Trump Pressures The Fed, Epstein Town Halls, France Recognizes Palestinian State

0:02President Trump put on a hard hat to tour the renovation project of the Federal Reserve Reserve He repeatedly mentioned to Fed Chair Jerome Powell that he wants interest rates lowered. Was the visit really about the project or about jawboning? I'm Sasha Pfeiffer, that's Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.

0:21Republicans nationwide are holding telephone town hall meetings with constituents, and many find themselves fielding questions about the release of information about Jeffrey Epstein. I believe transparency should be the hallmark of every administration, whether they're Democrat or Republican. How are Republicans answering to their voters on this issue? And France will soon recognize Palestine as a state. They say they want to speed the peace process by leveling the playing field at the negotiating table. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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2:15Learn more at schwab.com. White House officials say they still have a lot of questions about a renovation project at Federal Reserve headquarters. President Trump toured the construction site yesterday with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, and both of them wore hard hats. It's a tough construction job. They're building basements where they didn't exist or expanding them, and a lot of very expensive work. There's no question about it. Officially, that's what the visit was about, but there's no separating that tour from an ongoing pressure campaign by Trump and his allies to get the Fed to lower interest rates.

2:47NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith is here to tell us more about it. Good morning, Tam. Morning. Okay, so tell us about this tour. What happened? It was contentious. Just the part we were able to see on camera included Trump presenting Powell with a document and the two men arguing over the cost and scope of the project. Trump, who has a background in real estate, even said that, generally speaking, he would fire someone who managed a project with cost overruns this large. And he said the word fired with a flair that he used to use on his show, The Apprentice. So was this really about the construction project or did they talk about monetary policy?

3:24Interest rates were front and center. Trump has been badgering Powell for weeks about this, even giving him the nickname too late. And then with the Fed chairman standing right next to him, Trump was asked if there was anything Powell could say to make him back off some of the earlier criticisms. Well, I'd love him to lower interest rates. Other than that, what can I tell you? While at the Fed, Trump repeatedly said he wanted interest rates lowered significantly. So remind us again, what is the issue with the Fed building? Yeah, the project is very much over budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, in part due to steel tariffs, COVID, inflation, and the challenges of retrofitting historic buildings with modern standards.

4:07But Trump didn't seem particularly satisfied, and neither were top aides who came with him on the tour, including budget director Russell Vogt, who made it clear that this is not going away. This is our first site visit. We want to get to the bottom of what we can learn from it and how to do it better. And we're going to continue to ask questions and we won't get ahead of anything else. You know, just to remind that the Fed is supposed to be independent. I also want to remember that Trump actually appointed Chairman Powell in his first term. So what does the White House say about the criticism that what Trump is doing here is wildly inappropriate, is interfering with that?

4:42Yeah, I just have to say this was all highly unusual. The last president to visit the Fed was President George W. Bush in 2006 for a swearing-in ceremony. So the sight of President Trump scolding the Fed chairman about interest rates on his own ground was pretty remarkable. Last night, I asked Vote whether this was a pressure campaign, and Vote acted like these were two unrelated matters. The president has a policy view about lower interest rates that is vitally important to the country economically and for the pocketbooks of the American people. And he is a builder that looks at largesse and just automatically starts to think about how what he would do in that situation.

5:23He said the president has every right to talk about what he thinks the Fed should do. So, Tam, though, I still think the big question here is whether this focus on the building is all a pretext to fire the Fed chairman. Yeah, Trump said firing Powell would be a big move he didn't think was necessary. You know, his term comes up soon. I think he's going to do the right thing. Everybody knows what the right thing is. He means lowering rates. Only it's not even clear that Trump could legally fire Powell. And he's not the sole decider on interest rates. The entire Federal Reserve Board of Governors gets a vote.

5:59That is. And Piers, Tamara Keith. Tam, thank you. You're welcome.

6:10The U.S. House of Representatives is just starting its summer recess, but questions about Jeffrey Epstein are following lawmakers to their home districts. The push to release more files in the Epstein investigation has spread to several branches of government. W-H-Y-Y's Carmen Russell Sluchansky has been listening to some of the town halls that have happened so far in Pennsylvania, and he is with us now to tell us more about them. Good morning, Carmen. Good morning, Michelle. Okay, so we know that Pennsylvania is an important swing state. President Trump won the state in last year's presidential election, and Biden won before that, and it's home to some key competitive House races happening next year.

6:43So what have you been hearing so far about how much people care about this issue? Well, Republicans in a couple of those key swing districts you mentioned have already held telephone town halls this week. One of them, Scott Perry, won his South Central District last year by only around 1 percent, and he responded to a question about the Epstein files by saying he's been, quote, out front on calling for more details. I have requested the files. I have requested that the DOJ, and you can see the letter publicly, that the DOJ released the files. Not only that, that they also provide a special prosecutor.

7:17Ryan McKenzie, a freshman representative in another swing district, had a very similar response. So the House recess just started, but are we seeing the same thing happen in other states? Well, yeah. For example, Representative Eli Crane of Arizona, who supports a bipartisan resolution calling for the release of the record, said this during his own telephone town hall this week, with thanks to KJZZ's Michelle Morisco for getting this audio. I believe transparency should be the hallmark of every administration, whether they're Democrat or Republican. Now, Creighton won his seat by nine points in last year's election, so he's probably not particularly vulnerable going into 2026, but he is on a list of a few dozen Republicans Democrats think they can beat.

7:59So, you know, we've seen this issue reveal some divisions within the Republican Party. What about Democrats? How are Democrats focusing on this in Pennsylvania, where you are? Well, I called Representative Summer Lee, who represents the Pittsburgh area here in Pennsylvania and led a bipartisan panel effort to subpoena the DOJ files. And here's what she said. There's so much, you know, that's buying for, you know, Americans' attention. And yet they were not distracted in this moment from this particular promise that Trump did not fulfill. They were not willing to turn away from this one. Now, Lee added there's plenty of other concerns for voters to be focused on right now, like cuts to Medicaid and federal agencies.

8:36but she says Republicans are just going to have to answer to their own voters on this issue. And do you have a sense of whether these responses are likely to satisfy their constituents' concerns? Well, since these were telephone town halls, we didn't really get to hear how people reacted. But I reached out to Sam Chen, who has run several Republican congressional campaigns, who said that the responses probably won't be helpful to those who are not President Trump. Yeah, we call him Pat Vaughn Don for a reason, and it doesn't seem like anything really sticks to him. Trump-like candidates don't have his kind of Teflon-ness when they campaign.

9:12And so a lot of them lose. That's a very unique thing to the president. And this is just the beginning of a summer break for Congress. So we still have weeks to go to see how it shakes out. That is WHYY's Carmen Russell Sluchansky. Carmen, thank you. Thank you.

9:35Going overseas now, hunger is rampant in Gaza. More than 100 human rights and aid organizations have delivered a statement saying what they call Israel's, quote, total siege has, quote, created chaos, starvation, and death. The United Nations warns that one in five people in Gaza face starvation. Meanwhile, representatives for Israel and the U.S. have left Qatar, where they've been negotiating a possible ceasefire in Israel's war in Gaza. With us now to tell us more about all of this is NPIR's Emily Fang, who is in Tel Aviv. Emily, hello. Thanks for joining us. Hi, Michelle. So let's start with the ceasefire negotiations.

10:07They've been going on for more than two weeks now. Do we have a sense of where they stand? There has been no results so far. You know, there had been hope building in Gaza, in Israel, where I am over the last week for a potential 60-day ceasefire. And the U.S.'s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff had traveled to Italy to meet with Israeli representatives this week as well. You know, one of the sticking points in these negotiations is just how much of an Israeli military presence will be in Gaza long term. But Hamas presented its response to this issue and other issues, and an Israeli source involved in the negotiations said that Israel found this response, quote, workable.

10:43And then the negotiations hit a bump on Thursday. Israeli negotiators, as you mentioned, suddenly left Qatar saying they needed to consult with leaders back home. The U.S. team also left. And then Witkoff said Hamas, quote, does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith. Hamas quickly said in a statement it was, quote, surprised by negative statements from Witkoff. Israel state media, however, is assuring that there's no collapse to the talk, just a pause. And Witkoff said the U.S. will consider other alternatives from negotiations for stabilizing Gaza. But he didn't elaborate what those were.

11:15So in another development, France's president, Emmanuel Macron, says France will soon recognize Palestine as a state. Could that affect negotiations? Well, that's precisely the argument from French officials about why they're recognizing Palestine. They argue that when Israel sits down to negotiate with Palestinians, it's an unequal relationship because they're not sitting down as two equal states. And that's why France says there's no peace. Now, more than 140 countries already recognize Palestine as a state, but France, this is notable, is the first G7 country to do so. Israel and the U.S. have strongly opposed this.

11:53Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said France's decision, quote, rewards terror. And Secretary of State Margaret Rubio called France's decision reckless. So tell us more about the war in Gaza and the state of civilians there. Gaza health officials say the latest figure is 113 people have died of malnutrition there, and some of them certainly children. Yeah, there's no beating around the bush. The situation is dire in Gaza. And Pierre's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, has been sending me daily, almost hourly updates over the last week on how people there cannot find food to buy, even if they have the money to pay for skyrocketing prices.

12:31He himself has been surviving on sometimes less than one meal a day. and he's saying that parents there have begun giving their children salt water because they simply do not have anything else to give. The UN says about 100 ,000 women and children in Gaza face severe malnutrition, that they need medical treatment immediately and this mass hunger has led to more than 2 million people in Gaza facing severe risk and led to growing global condemnation of Israel for its controls on letting in food to Gaza. Aid organizations say they have trucks with food at Gaza's borders but they cannot get permission from Israel's military to enter.

13:07So Emily, Israel is saying that aid is going in, and Israeli officials have blamed Hamas for hampering aid efforts. So what can you tell us about the situation? Israel says it's allowing aid to get in mostly through this U.S. and Israeli design distribution system. And Israel claims it's the U.N. that's not been capable of getting their trucks into Gaza to distribute food. So we reached out to the U.N. office, which coordinates aid in Gaza, and they pushed back. They said Israel decides who and what gets into Gaza and when. They say there are routinely delays, and they need the Israeli military to stop bombing Gaza to let their drivers in.

13:43They're asking that Israeli troops stay away from their aid routes as well, because Israeli troops have shot dozens of people needing food who have approached the UN trucks just this week alone. And this week I spoke to Amjad al-Shawa, who runs a Palestinian aid organization on the ground in Gaza. he says he's been able to get some flour and medical supplies, but he has not been able to get any fuel in. So they have no way to use the flour. And he is hoping and praying for a ceasefire just so he and his family can eat. That is NPR's Emily Fang. She's in Tel Aviv. Emily, thank you. Thanks, Michelle.

14:20And that's up first for Friday, July 25th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Sasha Pfeiffer. What happens when the independence of the Justice Department is threatened? The Department of Justice is essentially whatever the president wants it to be right now. And its new leaders say they take their cues from the White House. We are so proud to work at the directive of Donald Trump. Tune in to the Sunday story from Up First for a look at the changing leadership of the DOJ and how that impacts the rule of law in America. That's the Sunday story from the Up First podcast. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Padmananda Rama, Hannah Block, Jenea Williams, and Alice Wolfley.

14:57It was produced by Zia Dutts, Nia Dumas, Christopher Thomas, and Claire Murashima. And today is Claire's last day with us. We will miss her a lot, and we wish her the best with her next chapter. So goodbye, Claire, and thanks for all the TikToks. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. Our technical director is Carly Strange, and our executive producer is Jay Shaler. We hope you'll have a great weekend. This message comes from Michelin. More than a tire company, Michelin is an innovation company. Now taking on space, developing an airless wheel for space exploration. Motion for life. More at michelinman.com slash y hyphen Michelin slash innovation.

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