Kevin Warsh, former governor of the US Federal Reserve, walks to lunch during the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, US, on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. The annual event has been a historic breeding ground for media deals and is usually a forum for tech and media elites to discuss the future of their industry. (Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced conservative economist and former Fed governor Kevin Warsh as his pick to be the new Federal Reserve chairman.
In a post on Truth Social early Friday morning, Trump said that he has “known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best.”
“He will never let you down,” Trump continued.
Warsh previously served on the Fed’s board of governors from 2006 to 2011. He was a top adviser to then-Fed chairman Ben Bernanke during the 2008 financial crisis, serving as a liaison between the central bank and Wall Street. During that time, he was an inflation “hawk” — skeptical of the Fed’s ultra-low interest rate policy. But in more recent interviews, Warsh has heaped praise on Trump and called for “regime change” at the Fed.
On Thursday, Trump said that he had “chosen a very good person” while walking the carpet at the Kennedy Center ahead of the premiere of the documentary about first lady Melania Trump.
Trump said his pick to replace current Chairman Jerome Powell is an “outstanding person and a person that won’t be too surprising to people.”
“A lot of people think that this is somebody that could have been there a few years ago,” Trump went on. “It’s going to be somebody that is very respected, somebody that’s known to everybody in the financial world. And I think it’s going to be a very good choice.”
Trump has repeatedly attacked Powell over the past year for his cautious approach to lowering interest rates.
Powell’s term as chairman expires in May.
Earlier this month, in an extraordinary escalation of the months-long attack on the independence of the Federal Reserve, Powell announced that federal prosecutors had launched a criminal investigation related to a multi-year renovation of the Fed’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Earlier this week, at its first meeting since news of the investigation surfaced, the Federal Reserve voted to hold interest rates steady.
Trump said that the Fed governors who voted earlier this week to pause interest rates will change their minds once there is a new chair.
“If they respect the Fed chairman, they’ll be with us all the way,” Trump said. “They want to see the country be great.”
Luigi Mangione appears for a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court, December 18, 2025 in New York City. (Curtis Means-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The judge overseeing Luigi Mangione’s federal case may decide on Friday if the death penalty will remain a sentencing option if he’s convicted.
Mangione, who is accused of stalking and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan in December 2024, will return to the federal courtroom on Friday. He has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges.
The defense argued that stalking “fails to qualify as a crime of violence” and therefore cannot be the predicate to make Mangione eligible for the death penalty if he is convicted of the federal charges. The defense also argued that the decision to seek the death penalty was political and circumvented the federal government’s protocols.
Judge Margaret Garnett has said Mangione would stand trial for the federal case in January 2027 if capital punishment remains on the table, and that the federal trial would begin in October if the death penalty is taken off the table. Either way, she set jury selection for Sept. 8.
Federal prosecutors contend the Altoona Police Department’s search followed departmental procedures. Mangione’s lawyers have argued the backpack search was illegal and police should not have had immediate access to the items inside, including the alleged murder weapon, a notebook and writings.
In making their case for a July 1 state trial, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said the state has a “deep interest” in upholding the right to life, maintaining public order and delivering justice for Thompson’s family.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sign stands at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate, now facing an impasse in negotiations, did not cast votes on a government funding deal on Thursday, sending the government ever closer to a partial shutdown with a little more than 24 hours until funding runs out.
Senate Democrats announced earlier Thursday they had struck an agreement with the White House to move forward with a plan that would see the Department of Homeland Security funding bill separated from a package of five other bills. Programs funded by the five-bill package would be funded until the end of September. DHS would be funded for two additional weeks to allow lawmakers to negotiate on other provisions in the package.
The Senate must get unanimous agreement to move forward with this plan if it wants to hold votes before Friday night’s deadline. As it stood Thursday night, there seemed to be objections by senators on both sides of the aisle gumming up the works.
“Tomorrow’s another day, and hopefully people will be in a spirit to try and get this done tomorrow,” Majority Leader John Thune said as he was leaving the Capitol late Thursday.
If Senators can’t win over the objectors by Friday, they’ll force the government into a partial shutdown. The Senate will reconvene at 11 a.m. Friday to see if they can reach an agreement. Any agreement they do reach would still need to be approved by the House, so at least a brief partial shutdown is, at this stage, highly likely.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is the Senate’s most vocal objector to the deal. He stormed into Republican Leader John Thune’s office earlier tonight calling the agreement stuck between Democrats and the White House a “bad deal” and telling reporters he was objecting to its advancement.
Graham called the treatment of ICE officers “unconscionable” as he was asked about his objections to proceeding.
“From a Republican point of view, the cops need us right now. They are being demonized. They’re being spat upon. They can’t sleep at night,” Graham said. “Are they right to want to change some ICE procedures? Absolutely. But I’m not going to lead this debate for two weeks before I can explain to the American people what I think the problem is. The problem is, structurally, for four years, the country was ruined.”
Graham also seems to be opposed to the deal because it would strip a controversial provision, passed in a stopgap funding bill earlier this year, that allows senators to file lawsuits if their phone records are accessed without notice. Graham was one of seven Republican senators whose phone toll data were accessed by Special Counsel Jack Smith during his investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“I am not going to ignore what happened,” Graham said. “If you were abused, your phone records were illegally seized, you should have your day in court.
It seems there may be other senators who have separate challenges with the funding bill plan as well, but it’s not yet clear who those senators are.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer placed blame on Republicans for the stall in votes tonight.
“Republicans need to get their act together,” he said as he left the Capitol.
But when pushed on whether any Democrats had outstanding objections to the bill that might stall things, Schumer didn’t give a clear answer.
Thune said there remains “snags on both sides” stopping the bill from advancing but wouldn’t give details about Democratic objections.
“They’ve got a couple issues on their side they’ve got to clear them up, we’ve got some things we’ve got to work on. But hopefully by sometime tomorrow we’ll be in a better spot,” Thune said.
It is likely that even if the Senate passes the bills, there will still be a short partial shutdown — the bills would need to go back to the House for consideration. It seems unlikely the House, which is in recess until Monday, could pass any of these bills before Friday night’s funding deadline.
Earlier Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson told ABC News’ Selina Wang that bringing the House back before Monday “may not be possible.”
“So, we have got some logistical challenges, but we’ll do it as quickly as we can and get everybody back,” Johnson said at the premiere of the “Melania” film. “And if there is a short-term shutdown, I think we’ll get it reopened quickly.”
Asked earlier Thursday if he was on board with the deal struck by Democrats in the Senate, Johnson said he had not yet seen details of the bill. But when asked if he supports Democrats’ demands to reign in federal agents — including prohibiting face masks and requiring body cameras — Johnson said “No.”
Democrats called to separate the DHS funding following the deaths of Renee Good, a mother of three who was fatally shot by an immigration enforcement officer in Minneapolis earlier this month, and became more urgent after the death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, who was killed in a shooting involving federal law enforcement over the weekend.
After Democratic urging, a critical mass of Republicans seemed prepared Thursday afternoon to support an agreement.
Earlier Thursday, Senate Democrats voted unanimously to block the package of six funding bills, with it failing to advance by a vote of 45-55. It would have needed at least 60 votes to proceed. Multiple Republicans also cast votes against the package.
Coming into the negotiations, Senate Democrats laid out a list of additional demands including: ending roving patrols, ensuring federal agents are held to the same use of force policies that apply to state and local law enforcement, preventing agents from wearing masks and requiring body cameras.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump struck an optimistic tone about averting a shutdown.
“Hopefully we won’t have a shutdown and we’re working on that right now. I think we’re getting close,” Trump said during his Cabinet meeting. “The Democrats, I don’t believe want to see it either, so we’ll work in a very bipartisan way.”
A car crashed into the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn on Wednesday evening. (WABC)
(BROOKLYN) — A New Jersey man is facing attempted assault as a hate crime and other charges after police said he repeatedly drove his car into the back of Chabad World Headquarters in Brooklyn.
Police were already assigned to a detail at the Chabad in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood when they heard a commotion in the building’s main entrance Wednesday evening, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. When officers responded, they saw a car strike the rear door, reverse and then strike the door again.
Video showed the suspect, 36-year-old Dan Sohail, get out of his Honda Accord after the crash and tell the crowd, “I dunno, it slipped! It slipped, you f—— a——!” Sohail appeared to spit at the crowd as NYPD officers led him toward their police cruiser.
No one was hurt but the building was evacuated as a precaution.
“The hate crime right now is that he basically attacked a Jewish institution,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. “He knew it was a synagogue.”
Kenny said Sohail visited the Chabad World Headquarters previously before he returned Wednesday night.
According to Jewish community leaders, Sohail told police he had been to synagogues in New York and New Jersey in recent months, asking how he could convert and looking for spiritual guidance. They said he seemed like he had studied Judaism as a way to deal with the problems he was having in life.
No explosives or other devices were found in the suspect’s car, police said.
The incident occurred during a Chabad holiday, when thousands of people from around the world were gathered at the headquarters, New York Attorney General Letitia James told reporters.
The Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey said in a statement that it was “deeply disturbed.”
At a news conference, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called it a “horrifying incident” and said “antisemitism has no place in our society.”
The syringe and liquid authorities said Anthony Kazmierczak used, which was taken into evidence by the Minneapolis Police Department. (US District Court. District of Minnesota)
(MINNEAPOLIS) — The man who was arrested after charging at Rep. Ilhan Omar during a town hall in Minneapolis has been charged by the Justice Department with assaulting a federal representative, a complaint shows.
Anthony Kazmierczak, 55, has been charged with “forcibly assaulted, opposed, impeded, intimidated and officer and employee of the United States,” according to the federal complaint.
He allegedly had a syringe filled with apple cider vinegar when he charged at Omar while she stood at a podium on Tuesday, according to the affidavit.
“I squirted vinegar,” he allegedly said after being tackled by security, according to the affidavit, which included an image of the syringe.
At the time of the incident, Omar was talking about how Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should resign.
“She’s not resigning. You’re splitting Minnesotans apart,” Kazmierczak allegedly said as he was being led away, according to the affidavit.
He was arrested and initially booked into Hennepin County Jail on suspicion of third-degree assault, Minneapolis police said Tuesday.
A “close associate” of the suspect told the FBI that several years ago, Kazmierczak allegedly said, “Someone should kill that b****,” while talking about Omar during a phone call, according to the affidavit.
After the incident, Omar told reporters that she won’t be intimidated.
“You know, I’ve survived more, and I’m definitely going to survive intimidation and whatever these people think that they can throw at me because I’m built that way,” she said.
Tuesday’s attack came amid tensions in Minneapolis between local officials and the Trump administration over the immigration crackdown in the city that has seen two U.S. citizens killed in shootings involving federal law enforcement.
U.S. President Donald Trump takes the stage to speak during a rally at the Horizon Events Center on January 27, 2026 in Clive, Iowa. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — In the hours after FBI agents seized 2020 election ballots from an elections facility in Georgia on Wednesday, President Donald Trump posted a series of thoroughly discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election — and the 2016 election too.
Fulton County officials said Wednesday that the FBI seized original 2020 voting records while serving a search warrant at the county’s Elections Hub and Operations Center. The FBI said they were conducting court-authorized activity at the facility, but said they would provide no further information.
Late Wednesday night, the president reposted to his social media platform a claim that Italian military satellites had been used to hack into U.S. voting machines to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
“China reportedly coordinated the whole operation,” the post reads. “The CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet.”
That was just one of a flurry of posts and reposts by Trump making discredited claims about the 2020 election, directly tying the allegations to the FBI’s seizure of ballots on Wednesday.
“This is only the beginning,” Trump said, reposting other posts about the FBI’s action in Georgia. “Prosecutions are coming.”
The development comes after Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss. Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election, and numerous lawsuits challenging the election results in the state were rejected by the courts.
Among the statements posted and reposted by Trump following the FBI’s actions in Georgia is one on the 2016 election that falsely claims that “Barack Hussein Obama” falsified intelligence and “conspired with foreign powers, not one, not two, not three, but four times to overthrow the United States government in 2016.”
In addition to being baseless, the claim ignores the fact that Obama was president in 2016, so if he tried to overthrow the government, he would have been overthrowing himself.
The conspiracy theory about Italian military satellites is not new. In 2021, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows directed both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense to look into the matter.
As documented in my 2021 book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” the conspiracy theory was brought to the White House by a woman who went by several aliases including “The Heiress” and was known at the Pentagon for her claimed ties to Somali pirates. She passed her material off to a national security council official at a supermarket parking lot in Arlington.
The Italian spy satellite theory was just one of many unsubstantiated allegations made about the 2020 election by Trump and his supporters. At a Trump campaign press conference in November 2020, lawyer Sydney Powell infamously claimed that voting machines had been rigged using software that was “created at the direction of Hugo Chavez.” This was an especially extravagant claim because Chavez, the former leader of Venezuela, had died three years earlier.
In 2023, Powell pleaded guilty to state charges of conspiracy to commit “intentional interference with performance of election duties” in Georgia and agreed to serve six years of probation and to pay a $6,000 fine.
And now it appears that Sidney Powell is back. In a post on X Thursday morning, DOJ official Ed Martin posted a picture of himself with Powell, writing, “Good morning, America. How are ya’?”
Waymo vehicle near Union Square, San Francisco, California, January 22, 2026. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
(SANTA MONICA, Calif.) — Federal officials opened an investigation after a Waymo self-driving vehicle struck a child near an elementary school in California, resulting in minor injuries.
The incident occurred on Jan. 23 in Santa Monica, within two blocks of an elementary school during school drop-off hours, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The vehicle was being operated by its automated driving system and there was no safety operator in it at the time, according to the agency.
The child “ran across the street from behind a double parked SUV towards the school and was struck by the Waymo AV,” the NHTSA said in a statement.
Other children and a crossing guard were in the area at the time, as well as several double-parked vehicles, the agency said.
“Our technology immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle,” Waymo said in a statement, adding that the autonomous driver “braked hard, reducing speed from approximately 17 mph to under 6 mph before contact was made.”
After the vehicle made contact, the child stood up and walked to the sidewalk, according to Waymo. The company said it called 911 and the vehicle “remained stopped, moved to the side of the road, and stayed there until law enforcement cleared the vehicle to leave the scene.”
Waymo reported that the child, whose age was not released, sustained minor injuries, according to the NHTSA.
Waymo said it reported the incident to the NHTSA the day it occurred and will “cooperate fully with them throughout the process of its investigation.”
The investigation will look into whether the self-driving vehicle “exercised appropriate caution given, among other things, its proximity to the elementary school during drop off hours, and the presence of young pedestrians and other potential vulnerable road users,” the NHTSA said.
Waymo and the NHTSA did not release any details on where the vehicle was traveling and if it had any passengers at the time of the collision.
Members of the National Guard stands at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on MLK Day on January 19, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s use of federalized National Guard troops in U.S. cities is projected to have cost roughly $496 million last year, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
If current troop levels are maintained, the deployments could cost as much as $1.1 billion this year, according to CBO estimates.
Monthly costs vary widely by location and troop levels, according to the estimate for 2026, ranging from about $6 million for roughly 350 Guard members in New Orleans, to $28 million for 1,500 troops in Memphis, and $55 million for nearly 2,950 personnel in Washington, D.C., though the precise number of troops fluctuates. Some 200 Guardsmen mobilized in Texas are estimated to cost about $4 million a month.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, requested the analysis in October.
“The American people deserve to know how many hundreds of millions of their hard-earned dollars have been and are being wasted on Trump’s reckless and haphazard deployment of National Guard troops to Portland and cities across the country,” Merkley said in a statement.
Last year, the largest share stemmed from operations in Washington, D.C., at about $223 million, followed by deployments to Los Angeles at $193 million, which included active-duty Marines, and smaller missions in Memphis ($33 million), Portland, Oregon ($26 million), and Chicago ($21 million), according to the CBO.
The estimates include troop pay, hotel lodging and meals. They do not account for longer-term costs, such as education benefits, disability compensation that service members may accrue during the missions, and the use of equipment and military vehicles.
The estimates are further complicated by uncertainty over both the duration and scale of the deployments, according to the CBO report.
“The costs of those or other deployments in the future are highly uncertain, mainly because the scale, length, and location of such deployments are difficult to predict accurately,” the report said. “That uncertainty is compounded by legal challenges, which have stopped deployments to some cities, and by changes in the Administration’s policies.”
Last summer, Trump deployed federalized troops into several Democratic cities. They were later pulled from cities including Los Angeles and Chicago after the Supreme Court ruled the president lacked sufficient legal justification for the deployments.
Luigi Mangione appears for a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court, December 18, 2025 in New York City. (Curtis Means-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A Minnesota man allegedly tried to break Luigi Mangione out of jail in New York, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Mark Anderson, 36, was charged Thursday with impersonating a federal agent after authorities said he showed up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn claiming to be an FBI agent with a court order to release Mangione, sources said.
Mangione is being held at MDC-Brooklyn while he awaits federal and state trials for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Anderson allegedly approached the intake area inside the MDC and claimed he had paperwork “signed by a judge” authorizing the release of a specific inmate, according to the criminal complaint. The complaint does not name Mangione, but law enforcement sources told ABC News that is who Anderson was seeking.
When Bureau of Prisons personnel asked to see Anderson’s credentials, federal prosecutors said he showed them a Minnesota driver’s license and “threw at the BOP officers numerous documents.”
Anderson said he had weapons in his bag, and inside the bag was a barbecue fork and a pizza cutter, according to the criminal complaint.
Anderson is expected to appear in court later on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Mangione is due in court on Friday; the judge overseeing his federal case may decide if the death penalty will remain a sentencing option if he’s convicted.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sign stands at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats on Thursday voted unanimously to block a package of six funding bills that would fund large portions of the government through the end of September — meaning a partial government shutdown could still happen in the coming days.
The bill failed to advance by a vote of 45-55. It would have needed at least 60 votes to proceed. Multiple Republicans also cast votes against the package.
The vote came amid news that talks are ongoing between Democrats and the White House over funding for the Department of Homeland Security ahead of the partial government shutdown that would begin at midnight Friday.
Those talks are intensifying in the final hours between the White House and Senate Democrats to reach an agreement over how to advance a package of bills necessary to fund the government — including Democrats’ request to separate the bill that funds DHS.
Democrats want DHS removed from a package that includes five other government funding bills so that changes to the DHS bill aimed at reining in Immigration and Customs Enforcement can be made without affecting the other agencies that still need to be funded.
There were Democratic calls to separate the DHS funding following the deaths of Renee Good, a mother of three who was fatally shot by an immigration enforcement officer in Minneapolis earlier this month, and became more urgent after the death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, who was killed in a shooting involving federal agents over the weekend.
If a deal is locked, Democrats would eventually need to vote yes on advancing this six-bill package. It is the first procedural step in allowing them to vote to modify it.
Although Democrats blocked this bill from moving forward, that doesn’t necessarily mean negotiations have fallen apart.
Majority Leader John Thune retained the right to call up this same vote later Thursday or Friday if he thinks a deal is locked in.
Negotiations are centered around that request from Democrats, sources told ABC News. This would allow the military and critical programs like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Head Start — a federal program run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that provides early childhood education, health, nutrition and family support services to low-income children and families — to be funded through September.
A deal would temporarily extend funding for DHS through a short-term bill, which would give Democrats and the White House more time to discuss any possible policy changes.
Coming into the negotiations, Senate Democrats laid out a list of demands including: ending roving patrols, ensuring federal agents are held to the same use of force policies that apply to state and local law enforcement, preventing agents from wearing masks and requiring body cameras.
Republicans need the support of at least seven Democrats in the Senate to avert a partial shutdown.
The White House has not yet commented on the ongoing negotiations.
While sources indicate Democratic leadership is optimistic that things are headed in their direction, that same level of optimism has not been shared from the White House, sources told ABC News.
It is likely that even if a deal is reached, there will still be a short partial shutdown. Any changes to the government funding bill passed in the Senate would have to go back to the House, which is currently in recess until Monday.
