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Trump DoJ’s investigation was purportedly about the management of the central bank’s renovation

A federal judge on Friday blocked the justice department from serving subpoenas to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell in an inquiry purported to be about the management of the central bank’s renovation.

Powell disclosed the surprise investigation on 11 January, and described the move as a threat to Fed independence and part of the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure the Fed to cut rates.

The judge agreed, saying a “mountain of evidence” suggests the investigation was to pressure the Fed chair to lower rates or resign.

“The government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime; indeed, its justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual,” chief judge James Boasberg of the DC district court wrote on Friday.

Mood among some in Iran shifts from hope of being rescued to dismay at destruction of infrastructure, culture and lives

After years of arrests, disappearances and mass killings of protesters, the hatred in Iran from some quarters for the hardline, oppressive governing regime had boiled into such a desperate rage that many believed Donald Trump’s promise that the US would “come to their rescue”.

Now, after a fortnight of war, with US and Israeli airstrikes killing hundreds as they hit residential blocks, shops, fuel depots and even a school, the mood is changing.

“They are also lying! Like the regime has been lying to us,” said Amir*, a student at the University of Tehran. “You are all worse than each other.”

The anti-regime protester has let himself hope for more from the US and Israel, which on the first day of the war had swiftly killed Iran’s most feared and powerful man, the supreme leader.

Since Italy became a country in 1861, there has been a surefire way to know who is and isn’t an Italian citizen: look at their parents.

The first page of the civil code, published in 1865 as the rulebook to Europe’s newest country, declared that a child born to an Italian citizen was an Italian citizen.

This founding tenet of the Bel Paese now looks set to change — ending diaspora dreams of returning to the mother country, and meaning that Italians who move abroad risk denying citizenship to their descendants.

On Thursday the Constitutional Court said it would rule in favor of the government and its controversial 2025 law that restricted citizenship for those born abroad. The law — issued last March via emergency decree — had been challenged by four judges, who questioned its constitutionality.

Mere hours after Donald Trump ordered strikes on Iran’s nuclear program last June, his vice president appeared on two separate Sunday shows to hail the success of the mission. JD Vance was so effusive that he used the word “incredible” or “incredibly” four times in less than one minute.

Within hours of Trump’s operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, Vance was on X posting a combative defense of the legality of the operation.

It’s now been two weeks since Trump launched a war with Iran, and Vance has yet to offer anything like these public votes of confidence.

The State Department has slashed by about 80% the fee for Americans to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship.

After years of legal battles with several groups representing Americans wanting to give up their citizenship, the department on Friday published a final rule in the Federal Register that reduces the cost from $2,350 to $450.

The new fee, which took effect on Friday, had been promised in 2023 but had never been implemented. The cost is now the same as it was when the State Department first started charging Americans to formally renounce their citizenship in 2010.

A federal judge put the brakes on the Justice Department's criminal probe of the Federal Reserve, saying it was part of an improper campaign by the Trump administration to pressure the central bank into cutting interest rates more aggressively.

Judge James Boasberg quashed subpoenas that had been issued to the Fed in January, ostensibly seeking information about cost overruns on the renovation of the Fed's headquarters. At the time, Fed chairman Jerome Powell had called that a pretext. And Judge Boasberg agreed.

"The Government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President," Boasberg writes in a newly-unsealed opinion. "There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas' dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will."

As the U.S. flu season winds down, health officials say the flu vaccine didn’t work very well, with one of its worst effectiveness rates in more than a decade.

A new strain that dominated the early winter was not well matched to the vaccine, leading to an intense early onslaught of flu.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday posted data that showed a continued decline in doctor’s office and hospital visits for flu symptoms through last week. The number of states reporting high flu activity dropped to 16, many of them in a belt stretching from Colorado to Virginia.

As US and Israeli jets descended to deliver the opening salvos of the war in Iran, Donald Trump’s back-of-the-envelope plan for regime change in Tehran was about to run into the reality of the largest US intervention in the Middle East since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

That reality came quickly.

One hundred and seventy-five people were killed when a US Tomahawk missile slammed into a girls’ school, apparently because the Pentagon used outdated targeting data for the strike. Hundreds of air-defence missiles were expended as Iran’s initial missile counterattack was mostly parried – but one drone smashed into a makeshift command centre in Kuwait, killing six US troops and wounding dozens more.

Five U.S. Air Force refueling planes ​were struck and ‌damaged on the ground at Prince Sultan ​air base in ​Saudi Arabia, the Wall ⁠Street Journal reported ​on Friday, citing two ​U.S. officials.

The planes, which were hit during an ​Iranian missile strike ​on the Saudi base in ‌recent ⁠days, were damaged but not fully destroyed and are ​being repaired, ​the ⁠Journal said, adding that no ​one was killed ​in ⁠the strikes.

Reuters could not immediately verify ⁠the ​report.

US defense head is eager to frame operation as a success – and slam journalists for not portraying it in a positive light

Pete Hegseth on Friday again claimed the US military campaign against Iran has been an unprecedented success, using a Pentagon press conference to accuse journalists of downplaying Washington’s supposed gains on the battlefield.

Speaking alongside the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the US defense secretary claimed Iran had been left without a functioning air force, navy or missile defense network after 13 days of strikes, and said the combined US-Israeli air campaign had hit more than 15,000 targets since the war began.

“The United States is decimating the radical Iranian regime’s military in a way the world has never seen before,” Hegseth told reporters.

Exclusive survey finds negative economic impacts felt across party lines as White House doubles down on tariffs

Seven in 10 Americans say Donald Trump’s tariffs have led to them paying higher prices, according to an exclusive new poll for the Guardian.

The Harris Poll survey presents Republicans with a major problem in the battle for the upcoming midterm elections. The majority of all voters (72%) believe Trump’s tariffs have had a negative rather than a positive impact and 67% said tariffs aren’t the right solution for improving the economy.

Yet Trump has made clear he wants to press ahead with more tariffs even after a supreme court ruling curbed many of the levies he introduced last year.

Organizers of the upcoming “No Kings” rally in Helena say that a new state rule banning permits for weekend rallies on the Capitol grounds violates their First Amendment rights. State officials countered that the new rule, quietly instituted just last month, was intended to save money.

The update to permitting guidelines on the Montana.gov site, which has not been previously reported, states that public events requiring a permit “may only occur on weekdays and between the hours of 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., excluding holidays.”

The revisions apply to all state-owned or leased spaces or grounds at the Capitol Complex. The policy requires a permit for any public event that uses “state resources, requires setup of any structures, materials, displays, or requires clean-up.” A public event is defined as “any event that is open to the public and to which the public will have full access.”