The Dictatorship
Trump’s war against Powell: Republicans aren’t just ‘concerned’ — some may actually take a stand
For Republican lawmakers who usually move in lockstep with President Donald Trump, the Justice Department’s investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is quickly becoming an unexpected loyalty test, with many GOP lawmakers expressing some discomfort and some going so far as to vow to make efforts to replace Powell difficult.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina — a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs — wasn’t concerned with any potential impropriety Powell may have committed by not accurately predicting the costs of Federal Reserve building renovations, as the DOJ is investigating. Tillis said it was “the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question.”
“If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none,” Tillis said.
While the unease that many Republicans are expressing is notable on its own, Tillis and some other GOP lawmakers are taking their discomfort a step further.
Tillis, who’s retiring at the end of 2026, said he would vote against any Federal Reserve nominee “until this legal matter is fully resolved” — including the looming vacancy to fill the chairman seat, which will be up for grabs when Powell’s term atop the Central Bank expires in May.
The Senate Banking Committee is composed of 13 Republicans and 11 Democrats, meaning if Tillis follows through with his ultimatum and joins all Democrats to oppose the next nominee, the panel would be deadlocked — holding up any Trump pick for the influential governing body.
And Tillis isn’t alone.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska called the Justice Department’s probe “nothing more than an attempt at coercion,” adding that Tillis was “right in blocking any Federal Reserve nominees until this is resolved.”
“The stakes are too high to look the other way: if the Federal Reserve loses its independence, the stability of our markets and the broader economy will suffer,” Murkowski said in a statement.
Other Republicans expressed similar displeasure with the DOJ’s subpoenas and the potential impact on the independence of the Federal Reserve, but no one was quite willing to take the same hardline stance as Tillis.
For instance, Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said he does “not believe” Powell “is a criminal,” but he added that he is a “bad Fed Chair.”
“I hope this criminal investigation can be put to rest quickly along with the remainder of Jerome Powell’s term,” Cramer said.
But when pressed on what action he would take to push back on the investigation, which he said he’s “not crazy for,” Cramer said he didn’t plan “to get super involved.”
“There are three branches of government and that’s not mine,” he said.
It was a similar story with many other Republicans. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said he’d “like to see this resolved as quickly as possible,” adding that it’s important the Fed remain “free of political influence.” But he didn’t say what he might do to maintain a Federal Reserve that’s free of that political influence.
Sen. Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, said he didn’t think Powell was “guilty of criminal activity.” But again, he didn’t call out Trump, and he didn’t say he’d do anything to address this criminal probe.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., another member of the Senate Banking Committee, seemed to take issue with the investigation, but he suggested his concern was that, contrary to the president’s wishes, the grand jury subpoenas might increase interest rates.
“If you wanted to design a system to cause interest rates to go up and not down, you would have the Federal Reserve of the United States and the Executive Branch of the United States get into a pissing contest. We don’t need it,” Kennedy said. “We need it like we need a hole in our head.”
“Everybody needs to take their meds and step back a little bit,” he added.
Still, other Republicans tried to avoid weighing in at all — or simply deferred to the Department of Justice.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he didn’t know enough to comment. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said he didn’t know “enough about the facts.” And Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., concluded that if the DOJ was taking this step, “there’s got to be a legal reason for it, and so I think we just let it play out.”
The GOP pushback broke out shortly after The New York Times reported Sunday that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into Powell, a frequent target of Trump’s ire over stubborn interest rates. For months, the president has publicly pressured the Central Bank chairman to bring down borrowing rates, flirting with outright firing him — an unprecedented move in and of itself.
The Fed has lowered interest rates three times during Trump’s second term, the most recently in December. But Trump is concerned that Powell isn’t bringing rates down faster and by more.
Ostensibly, the purpose of the investigation is to probe whether Powell lied to Congress when he testified about the renovation of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The project, which first received approval in 2017, seeks to revamp two Fed buildings that, according to the Central Bank, have not been renovated since the 1930s.
Trump has railed against the project, blasting it as too expensive. But Trump appointees on the project review board have been a key reason there have been cost overruns, with those appointees pushing for more marble in the buildings than glass.
In the eyes of many lawmakers, however, the investigation is a political effort by the administration to pressure Powell into bringing down interest rates. And they say it runs the risk of blowing up the independence that has been a cornerstone for the Fed.
Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Fed, called the pursuit of charges against Powell — whom he labeled “a man of integrity” — to be “an unnecessary distraction.”
“The Federal Reserve is led by strong, capable individuals appointed by President Trump, and this action could undermine this and future Administrations’ ability to make sound monetary policy decisions,” Hill said.
Powell, for his part, has said as much. In a video statement published Sunday, the chairman confirmed the investigation and rejected that it was based on the renovation.
“Those are pretexts,” Powell said. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”
Democrats naturally agree.
In remarks on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the accusations against Powell “clearly bogus.”
“Anyone with two eyes and half a brain knows exactly what this criminal probe represents: a brazen attempt by Donald Trump to cannibalize the Fed’s independence,” Schumer said.
“This has nothing to do with building renovations of all things,” he continued. “It has everything to do with Donald Trump weaponizing the DOJ into his attack dog and bullying America’s central bank into submission, on something unrelated to what they do.”
Meanwhile, as some Republicans express some rare disagreement with Trump, GOP leaders are trying to stay on the sidelines.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he wanted to “let the investigation play out,” urging individuals to “reserve judgment.” But when asked if he believed the probe compromised the credibility and independence of the Justice Department, he had an unreserved response: “Of course not.”
“They’re doing their job,” Johnson. “I mean if the investigation is warranted, then they have to play that out. We’ll see. We’ll see what happens. The allegation is serious, so we’ll see.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he hadn’t reviewed the charges, but added that the allegations “better be real and they’d better be serious.”
“Independence and shaping monetary policy in the country is something that we need to ensure proceeds without political interference,” Thune said, adding that “hopefully” the DOJ would deal with its investigation and resolve it “quickly.”
Syedah Asghar and Jack Fitzpatrick contributed to this report.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW.
The Dictatorship
What Tom Emmer said about Somalis was racist. What’s worse is he doesn’t believe it.
ByMichael Tisserand
There was a time when President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans didn’t think House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., had a sufficient understanding of who his enemies ought to be. But in remarks he made Wednesday at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition, Emmer did his best to signal that Trump’s enemies are his enemies, too.
Emmer’s 11-minute talk, during which he expressed racism and transphobia and railed against abortion, also served as yet another contrast to the memory of what Republicans in Minnesota used to be. The name of the state party used to be Independent-Republicansand the late U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger used to describe the state party’s worldview, without irony, as progressive Republicanism.
Emmer’s talk served as yet another contrast to the memory of what Republicans in Minnesota used to be.
That party is long gone. At Wednesday’s event, Emmer theatrically dismissed a few sheets of paper he said were his talking points and proclaimed, Trump-like, that he was going rogue. He took aim at transgender youth (“there’s a reason why Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed”), at “elite radical lefties,” at “evil Marxists,” at the media, called his state’s abortion laws “as bad as North Korea” and called the state itself the “People’s Republic of Minnesota.”
But Emmer earned some of the most enthusiastic applause in his racist rant against the state’s large Somali American population. “Sometimes Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re going to call us a racist, you’re going to call us an Islamophobe,” he said, before saying, “But I’m done being careful. Even the least bit careful.”
He said, “I don’t really care where you come from. But if come to this great country, you have to understand, you’re coming here to be an American.” Somalis “don’t assimilate,” he said, “And if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.”
Among the people who responded angrily to Emmer’s slander of Somalis was Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who was born in Somalia. “I assimilated all the way to Congress and this idiot still tells me to go back to where I came from,” she wrote on X.
In the debacle that followed Kevin McCarthy being voted out of the House speakership in 2023, Emmer was not elected to replace him because, by MAGA standards, he was too moderate. Trump called him a “Globalist RINO” and was still fuming that after Joe Biden won the race for president in 2020, Emmer voted to certify that election.
Emmer has worked harder to be seen as MAGA since then. In December, he appeared on “Varney & Co.” on Fox Business to support an Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge that made Somalis among its primary targets and became known as Operation Metro Surge. He offered up conspiracy theories and lies about Somali Americans committing 80% of the crime in the Twin Cities. He said money was being stolen from Minnesota state and federal programs to fund the Somali-based terrorist group al-Shabab.
When he signed up with the so-called Sharia Free America Caucus in February, he railed against letting “anti-American ideologies take root in our communities” and said he had been fighting against the nonexistent threat of Sharia law since he was a state legislator. I was unable to find stories of Emmer as a state legislator fearmongering about Sharia law. However, in 2015, when one of Emmer’s fellow Republicans was being rightly rebuked for attending an anti-Muslim event in St. Cloud, Emmer was a voice of reason and tolerance. He wanted his constituents to know that Somali Americans were contributing to the Minnesota communities they had made home and that they were “some of the fastest-assimilating populations.”
That same year, Emmer joined then-Rep. Keith Ellison, the Democrat who’s now the state’s attorney general, to found the Congressional Somalia Caucus: to help Somali Americans here and to promote peace and stability in Somalia.
Now Ellison is taking the lead in legal challenges against the ICE assaults Emmer champions.
This is the ticket into MAGA world: an embrace of abdication of decency and a necessary rejection of the spirit of welcome and tolerance one once held.
This is the ticket into MAGA world.
In April, a west central Minnesota event called “Understanding Immigration: A Community Conversation,” included Ayan Omar, a Somali American from St. Cloud, as a speaker. She works as equity director for the public schools and has been active in interfaith dialogues in the city.
Omar spoke of coming to the U.S. as a child, learning English by watching “The Simpsons” and learning self-value by watching “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” The message from Mr. Rogers, she said, was especially important because “I just wanted to cower and hide away because I stood out. Not only because I was a Somali-American refugee, but I was also poor.” It was learning about Frederick Douglass that inspired her to become a teacher.
What she was describing was the process of her becoming more and more American. Countless other Somali Americans have had similar experiences. OEmmer knows that.
And not so long ago, he wasn’t afraid to say it.
Michael Tisserand
Michael Tisserand is a Minnesota-based writer whose works include “Krazy,” a biography of cartoonist George Herriman, and Sugarcane Academy, a memoir of his family’s experiences of Hurricane Katrina. With support from a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is currently writing a book about Charlie Chaplin and “The Great Dictator,” for Oxford University Press.
An appeals court on Friday upheld Harvey Weinstein’s2022 rape and sexual assault conviction in California, but ordered the trial judge who gave him 16 years in prison to resentence him.
A three-judge panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal unanimously issued the decision, saying his trial judge did not violate the former movie magnate’s constitutional rights.
“We reject his attempts to disturb the jury’s guilty verdicts,” the judges wrote in their opinion.
Weinstein spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said in an email that “We are disappointed by today’s decision and respectfully disagree with the Court of Appeal’s conclusions regarding the fairness of Mr. Weinstein’s trial. At the same time, the court correctly recognized that his sentence cannot stand.”
The decision came a day after prosecutors in New York decided Weinstein would not face a fourth trial there, dropping the #MeToo-era case after the accuser said she could not bear to testify again.
The California panel said that resentencing was necessary because the judge that sentenced him considered New York convictions that were later thrown out as an aggravating factor. California’s attorney general agreed.
Weinstein, 74, still stands convicted of another sexual felony in New York, and he remains behind bars awaiting a September sentencing there. Prosecutors there are seeking a 20-year prison term.
In California, Weinstein was convicted in December 2022 of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault against an Italian model and actor known during the trial as Jane Doe 1. He would serve his new sentence there only after his New York term is complete.
After the trial, Jane Doe 1 came forward under her name, Evgeniya Chernyshova, when she sued Weinstein in civil court.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Chernyshova did. Her attorney also said she consented to being named.
Chernyshova testified that Weinstein arrived uninvited to her hotel room during the 2013 LA Italia Film Festival and assaulted her.
Weinstein’s defense argued that Weinstein deserved a new trial because Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench wrongly prevented his trial lawyers from asking about Facebook messages between Chernyshova and festival head Pascal Vicedomini that would have shown they had a sexual relationship.
The questioning would have demonstrated that she perjured herself when she said she and Vicedomini were just friends and colleagues, the defense said. And the lawyers argued it would have bolstered their assertion that she was not even in her room on the night of the alleged assault.
“The lower court all but gutted Mr. Weinstein’s defense,” attorney Jennifer Bonjean told the appeals judges at April 23 oral arguments.
But the appeals court said in its ruling that Weinstein did make the arguments he wanted during the trial based on other evidence, including another set of Facebook messages that Lench allowed.
“Thus, there was no denial of Weinstein’s constitutional right to present a defense,” the panel wrote in its opinion.
The three judges also found that Weinstein’s lawyers failed to adhere to California’s rape shield law prohibiting evidence of an accuser’s sexual history when they tried to introduce the messages. Weinstein’s lawyers had argued that the shield law was not pertinent because they wanted to use the messages only to impeach the witness’s credibility.
And the appeals judges said testimony from accusers describing sexual assaults Weinstein was not charged with was appropriate, and allowed under state law.
Before his sentencing, Weinstein told the judge that this was a “made-up story” from a woman he had never met.
The Los Angeles jury acquitted Weinstein of the sexual battery of a massage therapist and failed to reach verdicts on counts involving two other women.
“This is not the end of the appellate process,” Engelmayer said in his email Friday. “We intend to seek review in the California Supreme Court because we continue to believe significant legal errors affected the proceedings and warrant further review.”
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said it would not have comment on the decision until the office reviewed it.
An email seeking comment from Chernyshova’s attorney was not immediately answered.
ByGarry Pierre-Pierre
One of the first people, and the very first doctor, to publicly receive a Covid-19 vaccine in the United States was Dr. Yves Duroseauthe chair of emergency medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.
At a time when fear had emptied city streets and refrigerated trucks were lined up near hospital loading docksthat son of Haiti was a face of hope.
For Haitians, that image carried a deeper resonance. Ours is a community that America has often noticed only in moments of crisis. For once, the country was looking at a Haitian because he represented hope.
Ours is a community that America often noticed only in moments of crisis.
That memory from five and a half years ago is one reason the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday allowing the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians hit me so hard. Not with anger, but with deep sadness.
When I took the oath of citizenship decades ago, I believed America rewarded commitment with belonging. I still want to believe that. Thursday’s ruling suggests that, for some immigrants, the word “temporary” didn’t just describe their legal status but the nature of America’s welcome.
The first TPS recipients from Haiti arrived after the magnitude 7 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and killed hundreds of thousands of people in 2010. Today, Haiti faces a different catastrophe. Armed gangs control much of the capitalthousands have been killed or displaced and the State Department continues to warn Americans not to travel there.
For many TPS holders, the country they fled has not recovered. In many ways, it has become even more dangerous.
They believed something basic: that the United States would not send them back to a country engulfed by political violence, armed gangs and institutional collapse. TPS was created for those for whom returning home is unsafe. That humanitarian commitment should matter just as much as the lives those TPS holders have built since arriving.
They waited for Congress to do what some members had pushed for for years: create a pathway from temporary protection to permanent belonging. Instead, the years passed. Children became adults. Mortgages were paid. Careers were built. Entire lives unfolded while Washington postponed action. Temporary Protected Status became less a bridge than a waiting room. The finish line kept moving. Now, for many, it has disappeared altogether.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Haitian nurses, home health aides and other essential workers were hailed as heroes. Their work was indispensable then, and healthcare leaders say it remains indispensable today.
This dependence is not sentimental. It is measurable. The Boston Globe, citing data from the National Domestic Workers Alliancereported that roughly 13,000 Haitian TPS holders work as nursing assistants each day, caring for an estimated 65,000 patients.
According to a report by Massachusetts lawmakers Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, ending TPS for Haitians “threatens to seriously disrupt the health care, senior care and disability care workforces amid a nationwide health care crisis and persistent staffing shortages.”
Roughly 13,000 Haitian TPS holders work as nursing assistants each day, caring for an estimated 65,000 patients.
There is nothing temporary about the lives these TPS holders have built. There is nothing temporary about paying taxes for decades, buying a home, planting a garden or knowing your neighbors by name. There is nothing temporary about raising children who begin each school day by pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. There is nothing temporary about risking your life to care for strangers during a once-in-a-century pandemic.
I never imagined that, decades after taking my own oath of citizenship, I would be writing about a generation of immigrants who walked that same path with the same faith only to discover that the road ended before they reached their destination.
As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday, it must also confront a question that has shadowed much of its history: Who gets to belong?
Too often, America has answered that question by welcoming people when their labor is needed most, only to question their place later.
Perhaps that is the greatest irony of all. The people we continue to call temporary have spent years proving their commitment to this country. This ruling is bigger than Haitians or Syrians. It speaks to the covenant a nation makes with the people who answer its call during moments of need.
Though that process has never been smooth, America has always been at its best when it expanded the circle of belonging. Italians, Jews, Asians and even Black Americans born here were all told at one time that they could never fully be American. The country was not diminished by widening the definition of who belongs — it was strengthened by it.
The question is no longer whether Haitians who have their built lives here belong. They have answered that question through years of work, sacrifice and service.
The question is whether America still remembers what it means to be a country that welcomes immigrants.
The U.S. has every right to enforce its immigration laws. But laws do not exist in a vacuum.
The U.S. has every right to enforce its immigration laws. But laws do not exist in a vacuum. They also reflect the promises a nation makes about who belongs. After more than 16 years, the Haitians affected by Thursday’s ruling are no longer strangers passing through. They are co-workers, parishioners, homeowners and taxpayers woven into the fabric of neighborhoods from New York to Florida to Massachusetts.
Pull one thread and you do more than remove one person. You weaken the fabric itself.
Garry Pierre-Pierre
Garry Pierre-Pierre is a Pulitzer-prize winning, multimedia and entrepreneurial journalist. In 1999, he left The New York Times to launch the Haitian Times, a New York-based English-language publication serving the Haitian diaspora. He is also the co-founder of the City University Graduate School of Journalism‘s Center for Community and Ethnic Media and a senior producer at CUNY TV
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