“It looks like it’s about $3.1bn – it went up a little bit or a lot,” said Donald Trump, handing Jerome Powell a piece of paper as they stood amid construction at the US Federal Reserve’s Washington HQ. The usually unflappable Fed chief looked irritated, closed his eyes and shook his head. “I am not aware of that,” said Powell.
Powell scanned the paper and pointed out the figure wrongly included the cost of renovations for a different Fed building that was done five years ago. “It’s not new,” said Powell.
Here’s more on this and the day’s other key Trump administration stories.
Donald Trump sparred with the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, on Thursday during a rare presidential visit to the central bank’s headquarters.
Trump was continuing his campaign to pressure the Fed to cut interest rates and was visiting its Washington headquarters to view costly renovations he has suggested are tantamount to fraud.
Having called Powell a “numbskull” for the Fed’s recent decisions not to cut rates, Trump has turned up the pressure on Powell with criticism of the $2.5bn bill for renovating the Fed’s historical buildings.
The US is withdrawing its negotiating team from Gaza ceasefire talks in Qatar after Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, pointed the finger at Hamas for a “lack of desire to reach a ceasefire”.
“While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith,” Witkoff said on Thursday. “We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza.”
Former president Bill Clinton also sent a birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein, the Wall Street Journal reported. Last week, the Journal reported that Trump had authored a “bawdy” letter to Epstein as part of a birthday album compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell.
Columbia University’s long anticipated deal with the Trump administration after months of negotiations has drawn both condemnation and praise from faculty, students, and alumni – a sign that the end of negotiations will hardly restore harmony on a campus profoundly divided since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza.
David Pozen, a professor at Columbia Law School, slammed the deal as giving “legal form to an extortion scheme”, he wrote.
The US justice department has formed a “strike force” to investigate claims that the Obama administration carried out a “treasonous conspiracy” by using false intelligence to suggest Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.
Venezuelan men who were deported by the US to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process are speaking out about treatment they described as “hell” and like a “horror movie”, after arriving back home. A total of 252 Venezuelan nationals were repatriated in the last week in a deal between the US and Venezuelan governments, with many able to reunite with family after their ordeal in El Salvador.
Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order prohibiting “third-party, pay-for-play” payments to college athletes, a move the White House says is intended to curb the booster-funded bidding wars that have upended the landscape of college sports in recent years.
- South Park kicked off its 27th season with a blistering episode taking aim at Trump and its newly minted parent company, Paramount, just one day after signing a $1.5bn deal with the network.
- Thousands of employees at the US Department of Agriculture will be forced to take salary cuts and relocate out of the Washington DC area, as part of a major restructuring that experts warn will further weaken support for American farmers and complicate wildfire response.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 23 July 2025.
