Republicans defend Fed Chair Jerome Powell; Trump announces 25% tariff on countries doing business with Iran

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are scheduled to give depositions tomorrow and Wednesday, respectively, but neither has confirmed their attendance, a spokesperson for the Republican-led House Oversight Committee said tonight.

“The Clintons have not confirmed their appearances for their subpoenaed depositions,” the Oversight spokesperson said in a statement. “They are obligated under the law to appear and we expect them to do so. If the Clintons do not appear for their depositions, the House Oversight Committee will begin contempt of Congress proceedings.”

Bill Clinton is scheduled for a deposition at 10 a.m. tomorrow, and Hillary Clinton is scheduled for Wednesday morning. The Clintons were issued subpoenas in August along with several former attorneys general and former FBI Director James Comey as part of the committee’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Both depositions for the Clintons were originally scheduled for October.

In a letter to the Clintons’ lawyer in December, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said he would delay the depositions a second time because of the Clintons’ attendance at a funeral. But Comer said the lawyer, David Kendall, was “unwilling to provide any alternative dates for your clients’ testimony.” So Comer set the new dates for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Late last year, as Trump was publicly intensifying his attacks against the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell, federal prosecutors quietly began a criminal investigation. And when subpoenas were ready, three sources told NBC News, they kept the circle small.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia didn’t contact main Justice Department officials, the White House or the Treasury Department before it issued subpoenas involving the renovation of Federal Reserve office buildings, according to the three people familiar with the investigation, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity. The probe began in November, they said.

The investigation, which Powell confirmed las t night, is the latest instance in which Trump’s Justice Department has been accused of using the criminal justice system to punish or intimidate his perceived enemies. Powell has said federal prosecutors threatened an indictment.

In a phone call with NBC News, Trump said he knew nothing about the investigation before he attacked Powell again.

Read the full story here.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, announced tonight that former special counsel Jack Smith will testify publicly before the committee on Jan. 22.

NBC News reported last week that Jordan would invite Smith to testify in a public hearing after Smith’s more than eight-hour closed-door deposition with the committee in December.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told NBC News tonight that voting to fund the Department of Homeland Security through the appropriations process would be “malpractice” because Immigration and Customs Enforcement has repeatedly blocked his attempts to conduct oversight as a member of Congress.

“I’ve been looking for months now, months, to get simple responses, even, from ICE,” Booker said. “Congress has a job, and ICE has been blocking us from even the basic oversight that our founders intended that the executive branch have.”

“I will not support funding an agency unless they come and allow us to do our job, checks and balances, accountability,” he said.

Booker added that Democrats’ voting to fund DHS without ICE’s having to answer “basic questions” would be “a surrendering of our constitutional role and responsibility.”

The new U.S. ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, said today that a call between the two countries to discuss trade deal negotiations is scheduled for tomorrow.

“Many of you have asked me for an update on the ongoing trade deal negotiations. Both sides continue to actively engage. In fact, the next call on trade will occur tomorrow," Gor, who was sworn in post today, said in his arrival speech. "Remember, India is the world’s largest nation, so it’s not an easy task to get this across the finish line, but we are determined to get there.”

Gor was director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office last year before he was nominated to be ambassador to India.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tonight detailed the Pentagon's "AI first" policy during a speech at SpaceX’s headquarters attended by its founder, Elon Musk.

Hegseth said Cameron Stanley, an alum of AWS and Project Maven, will be the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer. He also announced that the Defense Department will partner with Grok, the generative AI model developed by Musk’s company xAI. Musk introduced Hegseth tonight.

Hegseth, who announced that AI models will be on every classified and unclassified network in the department “very soon,” said the Pentagon would prioritize “responsible AI,” which he described as “objectively truthful,” adding that “the days of equitable AI and other DEI and social justice infusions” were gone.

Grok has come under scrutiny in recent days over its nonconsensual creation of deepfakes of women and children, prompting international regulators to step up pressure on the chatbot and X.

As open enrollment for Affordable Care Act insurance comes to an end, people are moving to cheaper plans or dropping their coverage entirely, according to state and federal data.

Last year, Congress failed to extend enhanced tax credits for Obamacare customers. The result was soaring monthly premiums across the U.S.

“People are saying: ‘I just can’t make the math work. I cannot afford this. I’m going to just have to roll the dice and hope I don’t have any health issues this year,’” said Audrey Morse Gasteier, executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, the state’s ACA marketplace.

NBC News reached out to the 20 states, plus Washington, D.C., that run their own ACA exchanges about changes in sign-ups for 2026. Ten state health officials responded with their latest numbers. In the 30 states that NBC did not ask, people purchase their ACA insurance through HealthCare.gov, run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Read the full story here.

Officials in Minnesota are suing the federal government to stop the deployment of thousands of immigration agents to Minnesota, the state’s top prosecutor said today.

“We allege that the obvious targeting of Minnesota for our diversity, for our democracy and our differences of opinion with the federal government is a violation of the Constitution and of federal law,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said at a news conference.

Calling the deployment a federal “invasion of the Twin Cities,” he said: “This has to stop.”

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, includes the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as plaintiffs and names officials with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection as defendants.

Read the full story here.

Trump said today that countries doing business with Iran will pay a tariff of 25% on “any and all business being done with the United States of America.”

Trump made the announcement on Truth Social as Tehran cracks down on widespread protests challenging the regime’s rule, with activists saying security forces have killed hundreds of people. Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene if Iranian authorities opened fire on demonstrators.

The new 25% tariff for the countries doing business with Iran would be on top of any existing tariffs the U.S. has previously placed on affected countries, such as China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Trump said the rate takes effect immediately.

The House Administration Committee is scheduled Wednesday to mark up legislation that would ban congressional stock trading after months of haggling over the hot-button issue.

Several bipartisan proposals have been introduced to ban lawmakers from trading stocks, but they’ve all lacked leadership buy-in. Until now.

Committee Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis., announced today that a compromise deal has been reached with backing from Republican leaders, as well as some of the biggest GOP proponents of a stock trading ban, such as Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., and Chip Roy, R-Texas. 

The Stop Insider Trading Act would prohibit members of Congress from buying individual stocks, but they wouldn’t be required to sell any stocks they owned before they became lawmakers. If lawmakers wanted to sell any stocks, they would need to give seven days' notice.

A former congressional employee has been rung up on charges that he stole about 240 government cellphones from the House of Representatives, federal prosecutors said today.

Christopher Southerland of Maryland was indicted last month on a charge that he “willfully and knowingly embezzled, stole and converted to his own use cellular telephones” that belonged to the government, a court filing unsealed in January shows. The total value of the phones was about $150,000, according to the office of the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro.

The indictment alleges the phones were being swiped right and left from January to May 2023, while Southerland was working as a system administrator for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

As part of his job, Southerland was authorized to order phones for the approximately 80 staff members for the committee. He ordered 240 of the phones to be sent to his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland, in the five-month period, Pirro’s office said in a news release today.

Read the full story here.

The Justice Department’s decision to investigate the Federal Reserve comes after a long string of threats by Trump to go after the central bank’s chair, Jerome Powell.

Trump told NBC News last night that he had no advance knowledge of the Justice Department’s subpoenas, which center on Powell’s Senate testimony in June about the renovation of the Federal Reserve’s office buildings.

But Trump’s displeasure was out in the open, as was his desire to see legal action against Powell and the agency. For months, he has been making remarks and posting on social media that he wants Powell gone. In the past, the Justice Department has brought charges against current and former officials Trump has publicly exhorted the attorney general to prosecute.

While he has criticized the Federal Reserve’s renovation project — at the same time he is pursuing a controversial renovation of the White House — the core of Trump’s frustrations with Powell has stemmed from Powell’s refusal to further lower interest rates to fit with the administration’s agenda.

Read the full story here.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized the Fed probe in a statement last night, saying the move was "threatening the strength and stability of our economy."

"This is the kind of bullying that we’ve all come to expect from Donald Trump and his cronies," Schumer said. "Anyone who is independent and doesn’t just fall in line behind Trump gets investigated."

A slew of Democrats quickly condemned the probe in the hours after the news broke last night.

A top attorney is out of his job in the embattled Eastern District of Virginia, which sought to prosecute two of Trump’s perceived political enemies before the cases were dismissed, four people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The move to oust Robert McBride came as the Justice Department continues to say that Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan is the head of the office. A judge has pushed the administration to explain why it continues to refer to her as such, the people said.

Read the full story here.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., says that Trump called her after her speech today and that they discussed capping credit card interest rates, an issue on which they appear to have overlapping agreement.

“I told him that Congress can pass legislation to cap credit card rates if he will actually fight for it," she said. "I also urged him to get House Republicans to pass the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, which passed the Senate with unanimous support and would build more housing and lower costs. No more delays. It’s time to deliver relief for American families.”

During the Q&A after her speech this morning, Warren was asked about capping credit card interest rates, which Trump floated Friday. She said it’s not enough that just one Senate Republican, Josh Hawley of Missouri, is interested. She said the only way it will get done is if Democrats win control of the House and the Senate. “I’m willing to do it,” she said. “But one Republican and all of the Democrats does not get the job done.”

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon today, charging their effort to censure and demote him is “unlawful and unconstitutional.”

Hegseth said last week that the Pentagon was taking steps to downgrade Kelly’s military retirement rank and pay because of his “seditious statements” — a reference to a video in which he and other retired service members urged members of the military not to comply with illegal orders.

The suit charges Hegseth’s actions violate Kelly’s First Amendment rights, as well as the speech and debate clause of the Constitution, which grants immunity to lawmakers for official acts.

Read the full story here.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., swiftly condemned the Fed probe, saying in a statement last night that "Trump is abusing the authorities of the Department of Justice like a wannabe dictator so the Fed serves his interests, along with his billionaire friends."

"This Committee and the Senate should not move forward with any Trump nominee for the Fed, including Fed Chair," her statement continued.

Warren is the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, which must approve Trump's Federal Reserve nominees before they move to the full Senate for votes.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an interview on Fox News that the administration was "surging resources to Minneapolis."

"The Trump administration is going to deliver on President Trump's mandate to remove violent illegal aliens from our communities and make America safe again," she said.

Her comments come amid protests over the fatal shooting by an ICE officer of Renee Nicole Good.

The Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell’s willingness to fight back are already shaking Wall Street. But Main Street could feel shock waves, too.

The legal showdown makes it less likely that the Fed will lower interest rates this year, according to several analysts. Lower rates could translate into lower borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, helping support economic growth and the labor market.

Read the full story here.

A growing list of Republicans, including two senators on the influential Senate Banking Committee, have spoken out against the Justice Department subpoenas of the Federal Reserve and warned that the probe could undermine the central bank’s independence.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said in a statement that she spoke with Fed Chair Jerome Powell today and that “it’s clear the administration’s investigation is nothing more than an attempt at coercion.”

House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill, R-Ark., defended Powell as “a person of the highest integrity” and warned that the subpoenas “could undermine this and future Administrations’ ability to make sound monetary policy decisions.”

Read the full story here.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., outlined her vision for a “big tent” Democratic Party, while taking direct aim at figures in the party she believes are holding it back.

“A Democratic Party that worries more about offending big donors than delivering for working people is a party that is doomed to fail — in 2026, 2028, and beyond,” Warren said in a speech today at the National Press Club.

The former presidential candidate sought to lay down a marker for her vision as Democrats look for a way out of the political wilderness after losing the 2024 election. The intra-party power struggle includes divides over policy and messaging. And in an unusual move for a Democrat, Warren specifically called out, by name, people and groups she deems part of the problem.

Read the full story here.

Every living former chair of the Federal Reserve signed onto a statement calling the DOJ subpoenas "an unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks to undermine that independence" of the Fed.

"This is how monetary policy is made in emerging markets with weak institutions, with highly negative consequences for inflation and the functioning of their economies more broadly," said the statement. "It has no place in the United States whose greatest strength is the rule of law, which is at the foundation of our economic success."

The group of former Fed chairs, along with several former Treasury secretaries and former chairs of the council of economic advisers, also said in the statement that the Federal Reserve's "independence and the public’s perception of that independence are critical for economic performance."

The group of 13 signatories includes people who served under both Democratic and Republican administrations. The list includes former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, who served during the George W. Bush administration; former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, who served under both Democratic and Republican administrations; Harry M. Paulson, who served as Treasury secretary during the Bush administration; and Janet Yellen, who served as Treasury secretary during the Biden administration.

At least two Republican senators have criticized the DOJ's investigation into the Federal Reserve.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said in a statement that he believes Powell is a "bad Fed Chair," but that "I do not believe however, he is a criminal."

"I hope this criminal investigation can be put to rest quickly along with the remainder of Jerome Powell’s term," he continued. "We need to restore confidence in the Fed."

Aftyn Behn, the Tennessee Democratic state representative who overperformed normal Democratic margins while losing a December special election bid for the U.S. House, won't run again for the seat this year.

Behn said on social media that the special election bid took an "unimaginable toll" on her health and that she "love[s]" being a state legislator. She plans to launch a new organizing program too aimed at building the coalition Democrats need to flip a statewide office in "six to eight years."

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said this morning that he wasn't involved in conversations with the Justice Department about its probe into the Federal Reserve.

“I’ve not talked to the Justice Department ahead of them contacting Jay, and so I don’t really have anything to add other than I respect the independence of the Fed and the independence of the Justice Department, but we’ll see how it goes,” Hassett said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Asked if he takes Trump's comment that he had nothing to do with the investigation at face value, Hassett said the president has been very vocal about interest rates and cuts before the election.

"He’s frustrated that when he came in 2017 that there were big hikes before he’s inaugurated. And so he has lots of frustration with what he views as partisanship at the Fed," he said. "But this right here is a legal matter, and again, I’ve not been briefed on what the Justice Department is thinking, and I expect the president has not as well.”

Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist is ending his bid for governor and running for secretary of state, a move that helps winnow down the Democratic primary field in the key battleground race.

Gilchrist announced the decision in a video, in which he promised Michiganders to “protect your privacy and never allow your identity, voter registration information, or license plate data to be mined by big tech companies or surveilled by the Trump administration.”

Michigan’s current secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, is the front-runner in the Democratic primary, which also includes Genesee County's Chris Swanson. The GOP primary is crowded, featuring a handful of prominent Republicans. But the race includes an interesting wrinkle: The two party nominees will run in a general election that includes former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who is running as an independent.

Federal Housing Finance Authority director Bill Pulte said this morning on Bloomberg Television that "the DOJ is outside of my purview."

His comments came in request to a question about a report from Bloomberg News that he was a “driving force” behind the Powell and Federal Reserve subpoenas.

"The DOJ is outside of my purview, this is out of my purview," Pulte said. "I don’t know anything about it and I would defer you to the DOJ."

Pulte was specifically asked whether the president or Treasury secretary knew this action was coming. Pulte said, "On that matter, I’d refer you to the Department of Justice."

Pulte traveled with Trump on Air Force One to Mar-a-Lago on Friday, the same day the subpoenas were served. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Pulte said, “We do need to get rid of Jay Powell. He’s a disaster. What he’s caused with the building is a disgrace to the Fed. The Fed has no credibility as a result of him.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., will deliver a speech this morning at the National Press Club, where she will emphasize that Democrats cannot win elections if they do not rebuild trust.

She will argue that Americans will support candidates "who name what is wrong and who credibly demonstrate that they will take on a rigged system in order to fix it," according to speech excerpts shared by her office.

Warren will also lay out how Democrats build a big tent and caution Democrats against trying too hard to avoid offending people, "especially the rich and powerful who might finance our candidates." She will also draw out a contrast of choices she believes Democrats will have to make in order to establish wider support.

"Either we politely nibble around the edges of change, or we throw ourselves into the fight," she will say. "Either we carefully craft our policies to ensure that the rich keep right on getting richer, or we build a party that ferociously and unapologetically serves the needs of working people."

Trump said Iran wants to negotiate but warned he may still carry out strikes against the Islamic Republic over its violent crackdown on protests challenging the regime’s rule.

Activists say hundreds of people have been killed by security forces in their bid to quash the unrest, with the country cut off from the world by an internet and phone blackout that has lasted days. The situation was now under control, Iran’s foreign minister said today, adding that the country was “ready for war but also for dialogue.”

Trump has repeatedly warned that the United States may intervene if authorities open fire on the demonstrations, which first erupted two weeks ago over soaring prices.

Read the full story here.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will deliver a speech in Texas today alongside Elon Musk.

Hegseth will deliver the speech to SpaceX leaders and staff, according to a Defense Department press release. The department also said that the secretary would "administer the oath of enlistment to the next generation of American warfighters."

Hegseth will also visit Lockheed Martin on his trip.

His appearance alongside Musk comes months following a public falling out between the president and the tech mogul after Musk's monthslong tenure leading DOGE efforts in the administration.

Trump denied having any knowledge of the Justice Department’s investigation into the Federal Reserve after the agency subpoenaed the central bank Friday.

“I don’t know anything about it, but he’s certainly not very good at the Fed, and he’s not very good at building buildings,” Trump said of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in a brief interview with NBC News yesterday.

Read the full story here.