the president’s chief science and technology adviser, accused foreign entities “principally based in China” of engaging in deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to “distill,” or extract capabilities from, leading AI systems made in the US and “exploiting American expertise and innovation.”
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The administration, Kratsios wrote, will work with American AI companies to identify such activities, build defenses and find ways to punish offenders.
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The memo arrives at a time when China is challenging US dominance in artificial intelligence, an area where the White House says the US must prevail to set global standards and reap economic and military benefits. But the US-China gap in performance of top AI models has “effectively closed,” according to a recent report from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI.
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China’s embassy in Washington said it opposed “the unjustified suppression of Chinese companies by the US”.
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A majority of Americans blame Donald Trump for surging gasoline prices, which is weighing on his Republican party ahead of November’s congressional midterm elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
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Some 77% of registered voters in the poll, which concluded early this week, said Trump bears at least a fair amount of responsibility for the recent rise in gas prices, which was sparked by his decision to launch a war on Iran along with US ally Israel.
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The view was widely shared across the political spectrum, with 55% of Republican voters, 82% of independents and 95% of Democrats pinning blame on the president for the higher costs.
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Some 58% of voters, including one in five Republicans and two-thirds of independents, said they would be less likely to support candidates in the November midterms who support Trump’s approach to the conflict with Iran.
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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
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The Justice Department’s internal watchdog will review the agency’s handling of records related to financier Jeffrey Epstein, including whether all relevant documents were disclosed and properly redacted.
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William Blier, acting head of the department’s Office of Inspector General, said the inquiry will examine compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, legislation passed by Congress in November requiring the public release of records related to Epstein, with limited exceptions.
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He said:
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Our preliminary objective is to evaluate the DOJ’s processes for identifying, redacting, and releasing records in its possession as required by the Act.
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Blier added that the office will also look into “DOJ’s processes for addressing post-release publication concerns.”
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President Donald Trump, who had previously dismissed controversy surrounding Epstein as a “hoax” driven by Democrats, initially opposed the measure before ultimately backing and signing it amid pressure from fellow Republicans.
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The Justice Department released approximately 3.5 million pages of documents related to its Epstein investigations, though the disclosure came more than a month after the statutory deadline for release.
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Politico reported on Thursday:
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Alleged victims of sexual abuse by Epstein have complained that DOJ repeatedly failed to redact photos and other details that could reveal their identities and did not make public all the information prosecutors have about Epstein associates who were allegedly aware of his crimes or conspired with him but were never charged.
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Lawmakers have made similar complaints and have said they suspect DOJ has not released some relevant documents.
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In other developments:
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The Trump administration has moved to reclassify marijuana, more than four months after Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to move it from schedule I to schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act.
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Trump, apparently abandoning his attempt to frighten Iran’s leaders into negotiating by channeling Richard Nixon’s “madman” theory, ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in his conflict with Iran.
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Trump has decided to invite wanted war criminal Vladimir Putin to the G20 summit in December at Trump’s Doral golf resort, the Washington Post reports.
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Trump confirmed that the government is considering a plan to bail out or ‘“just buy” Spirit Airlines, but confused Barack Obama with Joe Biden, and Jet Blue with People Express, which has been defunct since 1987.
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India’s foreign ministry denounced comments from the rightwing US commentator Michael Savage, posted on social media by Trump, which argued against awarding birthright citizenship to the US-born children of immigrants “from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet”.
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Key events
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Rights lawyers welcome federal court ruling Trump’s ‘racist’ ban on asylum is illegal
After the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia blocked Donald Trump’s executive order suspending asylum access, ruling that federal law gives people the right to apply for asylum at the border, lawyers for a coalition of rights groups that successfully challenged the attempted ban expressed relief.
“This decision puts an end to the inhumane Trump policy of sending people, including families with little children, back to horrific danger without even a hearing,” Lee Gelernt, who argued the appeal for the ACLU, said. “The court made clear that the president does not have the unilateral power to wipe away all of the asylum laws enacted by Congress.”
“The circuit court reaffirmed our conviction that a president cannot unilaterally eliminate the right to seek asylum by executive order. We hope that the U.S. government remembers its obligation to consider applications for refugee protections and recommits to upholding the basic rights of people fleeing persecution,” Keren Zwick of the National Immigrant Justice Center said.
“Since January of last year, the government has used the proclamation to implement a near-total shutdown of asylum processing, slamming the door on vulnerable families, children, and adults seeking refuge,” Melissa Crow of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies said. “As the court rightly concluded, U.S. law is clear: People seeking safety have a legal right to apply for asylum. The government cannot wield racist, baseless claims of an ‘invasion’ to override Congress and deprive them of that right.”
Unlike Biden, Trump fails to use word ‘genocide’ in statement on Armenian genocide anniversary
As Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, points out, Donald Trump “is once again refusing to call the effort by the Ottoman Empire to annihilate Armenians what it was – genocide,” in his presidential statement on the start of the genocide on this day in 1915.
Schiff went on to call Trump’s statement “a tragic retreat from U.S. recognition of the genocide during the prior administration”.
Unlike Trump, and Barack Obama, during his presidency Joe Biden did refer explicitly to “the Armenian genocide” in his statements on the anniversary from 2021-2024, casting aside concerns about angering Turkey’s government.
Biden, of course, is held responsible by many Americans for not only failing to call Israel’s US-backed assault on the Palestinian population of Gaza a genocide, but also enabling it by providing arms and diplomatic support.
Trump’s reversal of Biden’s precedent also enraged the Armenian National Committee of America.
“President Trump is doubling down on his disgraceful surrender to Turkish threats – continuing, now for the sixth time, enforcing Ankara’s gag-rule against honest American remembrance of this crime – despite recognition by the White House, Congress, all fifty states, and more than a dozen NATO allies,” the ANCA’s director, Aram Hamparian, said in a statement.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will travel to Isalamabad, Pakistan tomorrow for further talks with Iran. The press secretary added that vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio will be waiting here in the US for updates. They will be on standby and will be prepared to dispatch to Pakistan if necessary.
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Donald Trump’s disapproval rating has hit the highest level of his second term, according to a polling average from the New York Times. Fifty-eight per cent of Americans disapprove of the president’s performance, while only 39% approve according to a collation of polls from the Times.
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The US justice department announced on Friday that it is taking steps to “strengthen the federal death penalty”, including bringing back firing squads and readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump administration. The justice department also said that it is “streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases”. In addition, the justice department said that it has “rescinded” the Biden-era moratorium on federal executions and has “authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants”.
The Republican chair of the Senate armed services committee, Roger Wicker, has said that “the time is over for negotiations with Iran’s regime.”
On social media, the GOP lawmaker from Mississippi said that the “radical successors” of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can “never be trusted to keep any promise or agreement”.
Wicker added that Trump should direct the military to “finish destroying Iran’s conventional military capabilities and eliminating any last remnants of their nuclear program”.
Earlier this week, Wicker chided administration officials for critcizing Nato allies and their reluctance to assist the war in Iran.
“These alliances continue to pay dividends for the United States. People need to stop saying otherwise,” Wicker said.
GOP chair of banking committee welcomes inspector general’s review of Fed renovations
Tim Scott, the Republican chair of the Senate banking committee, said that despite the justice department’s decision to close the criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the “American people deserve answers about the unacceptable cost overruns at the Federal Reserve”.
Scott has invited the inspector general of the central bank to present the banking committee with findings of a Fed renovation review in the next 90 days.
“These serious concerns warrant scrutiny, and l’m pleased this matter is continuing to receive it,” the GOP senator said.
Anna Betts
The US justice department announced on Friday that it is taking steps to “strengthen the federal death penalty”, including bringing back firing squads and readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump administration.
“Today, the Department of Justice acted to restore its solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences – clearing the way for the Department to carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals,” the justice department said in a news release.
In the statement, the department said that the actions taken include “readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump Administration” which “relies on pentobarbital as the lethal agent”, and “expanding the protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad”.
The justice department also said that it is “streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases”.
In addition, the justice department said that it has “rescinded” the Biden-era moratorium on federal executions and has “authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants”. The statement added that Todd Blanche, the acting US attorney general, has “already authorized seeking death sentence against nine of these defendants”.
Shortly after taking office last January, Donald Trump signed an executive order committing to pursue federal death sentences and directing the attorney general to ensure that states have sufficient supplies of lethal injection drugs for executions.
Read the full report:
Earlier, when Karoline Leavitt spoke to reporters, she noted that today’s gaggle would probably be her last before she gives birth to her second child and takes some parental leave.
“I know all of you have the president’s phone number personally, so I have no doubt that you won’t have a shortage of statements and news from this building while I’m gone,” she joked.
Donald Trump’s disapproval rating has hit the highest level of his second term, according to a polling average from the New York Times.
Fifty-eight per cent of Americans disapprove of the president’s performance, while only 39% approve according to a collation of polls from the Times. Dissatisfaction with Trump’s job performance appears to spike after the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran at the end of February, and the ensuing hike in gas prices across the nation.
Investigation into Jerome Powell continues under office of the inspector general, says Karoline Leavitt
In response to the news that the justice department has dropped the criminal investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, Karoline Leavitt said that the inquiry “still continues” under the Office of the Inspector General.
The White House also urged Thom Tillis, the Republican senator who was blocking any nomination from moving forward, to confirm Kevin Warsh – the president’s pick to lead the central bank – as “speedily as possible”.
Tillis had threatened to stall Warsh taking over until the investigation into Powell was closed.
White House confirms Witkoff and Kushner will travel to Pakistan for further talks with Iran
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner with travel to Isalamabad, Pakistan tomorrow for further talks with Iran.
The press secretary added that vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio will be waiting here in the US for updates. They will be on standby and will be prepared to dispatch to Pakistan if necessary.
