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Donald Trump has picked Kevin Warsh to lead the US Federal Reserve when current chairman Jerome Powell's four-year term ends in May.

Warsh is a former Fed governor and was considered for chair during Trump's first term. He has been an outspoken Fed critic and is expected to support lower interest rates in the near term.

The appointment comes amid mounting worries about the Fed's independence, following Trump's increasing attacks on Powell in recent months.

Powell has angered Trump by not cutting interest rates quickly enough, and federal prosecutors recently opened a criminal investigation over testimony he gave to the Senate about renovations to Fed buildings.

Kevin Warsh was found in the Justice Department’s newest batch of files on Jeffrey Epstein.

Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, appeared in the government’s Friday release of additional Jeffrey Epstein tiles.

Warsh’s name appears to be on an emailed list of guests to “St. Barth’s Christmas 2010,” among others such as Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and disgraced director Brett Ratner. Warsh also appears on a list of people attending a dinner hosted by British aristocrat William Astor.

The news comes the same day that Trump picked Warsh for the Fed, an unexpectedly conventional pick considering how desperate Trump is to sharply lower interest rates. Warsh has a history of being cautious on inflation, but has signaled a willingness for lower rates in the past few months.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is skeptical about many things the Trump administration is saying about de-escalating its immigration crackdown in his state.

"I know who I'm dealing with. I know that they're not going to keep their word," Walz tells NPR.

Texas A&M University on Friday announced it is ending its programs in women's and gender studies as part of a broader effort to eliminate teaching related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

The university said it had also modified hundreds of courses and canceled six to comply with a policy adopted last November that prohibits, without approval from the campus president, teaching that "will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity."

Ira Dworkin, an associate professor of English at Texas A&M and vice president of the American Association of University Professors at the university's flagship College Station campus, condemned the move as an unprecedented political interference by the university's board of regents, all of whom were appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.

Prominent people have been scrutinized for their visits to Jeffrey Epstein’s island in the Caribbean. Mr. Lutnick’s visit had not been previously disclosed.

Howard Lutnick, the billionaire businessman who serves as Trump’s commerce secretary, once planned a trip to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, according to documents that the Justice Department released on Friday.

The planned visit in 2012 came years after Mr. Lutnick has said he severed ties with Mr. Epstein.

In December 2012, the records show, Mr. Lutnick sent an email to Mr. Epstein saying that he had a group of people — including his wife and children and another family — who were visiting the Caribbean. He asked where Mr. Epstein was located and whether they could visit for a meal.

Newly released files from DoJ show the pair making plans in 2013 for the Tesla CEO to visit Epstein’s private island

Elon Musk had more extensive – and more friendly – communications with the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein than previously publicly known, according to documents released on Friday by the Department of Justice. Emails in the files appear to show the two cordially messaging each other to make plans for Musk to visit Epstein’s island.

The documents include Musk and Epstein emailing in December 2013 to determine when Musk should make the trip to Little St James.

Musk has been harshly critical of those linked to Epstein, but the newly released emails appear to contradict his own longstanding denial of any ties of his own. The Tesla CEO told Vanity Fair in 2019 that Epstein was “obviously a creep” and claimed that Epstein “tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island. I declined.” The emails between the two moguls come years after Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida. Authorities later arrested Epstein in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges.

An immigration judge on Wednesday granted asylum to a Chinese national who he said had a “well founded fear” of persecution if sent back to China after exposing human rights abuses there.

Guan Heng, 38, applied for asylum after arriving in the U.S. illegally in 2021. He has been in custody since being swept up in an immigration enforcement operation in August as part of a mass deportation campaign by the Trump administration.

The Department of Homeland Security initially sought to deport Guan to Uganda, but dropped the plan in December after his plight raised public concerns and attracted attention on Capitol Hill.

Guan in 2020 secretly filmed detention facilities in Xinjiang, adding to a body of evidence of what activists say are widespread rights abuses in the Chinese region, where as many as 1 million members of ethnic minorities, especially the Uyghurs, have been locked up.

A new front in the battle between California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Trump administration has opened over a video in which Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz visits Los Angeles and alleges members of its Armenian community orchestrated large-scale health care fraud.

The dayslong public scuffle on social media escalated on Thursday evening, when Newsom announced his office was filing a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services accusing Oz of discrimination.

Newsom’s office argued in the complaint that Oz “spewed baseless and racially charged allegations” that risked chilling participation in hospice and home care programs among the community targeted. The governor’s office noted the claims had “already caused real-world harm” by dampening business at an Armenian bakery that is shown in the video.

A person’s lifespan may be up to 55% heritable, according to new research.

A person's genes play a far greater role in likely lifespan than previously thought, according to a major new study published Thursday in the journal Science.

Using data from human twin studies, an international team of researchers arrived at the conclusion that the genetic contribution to how long we're likely to live is as high as 55%.

This new finding is strikingly higher than previous estimates, which have calculated the role of genetics in lifespan could range from 6% to 33%. It’s likely to intrigue — and perhaps disappoint — the fast-growing community of longevity influencers and self-described biohackers touting longer lives through supplements and customized drug regimens.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez condemned the executive order, calling it a “brutal act of aggression against Cuba and its people.”

Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, a move that could further cripple an island plagued by a deepening energy crisis.

The order would primarily put pressure on Mexico, a government that has acted as an oil lifeline for Cuba and has constantly voiced solidarity for the U.S. adversary even as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has sought to build a strong relationship with Trump.

In its deepening energy and economic crisis, fueled in part by strict economic sanctions by the U.S., Cuba had relied heavily on foreign assistance and oil shipments from allies like Mexico, Russia and Venezuela before a U.S. military operation ousted former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Since the Venezuela operation, Trump has said no more Venezuelan oil will go to Cuba and that the Cuban government is ready to fall.

A closely watched inflation indicator ticked up unexpectedly in December, stoking concerns that consumers and the U.S. economy continue to face challenges from rising prices.

The Producer Price Index, which measures changes in U.S. wholesale prices paid by businesses, increased by 0.5% in December, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

December's data marks the index's highest rate in the last three months. The jump can be largely attributed to a 0.7% rise in service prices, the BLS said, noting this is its largest increase since July.

The bureau said the majority of the jump in service prices is from trade services, with over 40% from a "rise in margins for machinery and equipment wholesaling."

Lawmaker from Estonia says photo celebrates ‘the greatest war criminal of the 21st century’

Donald Trump has apparently added a framed photo of himself standing with Vladimir Putin to the White House decor, prompting criticism from a senator, members of the media and beyond.

Newly surfaced photos from the Palm Room, which connects the West Wing to the executive residence, show a framed image of the US president and the Russian president at their summit in Alaska last August. Notably, that event marked the first in-person meeting between US and Russian leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. The meeting drew complaints from Democrats who accused him of “cozying up” to Putin, and rolling out “the red carpet” for the Russian leader “instead of “standing with Ukraine and our allies”.

The recently added framed photo was first noted by the PBS White House correspondent Elizabeth Landers on Tuesday, who shared two images of the photo hanging in the Palm Room, positioned right above a photo of Trump with one of his grandchildren. A Bloomberg photographer also captured the display on Tuesday.