Trump's choice of Warsh to lead Fed could reshape the world's most influential central bank

WORLD NEWS IN BRIEF

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump's nomination of Kevin Warsh to chair the Federal Reserve could bring about sweeping changes at a central bank that dominates the global economy and markets like no other.

Warsh, if approved by the Senate, will be under close scrutiny from financial markets and Congress given his appointment by a president who has loudly demanded much lower rates than many economists think are justified by economic conditions.

Whether he can maintain the Fed's long time independence from day-to day politics while also placating Trump will be a tremendous challenge.

Still, former associates and friends of Warsh say that he has the intellectual heft and people skills to potentially pull it off. His family also has connections to Trump that could reduce the pressure from the White House.

Warsh has "a judicious temperament and both the intellectual understanding but also the hopefully diplomatic talents to navigate what is a challenging position at this point," said Raghuram Rajan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and formerly head of India's central bank.

Warsh would replace current chair Jerome Powell when his term expires in May. Trump chose Powell to lead the Fed in 2017 but this year has relentlessly assailed him for not cutting interest rates quickly enough.

"I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best," Trump posted on social media Friday. "On top of everything else, he is 'central casting,' and he will never let you down."

Trump said later Friday in the Oval Office that he didn't ask Warsh to commit to cutting rates, calling such a question "inappropriate" and adding, "I want to keep it nice and pure."

But Trump added, "But he certainly wants to cut rates."

The appointment, which requires Senate confirmation, amounts to a return trip for Warsh, 55, who was a member of the Fed's board from 2006 to 2011.

He was the youngest governor in history when he was appointed at age 35.

He is currently a fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

MINNEAPOLIS

Fearing ICE, Native Americans rush to prove their right to belong in the US

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flooded Minneapolis, Shane Mantz dug his Choctaw Nation citizenship card out of a box on his dresser and slid it into his wallet.

Some strangers mistake the pest-control company manager for Latino, he said, and he fears getting caught up in ICE raids.

Like Mantz, many Native Americans are carrying tribal documents proving their U.S. citizenship in case they are stopped or questioned by federal immigration agents. This is why dozens of the 575 federally recognized Native nations are making it easier to get tribal IDs. They're waiving fees, lowering the age of eligibility - ranging from 5 to 18 nationwide - and printing the cards faster.

It's the first time tribal IDs have been widely used as proof of U.S. citizenship and protection against federal law enforcement, said David Wilkins, an expert on Native politics and governance at the University of Richmond.

"I don't think there's anything historically comparable," Wilkins said. "I find it terribly frustrating and disheartening."

As Native Americans around the country rush to secure documents proving their right to live in the United States, many see a bitter irony.

"As the first people of this land, there's no reason why Native Americans should have their citizenship questioned," said Jaqueline De León, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Native American Rights Fund and member of Isleta Pueblo.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in an email that "our agents are properly trained to determine alienage and removability."

"Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S.

Constitution, DHS law enforcement uses 'reasonable suspicion' to make arrests. The Supreme Court recently vindicated us on this question," the email read.

In September, the Supreme Court allowed ICE agents to use a person's apparent race and ethnicity as a factor in deciding whether to detain them.

Last year, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said that several tribal citizens reported being stopped and detained by ICE officers in Arizona and New Mexico.

He and other tribal leaders have advised citizens to carry tribal IDs with them at all times.

Last November, Elaine Miles, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon and an actress known for her roles in "Northern Expo-sure" and "The Last of Us," said she was stopped by ICE officers in Washington state who told her that her tribal ID looked fake.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe this week banned ICE from its reservation in southwestern South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska, one of the largest in the country.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota said a member was detained in Minnesota last weekend.

And Peter Yazzie, who is Navajo, said he was arrested and held by U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix for several hours last week.

Yazzie, a construction worker from nearby Chinle, Arizona, said he was sitting in his car at a gas station preparing for a day of work when he saw ICE officers arrest some Latino men. The officers soon turned their attention to Yazzie, pushed him to the ground, and searched his vehicle, he said.

He said he told them where to find his driver's license, birth certificate, and a federal Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. Yazzie said the car he was in is registered to his mother. Officers said the names didn't match, he said, and he was arrested, taken to a nearby detention center and held for about four hours.

"It's an ugly feeling. It makes you feel less human. To know that people see your features and think so little of you," he said.

DHS did not respond to questions about the arrest.

BELZONI, MISS.

Tens of thousands face another arctic blast without power as East Coast preps for a new storm

As tens of thousands of people endured nearly a week with no electricity, another storm loomed on the East Coast where residents braced for near-hurricane force winds, heavy snow and potential flooding.

More than 230,000 homes and businesses were without electricity Friday, with the vast majority of those outages in Mississippi and Tennessee, according to the outage tracking website poweroutage.us.

In Mississippi's Lafayette County, where about 12,000 people were still without electricity mid-day Friday, emergency management agency spokesperson Beau Moore said he knows not everyone will get power back before the cold hits.

"It's a race against time to get it on for those we can get it on for," Moore said.

Arctic air moving into the Southeast will cause already frigid temperatures to plummet into the teens (minus 10 degrees Celsius) on Friday night in cities like Nashville, Tennessee, where many people still lacked power nearly a week after a massive storm dumped snow and ice across the eastern U.S., the National Weather Service said.

Forecasters say the subfreezing weather will persist in the eastern U.S. into February and there's high chance of heavy snow in the Carolinas, Virginia and northeast Georgia this weekend, possibly up to a foot (30 centimeters) in parts of North Carolina. Snow is also possible along the East Coast from Maryland to Maine.

On Saturday night and early Sunday, forecasters expect intense winds accompanied by moderate to heavy snow that could lead to blizzard conditions for a time before the storm starts to move out to sea Sunday morning.

With the wave of dangerous cold heading for the South, experts say the risk of hypothermia heightens for people in parts of Mississippi and Tennessee who are entering their sixth day trapped at home without power in subfreezing temperatures.

"The body can handle cold temperatures briefly very well, but the prolonged exposure is a problem." said Dr. Hans House, University of Iowa professor of emergency medicine.

Nearly 90 people have died in areas affected by bitter cold from Texas to New Jersey. Roughly half the deaths were reported in Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana.

While some deaths have been attributed to hypothermia, others are suspected to be related to carbon monoxide exposure.

NEW YORK

Justice Department says it's releasing 3 million pages from its Jeffrey Epstein files

The Justice Department on Friday released many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier's sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with rich and powerful people including Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents in the latest Epstein disclosure, as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. The files, which were being posted to the department's website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release of documents in December.

The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Lawmakers complained when the Justice Department made only a limited release last month, but officials said more time was needed to review an additional trove of documents that was discovered and to review the records to ensure no sensitive information about victims was inadvertently released.

"Today's release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act," Blanche said at a news conference announcing the disclosure.

Friday's disclosure is likely to represent the largest document dump about a saga that the Trump administration has struggled to shake and that has long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have suspected government cover-ups and clamored for a full accounting, demands that even Blanche acknowledged might not be satisfied by the latest release.

"There's a hunger, or a thirst, for information that I don't think will be satisfied by review of these documents," he said.

After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all of the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needed to be redacted, or blacked out. But it denied any effort to shield Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago despite an earlier friendship, from potential embarrassment.

Among the materials being withheld from release Friday is information that could jeopardize any ongoing investigation or expose the identities of potential victims of sex abuse. All women other than Maxwell have been redacted from videos and images being released Friday, Blanche said.

"We did not protect President Trump. We didn't protect - or not protect - anybody," Blanche said.

The number of documents subject to review has ballooned to roughly 6 million, including duplicates, the department said.

- The Associated Press