Central bank faces political ‘stress test’ that threatens economy, ex-Fed Chair Powell says
Jerome Powell speaks after receiving the 2026 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award on May 31, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The Federal Reserve is weathering a political “stress test” that threatens to undermine public trust in the central bank and damage the United States economy, former Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in recent remarks.
“Like many other institutions, the Fed has been undergoing a stress test,” Powell told an audience at the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston on Sunday, adding that “Congress wisely chose to insulate monetary policy decisions from political pressure. All other advanced-economy nations have done the same.”
The remarks amounted to a spirited defense of Fed independence, coming just weeks after Powell stepped down from his role as head of the central bank. Powell remains on the Federal Reserve’s 12-person board of governors.
At the outset of this year, the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into Powell centered on his testimony to Congress about the cost overruns in a building renovation. It was the first criminal probe of a Fed chair in the central bank’s 113-year history.
Powell denied any wrongdoing and condemned the investigation as an effort to influence Fed policy. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly criticized Powell’s approach to interest-rate policy, denied any involvement in the criminal investigation.
The Supreme Court, meanwhile, is set to issue a decision in the coming weeks in a high-stakes legal fight focused on Trump’s attempted ouster of Fed Governor Lisa Cook over alleged mortgage fraud.
Federal law allows the president to remove a member of the Fed board “for cause,” but little precedent exists for such a removal. Cook rejected the charges as baseless, calling them politically motivated.
In his recent remarks, Powell defended legal protections for Fed officials as critical safeguards for the nation’s economy.
“If any administration finds a way to remove Fed officials over policy differences, then future administrations will do so as well. The public would lose faith that the central bank will make decisions based on only what’s best for all Americans. The Fed’s credibility would be lost,” Powell said.
“That credibility enables the Fed to support a strong and stable economy for the benefit of American families and businesses,” Powell added.
The warning comes as the Fed weathers a renewed bout of inflation set off by a historic oil shock amid the Iran war. The conditions offer an initial test for Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who took the helm of the central bank last month.
If the Fed were to lose its independence, central bankers beholden to political leaders may favor lower interest rates as a means of boosting short-term economic activity and galvanizing public support, some analysts previously told ABC News. But, they added, that posture poses a major risk in the possibility of years-long inflation fueled by a rise in consumer demand, untethered by interest rates.
A burst of high inflation in the 1970s and 1980s offers a cautionary tale.
Before inflation took hold, President Richard Nixon had urged then-Fed Chair Arthur Burns to cut rates in the run-up to the 1972 presidential election. Nixon’s advocacy is widely viewed as contributing to lower-than-necessary interest rates that allowed inflation to get out of control.
Nearly a decade later, in 1981, the Fed raised interest rates as high as 20% in order to bring inflation under control. While the move succeeded in cooling off price hikes, it plunged the U.S. into a recession and sent the unemployment rate to 10%.
Luigi Mangione appears at an evidence suppression hearing at Manhattan Supreme Court on May 18, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Jeenah Moon-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Accused killer Luigi Mangione will stand trial in Manhattan federal court beginning Jan. 5 with jury selection, followed by opening statements on Jan. 25, Judge Margaret Garnett said Monday.
Garnett said she hoped to hold the trial this fall but Mangione’s state trial, scheduled to begin Sept. 8, makes that “impossible.”
“In my view it’s simply impossible for us to be moving through the jury selection process in this case while the defendant and his counsel are fully engaged in the state trial,” Garnett said.
Mangione, wearing beige jail clothing, did not speak during Monday’s hearing. His appearance was delayed about 20 minutes after he got stuck in an elevator with U.S. marshals.
Defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo said New York State Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro will hold firm to the Sept. 8 start.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he stalked UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson before shooting and killing him in December 2024 in Midtown Manhattan. Mangione has also pleaded not guilty to state charges.
For the federal trial, hundreds of prospective jurors from Manhattan, the Bronx and New York City’s northern suburbs will fill out questionnaires in December. Garnett said she would not post the questionnaire on the public docket until all prospective jurors finish filling it out, saying that the need for a fair and impartial jury overrides the customary expectation of public access to the document.
The defense said it might ask the judge to include additional questions depending on the outcome of Mangione’s state trial.
The jury will be comprised of 12 jurors and six alternates.
Leon Black, chairman and chief executive officer of Apollo Global Management LLC, attends the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., April 27, 2015. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Appearing before the House Oversight Committee Friday, private equity billionaire Leon Black said he was unaware of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s “demonic life” and that the $158 million he paid Epstein was for legitimate services and “bona fide advice,” according to a copy of his opening remarks reviewed by ABC News.
The latest in a series of rich and powerful people questioned about their relationship with Epstein as part of the House Oversight panel’s ongoing probe, Black maintained a social relationship with Epstein since the mid-1990s and eventually paid him more than $170 million for “tax and estate planning advice,” according to the Senate Finance Committee.
Black has denied wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, though his financial payments to Epstein served as a lifeline to the convicted sex offender in the years after Epstein’s 2008 prison sentence for soliciting a minor for prostitution.
Black’s prepared remarks cast him as the victim of “ugly and vicious” narratives around Epstein, saying he has been the subject of baseless allegations and conspiracy theories about Epstein and that “extraordinary damage has been done to me and my family.”
“I wish I had never met Epstein. I regret ever doing business with him. My association with him, the frivolous but destructive litigation, the endless rumor mill, have created a toxic environment for my wife and family, which I deeply regret,” the prepared remarks said.
Addressing the massive amount of money he paid Epstein, Black, in his remarks, said those were legitimate payments and that he was never blackmailed by Epstein.
“Let me state unequivocally that I have never abused a woman. I have never been with an underage woman. I have never engaged in sex trafficking. I have never paid Epstein for access to women. I was never blackmailed by Epstein. I was not involved with, and had no knowledge of, any of Epstein’s heinous conduct,” his prepared remarks said.
According to Black, Epstein lived a “Jekyll and Hyde” existence and that he, at first, only saw the positive side, including his “unrivaled network of relationships with individuals in finance, academia, science, politics.” Black, in his remarks, said his relationship with Epstein began as personal but grew overtime to helping manage his family investment office.
“With hindsight, I now see that Epstein exaggerated, embellished, manipulated, and outright lied — prolifically and without concern for me or my family. And I now see that his deceit was not limited to me but also extended to numerous highly sophisticated individuals,” Black’s prepared remarks said.
While Black said that Epstein “took credit for other people’s ideas” and made false claims about investments, Black also argued Epstein was able to resolve “a massive estate problem” for him that ” would have destroyed enormous value.” According to Black’s remarks, he originally thought he was paying Epstein $95 million in net fees, though that was actually $158 million because Epstein lied about the tax deductibility of the payment.
Black also said in his prepared remarks that he was aware of Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution, but that Epstein lied about the nature of the crime.
“Epstein told me that it was an isolated incident resulting from a fake ID. Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others. I wish I had not,” he said, according to his prepared remarks.
According to Black, he cut ties with Epstein in 2018 after Epstein failed to repay most of a $30 million loan. Black said he grew “tired of his relentless pursuit of more and more money from me for professional services.”
While Black, according to his remarks, said that he was “glad” to answer the committee’s questions, he noted that he will “not speak about the personal lives of adult women” that he believes should not be connected to Epstein.
“I am here to voluntarily answer questions about the work that Epstein did for me and for the services for which I paid him. I am not here to answer questions about my personal life which would be hurtful to my wife, children and family. And I will not speak about the personal lives of adult women who have not chosen, and do not deserve, to be connected, by me or anyone else, to Epstein,” Black said, per his remarks.
“Leon Black was one of Jeffrey Epstein’s primary sources of income, flooding him with cash at a time when he was already a registered sex offender. Black has not yet offered a compelling explanation regarding the origination and execution of Epstein’s extraordinary compensation scheme for alleged tax advice,” Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote in a letter to the House Oversight Committee earlier this month. The Senate Finance Committee is leading its own investigation of Epstein’s finances.
Black has long been scrutinized over his relationship with the disgraced financier — describing it as a “horrible mistake” — and was forced out of his firm Apollo Global Management following an external investigation that revealed payments to Epstein totaling at least $158 million.
“Knowing all that I have learned in the past two years about Epstein’s reprehensible and despicable conduct, I deeply regret having had any involvement with him,” Black said during a 2020 Apollo earnings call. “With the benefit of hindsight, working with him was a horrible mistake on my part. I am not seeking to excuse that decision, but I do believe it may be helpful to convey some relevant facts.”
While the investigation concluded that Black and others were aware of Epstein’s 2008 conviction, a report summarizing its findings said that Black was not “involved in any way with Epstein’s criminal activities at any time” or aware of the “scope and details” of Epstein’s sex trafficking. Black has never been charged with a crime.
“When Black first retained Epstein, he believed that Epstein had served his time for the originally charged offenses and believed that it was not inappropriate to give Epstein a second chance, as many other prominent figures in business, science, politics and academia had done,” the report said.
The release of the Department of Justice’s Epstein files earlier this year cast more scrutiny on Black, whose name appears in the files more than 8,000 times. Epstein at one point appeared to serve as a middleman to pay $100,000 to a woman with whom Black allegedly had an affair, according to emails included in the files, and routinely served as a fixer for issues involving his finances.
“Leon, as you are well aware, there is little I won’t do for you or at least try to do as a friend, and a great deal that I have already done (both known and some things that will need to remain unknown),” Epstein wrote to Black in a 2014 email. In another email in 2017, Epstein described his relationship with Black as “saving you from yourself.”
In a statement to ABC News, Black’s attorney Susan Estrich pointed to the external investigation conducted for Apollo that found Black “had no awareness of the criminal activities that led to Epstein’s arrest in 2019” and noted that Black has called for an independent investigation of his relationship with Epstein.
Wyden of the Senate Finance Committee has called on the House Oversight members to scrutinize the $170 million that Black paid Epstein between 2012 and 2017 for purported tax and estate planning. According to Wyden, those payments are sixty times more than what Epstein paid his other tax and estate professionals during the same timeframe.
“Black is a well-advised businessman with access to sophisticated attorneys, yet it appears Epstein was able to shake him down for money that he wasn’t legally owed. This suggests that Epstein may have extorted Black or performed other unseemly tasks on his behalf,” Wyden wrote earlier this month.
Attorneys for Black have pushed back against Wyden’s accusations, accusing him of harassment and saying that the billionaire has cooperated “voluntarily and without compulsion.”
“We are aware of no other private citizen subjected to more written requests from you over the same period,” Black’s attorneys wrote in an April 2026 letter to Wyden. “Your continued attempts to invade into matters pertaining to Mr. Black’s personal life — without the support of any legitimate legislative purpose — appear targeted to unfairly harass Mr. Black in a manner that completely disregards the proper scope of Congress’s investigative powers.”
According to the 2021 external report, Epstein was paid proportionally to the amount of money he saved Black and that Epstein “provided advice that conferred more than $1 billion and as much as $2 billion or more in value to Black”; however, the report also acknowledged that Epstein’s advice was often not useful and that he was “generally a disruptive and caustic force.”
The external report said investigators found “no evidence suggesting that Black ever compensated Epstein for any service other than Epstein’s legitimate advice on trust and estate planning” and other issues.
A 31-page report on the White House ballroom submitted to the panels reviewing the project show the proposed addition to the White House from additional angles and features new renderings of the project. Commission of Fine Arts
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s plans to build a White House ballroom are in the hands of three appellate judges who will hear oral arguments Friday over whether construction should be allowed to continue.
The panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will weigh the Trump administration’s request to throw out a lower court judge’s order halting the construction, in a lawsuit brought by historic preservationists.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled in late March that Trump has gone beyond his authority in building the ballroom, given that it has not been authorized by Congress. Leon’s order was administratively stayed by the appellate panel on April 17, a move that has allowed construction to continue since then.
The Trump administration has argued in court papers that beyond the president’s desire to build a large, permanent event space to host future inaugurations and state dinners, the ballroom — part of a broader “East Wing Modernization Project” — is essential to national security.
The Justice Department points to recent shootings that have occurred in relatively close proximity to the president, including at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April and on Pennsylvania Avenue in May, as examples of why the ballroom is needed for security reasons. Both of those incidents had gunmen allegedly exchanging fire with Secret Service police officers.
The government’s filings in the case have described the ballroom project as a fortification of the entire White House complex, saying that with its “deeply ensconced bunker, and its attendant bomb shelters, hospitals, medical facilities, and other National Security functions, to the highly sophisticated Drone Port and Sniper Nests atop the Ballroom, the complex is a highly knitted, unified whole.”
The administration also argues that the group that has sued, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, lacks the standing necessary to bring a case.
Lawyers for the National Trust say that it’s Congress, not the president, that controls the grounds of the White House, and that Leon was correct to determine in his ruling that no statute “comes close” to giving Trump the authority he claims to construct a large edifice next to the executive mansion.
“The public’s interest in its government following the law, and the maintenance of the President’s proper role in our system of separated powers, underscore that the district court did not abuse its discretion,” they write in a brief, urging the appeals court judges to let Judge Leon’s injunction stand.
Prior to beginning consideration this week of an immigration enforcement funding bill, Senate Republicans removed a $1 billion provision, drafted in response to a request from the Secret Service, that officials said a portion of which would have gone toward security-related aspects of the ballroom project.
Arguments in the case will be heard by Obama-appointee Patricia Millett, Trump-appointee Neomi Rao and Biden-appointee Brad Garcia.
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.
