The Justice Department’s New Target in D.C., and a Surge of Federal Agents in Minnesota

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, January 12th. Here's what we're covering.

0:14No one, certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve, is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure. On Sunday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell released a rare video message saying he had learned that he is now the target of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. He said the Fed had been served with grand jury subpoenas. The inquiry centers on a claim the Trump administration has made for months, that Powell lied to Congress about the scope of renovations of the Fed's headquarters that have run$700 million over budget.

0:52Powell, who President Trump has previously threatened to fire, said the Justice Department is trying to intimidate him. The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president. While Trump was the one to nominate Powell to the Fed back in 2017, the president has taken an increasingly hostile stance towards him, attacking Powell again and again for not slashing interest rates, even though the Fed is designed to be insulated from political pressure.

1:28It's part of a broader assault by Trump on the Fed's independence. He's also tried to fire Lisa Cook, a Fed governor appointed during the Biden administration, in a case that the Supreme Court will hear arguments about next week. Last night, Trump denied that the investigation into Powell is politically motivated, saying, quote, quote, what should pressure him is the fact that rates are far too high. That's the only pressure he's got.

2:03This weekend, mounting outrage over the Trump administration's deportation campaign and the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis sparked protests across the country. From New York to Los Angeles. No justice, no peace. I drop my sheets. To Houston, Omaha, Boston, Seattle. In Minneapolis itself, protests wound through downtown, where demonstrators stopped at hotels to bang drums and blare music to try and keep any ICE agents staying there from sleeping. Meanwhile. Well, Maria, we're sending more officers today and tomorrow. They'll arrive. There'll be hundreds more. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration is sending another surge of federal agents to Minneapolis.

2:52It is ground zero for stealing of taxpayer dollars and protecting criminals. Billions and billions of dollars. In an interview on Fox News, Noem claimed that a major welfare fraud scandal linked to Minnesota's Somali community was the reason for the deployment. The state's governor and the Minneapolis mayor, however, have called for no more ICE officers there, saying the agent's presence is putting residents in danger. Today on The Daily. We've just gotten a pretty dramatic increase in 911 calls from people in the community related to a lot of the street enforcement that's happening. The Minneapolis police chief, on what he has seen in the city since the administration started ramping up its aggressive immigration enforcement there.

3:41I mean, it's everything from people are being arrested and their cars are left in the roadway, sometimes blocking the street. And at one case, left when it wasn't even placed in park and was rolling down the road. Wait, wait, so ICE officials are taking someone out of their car, arresting them, and their car is not even put in park? We had that happen. We had another time where there was a dog in the car and they left the dog in the car. I mean, even this morning, we've gotten calls for individuals who were pepper-sprayed by ICE. There's just a variety of calls for service that we then have to manage and triage that were not happening before.

4:25On Air Force One yesterday... On Iran, have they crossed your red line yet to trigger a response? Well, it's starting to, it looks like, and there seemed to be some people killed that aren't supposed to be killed. President Trump said military options are on the table for Iran as the government there cracks down on protests. But we're looking at it very seriously. The military is looking at it. And we're looking at some very strong options. Trump previously said the U.S. would step in if government forces killed peaceful demonstrators. Crowds have been gathering across Iran since late last month.

5:02It started as a reaction to the country's deep economic crisis, and it's become a larger anti-government movement. Trump has said the Iranians are looking at freedom and, quote, the USA stands ready to help. As the government has tried to subdue the protests, the Internet's been cut. But reports have trickled out this weekend, including verified videos of body bags lined up outside hospitals. Human rights groups are reporting casualties in the hundreds, with no sign the authorities are relenting. In response to Trump's threat, Iran's Speaker of Parliament warned about retaliatory attacks, saying if the U.S.

5:41does strike Iran, quote, U.S. military and shipping lanes will be our legitimate targets.

5:53The chatbot Grok, which was created by Elon Musk's company XAI, has ignited a huge backlash to the point that some countries are now blocking access to it entirely. The outrage centers on Grok's ability to churn out sexualized images of real people. For example, earlier this month, a young woman posted a picture of herself wearing a blue tank top on X, Musk's social media platform. Over the next several days, dozens of people replied to her post asking Grok to create new images of her in lingerie or bikinis. Grok did it, attaching them as replies, and those AI images racked up thousands of views.

6:36The incident is part of a flood of Grok-generated images that sexualize women and children and have been posted on X. The system has safeguards to prevent it from generating fully nude images, but some X users have found ways to circumvent that. This weekend, Indonesia and Malaysia said they would be blocking access to Grok. A Brazilian official has called for the chatbot to be banned there, and French lawmakers said they've reported X to a public prosecutor. In response to the controversy, Musk said that any users who create sexualized images of children would suffer, quote, consequences, and the company is now limiting requests for AI images only to some paid subscribers.

7:19A spokesman for the prime minister of Britain said that was not a solution, saying it was insulting to victims, and, quote, simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service.

7:42And finally, every month in Ukraine, a small stream of people who've been caught on the other side of the front lines escape from Russian-occupied territory. As they've come across a border checkpoint, they've given some of the most detailed accounts yet of life under Russian rule. My colleague, Times reporter Maria Varenikova, has been interviewing some of them. She says that the children in particular have described a widespread attempt in occupied schools to indoctrinate kids and turn them into Russian nationalists. Most children and parents told me many stories about how Russia is pushing their propaganda on them.

8:22For example, the Ukrainian language, they were not able to learn it anymore, that they were studying a lot of Russian history. And in that Russian history, there is already a bit about when Russia occupied their homes, which is called liberating. They also, from a young age, have been marching on a schoolyard, doing lots of exercises aimed at the military training, preparing them to the war. Also, from very first grade at school, they are drawing, instead of some flowers, they would be drawing weapons. One mother showed me a picture of her children standing in a line in a school class, holding the pictures that every child has drawn.

9:08And just looking through every picture, you could see like machine gun, tank, and every child was holding this green picture in front of them. Students and their parents and human rights experts in Ukraine told me that Russian propaganda does work. And some children, they do fall for it and believe in what they have been told. For example, one boy that I spoke with told me that he indeed started believing that Ukraine have started the war because he said that seeing so many grownups around me telling the same story, you start believing it.

9:51Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.