Trump picks Kevin Warsh for Fed chair, but key Republican vows to block him over Powell investigation
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 policymaker 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, while also supporting lower interest rates.
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.”
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend de Grisogono Sponsors The 2005 Wall Street Concert Series Benefitting Wall Street Rising, with a Performance by Rod Stewart at Cipriani Wall Street on March 15, 2005 in New York City. (Patrick Mcmullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein referred to Donald Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked” and told his former companion Ghislaine Maxwell that an alleged victim had “spent hours at my house” with Trump, according to email correspondence released Wednesday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump,” Epstein wrote in a typo-riddled message to Maxwell in April 2011. “[Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”
“I have been thinking about that … ” Maxwell replied.
That email exchange — which came just weeks after a British newspaper published a series of stories about Epstein, Maxwell and their powerful associates — was one of three released by the Democrats from a batch of more than 23,000 documents the committee recently received from the Epstein Estate in response to a subpoena.
The names of alleged victims and other personally identifying information were redacted from the messages.
The other newly released email exchanges are between Epstein and author Michael Wolff, who has written four books chronicling the Trump presidency. Wolff has said he spoke to Epstein at length about Trump during his reporting for the books.
“I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards,” Wolff wrote to Epstein in December 2015, six months after Trump had officially entered the race for the White House.
“If we were to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein replied.
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff replied the next day. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”
The third message — exchanged between Epstein and Wolff while Trump was well into his first presidential term in January 2019 — appears to touch on the topic of whether Trump had banned Epstein from membership at Mar-a-Lago years earlier.
“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop”
The full context of these email exchanges is not clear from the portions released by the committee Democrats.
Wolff in a phone interview on Wednesday said of the 2015 exchange that he couldn’t remember “the specific emails or the context, but I was in an in-depth conversation with Epstein at that time about his relationship with Donald Trump. So I think this reflects that.”
“I was trying at that time to get Epstein to talk about his relationship with Trump, and actually, he proved to be an enormously valuable source to me,” Wolff said. “Part of the context of this is that I was pushing Epstein at that point to go public with what he knew about Trump.”
None of the documents previously made public as part of civil lawsuits or Maxwell’s trial contain allegations of wrongdoing by Trump.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump in July posted a lengthy social media post that in part blamed Democrats for creating a controversy about files related to Epstein, which he called a “scam” and “hoax.”
“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘b——–,’ hook, line, and sinker,” he wrote at the time.
Republicans on Wednesday claimed Democrats were selectively choosing documents to “generate click-bait” and that they’re withholding other documents that name Democrat officials. Republicans said they’re still reviewing the documents related to Epstein to protect potential victims. They called on Democrats to stop politicizing the investigation.
“Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate click-bait that is not grounded in the facts,” a House Oversight Majority spokesperson told ABC News.
The spokesperson added, “The Epstein Estate has produced over 20,000 pages of documents on Thursday, yet Democrats are once again intentionally withholding records that name Democrat officials. The Committee is actively reviewing the documents and will release them publicly once all victim-identifying information has been appropriately redacted. Democrats should stop politicizing this investigation and focus on delivering transparency, accountability, and justice for the survivors.”
Republicans on the Oversight Committee accused their Democratic counterparts of “trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump.”
In a social media post, the Republicans claim that in the 2011 email between Epstein and Maxwell, the Democrats redacted the name “Virginia,” a likely reference to prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who had made extensive public comments about her exploitation by Epstein, but had never accused Trump of any wrong-doing. The Republicans said that the Epstein Estate had not redacted Virginia’s name when providing the records to the committee.
“Why did Democrats cover up the name when the Estate didn’t redact it in the redacted documents provided to the committee?” the Republicans’ posted on X. “It’s because this victim, Virginia Giuffre, publicly said that she never witnessed wrongdoing by President Trump. Democrats are trying to create a fake narrative to slander President Trump. Shame on them.”
Giuffre died by apparent suicide earlier this year. Her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” was published posthumously last month.
The email with Virginia’s name unredacted was provided to ABC News by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.
The publication of the emails comes on the same day that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is scheduled to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who won a special election last month.
Once sworn in, Grijalva is expected to provide the final signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on a House bill that would compel the Department of Justice to release the government’s full investigative files on Epstein.
The earliest that vote could happen is the first week of December, after the Thanksgiving recess.
“The Department of Justice must fully release the Epstein files to the public immediately,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the Oversight committee, which is conducting an investigation into the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein.
“The more Donald Trump tries to cover-up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President,” Garcia said.
The Trump administration has been dogged by controversy over the Epstein files since the DOJ — in an unsigned statement earlier this year — announced that the department would not be making its files public, despite earlier promises by members of the Trump administration for transparency.
The statement said that the government had not turned up evidence of a “client list” or credible evidence that “Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.”
The DOJ has so far produced only a small fraction of the documents and other evidence gathered by federal investigators over the course of multiple investigations into Epstein’s alleged international sex-trafficking operation.
It’s not clear if the email messages the estate provided to the committee are also in the possession of the DOJ.
After Epstein’s arrest in 2019, President Trump said he hadn’t spoken to him in 15 years. Earlier this year, Trump claimed he ended his association with Epstein in the early 2000s after discovering that Epstein and Maxwell were allegedly poaching employees from Mar-a-Lago.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking young girls and women.
Maxwell, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Texas for child sex trafficking and other offenses in connection with Epstein.
Linda McMahon, US education secretary, during a news conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Education has moved to terminate one of former President Joe Biden’s most popular student loan forgiveness plans — impacting millions of Americans — through a proposed joint settlement with the state of Missouri on Tuesday.
The pending agreement ends the Saving on a Valuable Education or “SAVE” plan, which is home to over 7 million student loan borrowers. It marks a major victory for the Trump administration’s efforts to claw back Biden-era policies, including Biden’s numerous efforts to implement student loan debt cancellation.
Officials in the Trump administration’s Education Department, who’ve decried those policies for months, suggested that the administration is righting a wrong by ending the “deceptive scheme” of student loan forgiveness.
The Biden administration touted the plan for including $0 payments for anyone making $16 an hour or less, lowering monthly payments for millions of borrowers, and protecting borrowers from runaway interest if they are making their monthly payments.
“The law is clear: if you take out a loan, you must pay it back,” Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in a release from Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s department on Tuesday. “Thanks to the State of Missouri and other states fighting against this egregious federal overreach, American taxpayers can now rest assured they will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for illegal and irresponsible student loan policies.”
The Biden administration launched the SAVE Plan, which it dubbed the most affordable payment plan ever, after the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s previous signature debt relief program in 2023.
SAVE was one of several income driven repayment (IDR) plans, which calculate payment size based on income and family size, aimed at easing the repayment process as a pandemic-era pause ended.
Several Republican-led states, including Missouri, sued the Biden administration over the plan, and a federal appeals court blocked the program in 2024.
The announcement on Tuesday would mark an end to those lawsuits.
McMahon, a vocal critic of student loan forgiveness, has said the administration will no longer allow American taxpayers to take on debts that are not their own.
“The Biden Administration’s illegal SAVE Plan would have cost taxpayers, many of whom did not attend college or already repaid their student loans, more than $342 billion over ten years,” McMahon wrote in a post on X. “We will not tolerate it.”.
Her agency’s already saddled Federal Student Aid (FSA) Office will provide support to borrowers currently enrolled in selecting a new, “legal repayment plan,” the department said.
The department said borrowers will have a limited time to find a new payment plan. However, FSA’s Loan Simulator tool will estimate monthly payments, determine repayment eligibility and select a new plan that best fits those borrowers’ needs and goals, the department said.
Some student loan advocates worry the proposed agreement unleashes chaos on borrowers.
“The 7+ million borrowers enrolled in SAVE will face higher monthly loan payments — and may lose out on months of progress toward loan forgiveness,” Michele Zampini, associate vice president of federal policy & advocacy at The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) wrote in a statement.
Protect Borrowers Deputy Executive Director and Managing Counsel Persis Yu said the move strips borrowers of the most affordable repayment plan that would help millions to stay on track with their loans while keeping a roof over their head.
“This settlement is pure capitulation–it goes much further than the suit or the 8th Circuit order requires,” Yu wrote in a statement to ABC News. “The real story here is the unrelenting, right-wing push to jack up costs on working people with student debt.”
Under that bill, the plans will be replaced with two separate repayment plans: a standard repayment plan and the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), a new income-based repayment plan coming July 1, 2026.
The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks at the White House press briefing room in Washington DC, United States, on December 11, 2025. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on Friday that she is pregnant with her second child.
“The greatest Christmas gift we could ever ask for – a baby girl coming in May 2026,” Leavitt wrote in a post to Instagram.
“My husband and I are thrilled to grow our family and can’t wait to watch our son become a big brother. My heart is overflowing with gratitude to God for the blessing of motherhood, which I truly believe is the closest thing to Heaven on Earth,” she wrote.
“I am also extremely grateful to President Trump and our Chief of Staff Susie Wiles for their support, and for fostering a pro-family environment in the White House. 2026 is going to be a great year and I am so excited to be a girl mom!” Leavitt added in the social media post.
Leavitt is 28 years old and is the youngest person to serve as White House press secretary. She previously worked in the press office during President Donald Trump’s first term and also served as the press secretary for his 2024 campaign.
Leavitt ran a failed bid for Congress in New Hampshire, her home state, in 2022.
She and her husband, Nicholas Riccio, welcomed their first child, Nicholas “Niko” Robert Riccio, in 2024.
