The U.S. Department of Justice does not have evidence of wrongdoing in its criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, a top deputy to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro admitted in a closed-door hearing.

The Washington Post reported that the admission “undercuts President Donald Trump’s claim that ‘there is criminality’ in the $2.5 billion overhaul of the Fed’s headquarters,” a renovation the president has claimed is costing $4 billion.

Pirro’s prosecutors are probing whether the project’s cost overruns amount to fraud, and whether Chairman Powell gave false testimony to the Senate Banking Committee.

G.A. Massucco-LaTaif, chief of the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C., said that Justice Department lawyers “do not know at this time” what evidence there is of fraud or criminal misconduct, but argued that the project was $1.2 billion over budget and that “it doesn’t seem right.”

Massucco-LaTaif also told Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg that they “don’t know” what statements Powell made were false, but said that some statements were cause for concern.

“Attorneys for the Fed and the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. battled over the legality of two grand jury subpoenas at the center of the investigation,” the Post reported. “Both subpoenas were quashed this month by a federal judge, who described them as an illegal effort by the Trump administration to pressure Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell to lower interest rates or resign from the independent central bank.”

Alan Tonelson, who writes about economics and national security, called the prosecutor’s admission a “Big embarrassment for Trump.”

“Another Trump Team retribution bungle,” remarked USA Today columnist Chris Brennan.

READ MORE: Trump Taps ‘Alpha Male’ Influencer as New Envoy for American Tourism and Values

Image via Shutterstock

During the Obama and Biden years, opposition to same-sex marriage, contraception, and abortion was the Catholic Church in America’s calling card. But in the Trump era, that has changed — and the Church is sounding far more liberal, according to The Atlantic‘s Francis X. Rocca.

The Church’s “teaching hasn’t changed, but the president’s second term has shifted the bishops’ attention. The most urgent political concern for America’s Catholic leaders is no longer abortion; it’s immigration,” writes Rocca, who adds that it “dominates U.S. Catholic leaders’ public messaging.”

In November, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) posted to YouTube a special pastoral message “addressing their concern for the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United States,” and advocating for “a meaningful reform of immigration laws and the recognition of the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants,” the bishops wrote.

READ MORE: Trump Taps ‘Alpha Male’ Influencer as New Envoy for American Tourism and Values

It was the first time in a dozen years they had posted a special pastoral message. The last time had been in 2013, criticizing what they called the Obama administration’s “coercive” mandate requiring employers to include contraception in their employees’ health care coverage.

Last month, on the day of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, 18 border-state bishops “urged the administration to implement a range of reforms and to honor migrants’ right to apply for asylum,” Rocca wrote. “Following the government’s crackdown in Minnesota, bishops gathered in the state to support migrants and denounce mass deportations. USCCB lawyers told the Supreme Court last month that the president’s plan to revoke birthright citizenship would be an affront to human dignity.”

It’s not just immigration that has the U.S. Catholic Church at odds with the Trump administration and the GOP, it’s also Trump’s war against Iran.

“Cardinal Robert McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., has said that the government’s decision to attack did not meet the Church’s criteria for a just war. After the White House posted footage of missile strikes mixed with scenes from action movies, Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, issued a statement calling the video ‘sickening.’ And last week, Trump rejected Pope Leo XIV’s repeated calls for a cease-fire.”

For decades, the Catholic Church in the U.S. had focused on abortion, but in 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court found that same-sex couples have the same rights and responsibilities to marriage as do different-sex couples, the USCCB called it a “tragic error.”

Rocca writes that “no concern” was more important to the late Pope Francis than immigration, and “he encouraged U.S. clergy to focus on it.”

Last year, Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, “told reporters that being truly ‘pro life’ requires opposing not only abortion but also the ‘inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States.’ He later endorsed the bishops’  ‘special message’ on immigration, calling it ‘very important.'”

READ MORE: Donald Trump’s ‘Serious’ War Mistake: Columnist

Image via Reuters 

He’s been called a “masculinity hobbyist” and a “right-wing entertainment weirdo best known for his love of Hooters,” but self-described “alpha male” Nick Adams, a conservative political commentator, will now also be known as the Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism, and Values.

The Washington Post in 2024 described Adams as “the Trump-backed raconteur who is teaching America’s young men the art of being hard to deal with.”

“In some ways,” the Post added, “Adams’s shtick is conventionally conservative: He’s Christian, he’s very concerned about there being only two genders, he rails against ‘woke.’ In other ways, his version of MAGA manhood is so over-the-top, so uncanny that it almost seems like performance art.”

Politico reports that Adams’ new role comes months after his nomination to be the U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia fell through.

His White House bio calls Adams a “political and policy author, thought leader and educator” who currently serves as the Executive Director of the Texas and Florida-based Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness (FLAG), a non-profit organization that teaches civics and informs parents and students on the power of the American Dream.

In a social media video, Adams said, “the greatest president we have ever seen has bestowed upon me” the duty to tell the story of American greatness “near and far, to reignite a love for America at home, and relight the sacred beacon atop the shining city on a hill for the entire world to see.”

It will be my honor to serve this country as Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism, and Values.

I am deeply grateful for President Trump’s continued friendship and confidence in me to serve in this critical role.

I will thrust forward into this role… pic.twitter.com/OYVwZjTxwv

— Nick Adams (@NickAdamsinUSA) March 24, 2026

READ MORE: Donald Trump’s ‘Serious’ War Mistake: Columnist