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.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) speaks during a Get Out The Vote campaign rally at the Schertz Civic Center Conference Hall on March 02, 2026 in Schertz, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — ABC News projects Texas Sen. John Cornyn will face a runoff against state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Replican Senate primary in Texas. The Associated Press has projected that Texas state Rep. James Talarico will win the Democratic Senate primary.
The Senate primaries are among those in the state that have national implications and will shed insight into American attitudes one year into President Donald Trump’s second term.
Trump has made it clear that he is keeping a close eye on the state, announcing endorsements in select House races but staying on the sidelines for the Senate race.
In a House race that Trump didn’t make an endorsement in, state Rep. Steve Toth will defeat incumbent four-term Rep. Dan Crenshaw, The Associated Press projects.
State significance
The race between Cornyn, who is seeking his fifth term in the Senate, and Paxton is the “most expensive Senate primary on record,” according to tracking firm AdImpact, with over $122 million dedicated to ad spending and reservations.
On the Democratic side, Talarico defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett, according to the Associated Press, in a battle between two rising stars in the Democratic Party who both hope to flip the seat for the first time in decades.
This election also marks the moment in which redistricting will begin to play out. Following Trump’s encouragement last summer, Texas spearheaded the redistricting wars — triggering a Supreme Court case, sparking national debate over mid-decade gerrymandering, and prompting other states to follow suit.
Now, newly drawn maps are likely to deliver five GOP pickups for the House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority.
While Texas’ 23rd Congressional District is expected to stay red, the showdown between Trump-endorsed incumbent Rep. Tony Gonzales and Brandon Herrera will be one to watch, especially after multiple Republicans have called upon Gonzales to resign following an alleged relationship with his former staffer who died by suicide.
In the gubernatorial race, ABC News projects Trump-endorsed Gov. Greg Abbott, who is running for his fourth term in a state where governors do not have term limits, will face state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic candidate.
Meanwhile, retired MLB baseball star Mark Teixeira is projected to win the Republican primary for Texas’s 21st congressional district, the Associated Press projects.
U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on February 02, 2026. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Monday called on Republicans to “take over” and “nationalize” voting as he continued to make false claims about the electoral process in the U.S. with the 2026 midterm elections on the horizon.
Trump made the comments in an interview with former FBI Director Dan Bongino, who resigned from his post in December and returned to podcasting.
Trump alleged noncitizen voting was improperly influencing election outcomes, though experts insist such instances are incredibly rare and already illegal, and told Bongino it was “amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it.”
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,'” Trump said. “We should take over the voting … in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that are so crooked and they’re counting votes.”
The Constitution gives states the authority to conduct federal elections, subject to laws passed by Congress. The elections clause states, in part, that “state legislatures will establish the times, places, and manner of holding elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate.”
Trump didn’t elaborate on how he wanted Republicans to “nationalize” voting.
Asked by ABC News for specifics on what Trump meant, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded, “President Trump cares deeply about the safety and security of our elections — that’s why he’s urged Congress to pass the SAVE Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the chamber’s top Democrat, slammed Trump over his comments to Bongino.
“Just a few hours ago, Donald Trump said he wants to nationalize elections around the country. That’s what Trump said. You think he believes in democracy? He said, ‘We want to take over, the Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,'” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Does Donald Trump need a copy of the Constitution? What he is saying is outlandishly illegal.”
Trump’s agenda is at stake in this year’s elections, where all seats in the House and 35 in the Senate will be up for grabs. Currently, Republicans hold narrow margins in both chambers — but midterm cycles are historically unkind to the sitting president’s party.
Last year, Trump and other Republicans pushed for mid-decade redistricting in order to gain additional House seats. The president warned Republicans last month that they have to win the midterms or he will get “impeached.”
Trump also continues to litigate his 2020 election loss, spreading false claims of fraud.
Last week, the FBI searched and seized original 2020 voting records from the Fulton County Elections and Operations Hub in Georgia, a swing state that went blue in 2020 and helped secure Joe Biden’s victory.
“Now you’re going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get, with a court order, the ballots. You’re going to see some interesting things come out,” Trump said on Bongino’s podcast.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson walks to the front of the “Invading our community with peace” weekly Friday peace walk led by St. Sabina Church in Auburn Gresham, Chicago on June 25, 2021. (Vashon Jordan Jr./Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, Baptist minister and pioneering politician who launched two bids for the U.S. presidency, died on Tuesday morning at the age of 84, his family said in a statement.
“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the family statement said.
“We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family. His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by,” it added.
Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline Jackson, whom he married in 1962, and six children.
Jackson had weathered a myriad of health issues in recent years. In November 2025, Jackson was hospitalized in Chicago for treatment of complications from progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a neurodegenerative condition that he had been managing for a decade, according to a statement from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the civil rights organization Jackson founded.
“Reverend Jackson is in stable condition and is breathing without the assistance of machines,” the Jackson family said in a statement a few days after Jackson’s hospitalization, in response to speculation about his condition. “Contrary to specific reports, he is not on life support.”
“The Jackson family extends heartfelt appreciation for the many prayers and kind messages offered during this time,” the statement also said. Jackson was released from the hospital the following week.
A further family update on Jackson’s health came in mid-December 2025, when it released a statement saying that Jackson had been released from an acute-care facility where he had “received additional care” following his hospital release. The statement also said Jackson “has battled several infections consistent with the progression of his PSP diagnosis” for “the last several months.”
In 2017, Jackson announced that he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. However, the November 2025 announcement said that the PSP diagnosis had been confirmed the previous April.
Jackson also underwent gall bladder surgery in 2021 and was hospitalized later that year after falling while protesting with students at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He also was hospitalized for COVID-19 that August.
Beginning his career as a protégé of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson quickly rose to become one of the nation’s most prominent and influential civil rights leaders. In 1971, he formed the nonprofit Operation PUSH – People United to Save/Serve Humanity – to advocate for social and economic parity for Black Americans.
Jackson ran for president twice, both times as a Democrat, placing third for the party’s nomination in 1984 and second in 1988, marking the most successful presidential runs of any Black candidate prior to Barack Obama’s two decades later.
Following his first campaign, Jackson formed the nonprofit National Rainbow Coalition with the stated purpose of affording minority Americans a greater political voice. In 1996, Jackson merged the groups into Rainbow/PUSH, and served as the head of both until 2023.
Jackson was also elected in 1990 as the shadow delegate for the District of Columbia, serving a single term. In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Jesse Louis Jackson was born Oct. 8, 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, in the segregated South, and grew up poor in a sharecropping family. He was a gifted student and athlete, graduating from high school with offers for a minor league baseball contract and a Big 10 football scholarship.
He opted instead to attend the University of Illinois before transferring to and graduating from North Carolina A&T, a historically Black university. He then began theological studies before going to work full-time with Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He was ordained a Baptist a minister in 1968.
In 1966, 24-year-old Jackson became head of the Chicago Chapter of the nascent Operation Breadbasket, the economic activism arm of the SCLC, and was appointed its national director the following year. He also helped establish the Chicago Freedom Movement to work for open housing and school desegregation.
Jackson participated in many of the civil rights movement’s landmark moments, including the March on Washington in 1963, where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and the Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama in 1965. He was also with Dr. King when the civil rights leader was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.
Reflecting on Dr. King’s memory almost 50 years later, Jackson said he was inspired by his ability to remain undaunted even in the face of overwhelming challenges.
“He is a frame of reference. His resurrection is powerful,” Jackson said in a 2018 interview with ABC Chicago station WLS.
Speaking of King’s assassination, Jackson added, “All I can remember is some voice saying, ‘One bullet cannot kill a movement.’ We must keep going … If your key player is hurt on the field you cannot forfeit the game, you have to internalize your pain and keep marching and keep moving, and we have to be faithful to his charge 50 years later.”
Three years after King’s murder, Jackson left the SCLC and founded Operation PUSH, a social justice organization dedicated to improving the economic conditions of Black communities across the U.S.
The organization fought for greater educational and employment opportunities for Black Americans and was successful in compelling major corporations to adopt affirmative action policies benefiting Black workers.
Jackson’s social activism evolved into political ambition in in the 1980s, when he launched two campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 1984 and 1988. He placed third in primary voting in 1984 and came in second to Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis in 1988, winning 12 primaries and caucuses and receiving some 6.9 million total votes.
As only the second Black American to mount a nationwide presidential campaign, after New York Rep. Shirley Chisholm in 1972, Jackson’s historic runs were the most successful by a Black candidate until President Barack Obama won in 2008.
Jackson ultimately did win political office, when he was elected to serve in the U.S. Senate as a shadow delegate for the District of Columbia, from 1991 to 1997.
Jackson also used his skills as a negotiator to facilitate the freedom of people held abroad, leading to the release of Navy pilot Robert Goodman in 1984 from captivity in Lebanon after his plane was shot down, as well as three American prisoners of war held by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 1999.
In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Jackson a frequent critic of Clinton and his policies – the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in recognition of Jackson’s decades of social activism.
“It’s hard to imagine how we could have come as far as we have without the creative power, the keen intellect, the loving heart, and the relentless passion of Jesse Louis Jackson,” Clinton said at the ceremony. “And God isn’t done with him yet.”
Jackson was the recipient of numerous other awards throughout his lifetime, including the NAACP President’s Award and the American Institute for Public Service’s Jefferson Award. In 2021, Jackson received France’s highest order of merit, the Commander of the Legion of Honor.
In later years, Jackson was a vocal proponent for the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He was also involved in the United Kingdom’s Operation Black Vote to promote minority participation in British elections.
In July 2023, Jackson stepped down as head of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition after more than 50 years as its head. “We’re resigning, we’re not retiring,” Jackson said at the time, vowing to continue fighting for social justice causes.
