TV News LIES

US President Donald Trump has spent months attacking the head of the US central bank on social media and in remarks to reporters, calling Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell names like "numbskull".

On Thursday, the dishttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ljlvg1e7eopute played out in person, with cameras rolling, as the two men clashed over the cost of building renovations.

The tense moment came as Trump has been escalating his pressure on Powell, who Trump says is moving too slowly to cut interest rates.

He has repeatedly floated the possibility of firing Powell, only to quickly disavow the idea, which analysts say would rock financial markets and spark a legal battle.

Trump's visit to the Federal Reserve is the first by a sitting president in roughly two decades.

It comes ahead of the Fed's meeting in Washington next week, where policymakers are widely expected to vote to leave interest rates unchanged.

Speaking to reporters at the start of his tour, Trump said that the administration was "taking a look at what's happening" at the Fed's $2.7bn (£1.8bn) renovation.

"It looks like it's about $3.1bn," Trump said, as Powell shook his head.

"I'm not aware of that," Powell shot back. "I haven't heard that from anybody at the Fed."

Trump then produced a document from his jacket pocket, which Powell briefly read and brusquely handed back to the president, saying that Trump was "adding a third building" to the total.

"It's a building that's been built," Trump said.

Powell responded: "It's a building that was built five years ago... it's not new."

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New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, Alina Habba, on Thursday said she would continue on in the position despite a judicial decision declining to extend her interim status and instead opting to replace her.

She doubled down in her first remarks since the decision, declaring that she is now the state’s acting U.S. attorney.

“Donald J. Trump is the 47th President. Pam Bondi is the Attorney General. And I am now the Acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey,” Habba said in a statement posted to the social platform X. “I don’t cower to pressure. I don’t answer to politics. This is a fight for justice. And I’m all in.”

A Justice Department official said that Trump withdrew her nomination to be the state’s U.S. attorney and she was appointed first assistant U.S. attorney, meaning she becomes acting U.S. attorney because the position is now vacant.

The announcement comes hours after Desiree Grace, the attorney tapped by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey judges to succeed Habba, said she was prepared to assume the role, elevating the standoff to new heights.

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Columbia University, in hopes of restoring hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen funding, has struck another deal with the Trump administration, the university announced.

The Ivy League school in New York City will pay a $200 million fine over three years to the government to settle allegations it violated federal civil rights laws and failed to protect members of its Jewish community from discrimination.

It will also jointly appoint an independent monitor to update the federal government on its compliance with new policies, and pay an additional $21 million fine to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The agreement marks the second major concession from the university in its protracted negotiations with the government. Despite the drawn-out talks, and many compromises on Columbia's part, the Trump administration has yet to reroute hundreds of millions of dollars back to the school.

The school previously agreed, among other things, to bolster campus law enforcement, appoint a new administrator to oversee its Middle Eastern studies department and retool its protest policies in an effort to assuage the White House.

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President Donald Trump is getting heat on social media for making a claim on Tuesday about cutting drug prices that’s essentially mathematically impossible.

Trump began promisingly enough with a complaint shared by Democrats and Republicans alike: the high cost of medication, and how much more Americans pay for some medications than patients in other countries.

He promised to reduce those costs ― but to a very unlikely degree.

“We’re gonna get the drug prices down. Not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we’re gonna get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%,” Trump said at a Republican dinner. “Numbers that are not even thought to be achievable.”

Critics quickly pointed out the reason those numbers are not thought to be achievable: reducing the price by 100% would make the drugs free. Reducing it by “1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%,” as Trump said, would make the cost negative dollars ― with the drug company essentially paying people to take the medication.

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A federal judge in Florida has denied the Justice Department’s request that grand jury transcripts from the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein be made public, hindering President Donald Trump’s efforts to tamp down criticism from his base about not releasing more files from the late financier’s sex-trafficking case.

U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg determined Monday that the request did not fall under any of the exceptions to requirements that grand jury material remain sealed. Grand jury transcripts are highly shielded to protect victims and witnesses, and it’s rare for a judge to make them public.

Despite that unlikelihood, Attorney General Pam Bondi made the request with the court last Friday. In her motion, she defended the Justice Department’s decision earlier this month not to release any more files but acknowledged there remains “extensive public interest” in how the Trump administration reached that conclusion. Releasing grand jury transcripts, the motion argued, could help address that.

Rosenberg rejected that.

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Attorney General Pam Bondi informed President Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a bombshell report The Wall Street Journal published Wednesday.

Bondi and her deputy told the president that Justice Department (DOJ) officials reviewed what she described as a “truckload” of documents on Epstein and discovered the president’s name appeared multiple times, according to the report, which cited senior administration officials.

Bondi also told Trump that many other high-profile individuals were named in the files — which alone is not a sign of wrongdoing. One official familiar with the documents told the Journal the files contain hundreds of names.

Trump was told at the meeting that the DOJ did not intend to release any more files on Epstein because the material included child sexual abuse material and personal information of Epstein’s alleged victims, the Journal reported. DOJ officials also saw the documents as containing unverified hearsay about Trump and others, Bondi told Trump.

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