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Protests In Iran & A Scandal At The Fed

Minnesota Sues ICE & Rubio Eyes A Presidency?

Author

Marcus Gee-Lim
January 13, 2026

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today we’re covering craziness at the Fed, mass protests in Iran, a crisis for Cuba, developments in Ukraine, an ICE lawsuit, Trump’s affordability push, and a very big day for Google.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” ― Virginia Woolf

The Feds Are Fed Up With The Fed

“Governor Jerome H. Powell” by Federalreserve via Flickr.

It’s been just two weeks since the start of 2026, but we’ve already collected enough crazy headlines to last us two months. Last Friday, the White House launched an unprecedented attack on the Federal Reserve, opening a criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The investigation is focused on the $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s Washington D.C. headquarters – according to the U.S. attorney’s office in the D.C., Powell lied to Congress about the extravagance and scope of the process. In a statement released on Sunday, Powell said that federal prosecutors had served the central bank “with grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment” for the potential crimes of perjury and making false statements.

“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,” Powell said. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.”

Normally, the Fed is tasked with keeping interest rates low and the labor market healthy without listening to the president’s political demands. During his second term, Trump has ignored the Fed’s independence, pushing for Powell to lower interest rates in order to make money more available to businesses. When he refused to budge for most of 2025, the president publicly stated his frustrations with Powell multiple times, calling him “Mr Too Late” and a “numbskull” and even flat-out stating “I would love to fire him” in December. The thing is, Powell’s term as Fed Chair ends in May, and Trump gets to pick his successor (he also chose Powell for the job in 2018), so this is more about removing Powell from the bank entirely. 

Tehran Gets Deeper In Trouble

Nationwide protests in Iran only grew over the weekend despite the best efforts of the country’s government. The demonstrations began late in December as Iranians became increasingly frustrated with the country’s deep economic crisis, and now the nation seems to be on the brink of regime change. Or war.

According to one western NGO, at least 648 people have been killed over the past two weeks of protests, and the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has claimed that more than 10,600 people were arrested in relation to the demonstrations. Since last Thursday, the government has blacked out the country’s internet in order to keep protests from growing – some Iranians have been able to get online via Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service, but authorities have also used military jammers to cut off those users.

Iran’s government has claimed that the U.S. and Israel are inciting the protests and driving demonstrators to violence, giving them an “excuse” to interfere with the country. On Monday, the White House played into that claim by promising that Trump would be “unafraid to use the lethal force and might” of the U.S. military “if and when he deems that necessary.” Airstrikes, cyber operations, and psychological campaign against Iran are apparently on the table according to two Department of Defense officials, but the White House has mostly been focused on diplomatic options first – yesterday, Trump announced that the U.S. would slap 25% tariffs on goods from any nation that trades with Iran, and also made public that Iranian officials had called him asking “to negotiate.”

Posting His Boy Into Presidency

“Marco Rubio At New Hampshire FITN 2016” by Michael Vadon. CC BY-SA 4.0.

  • It’s 2026, which means that international diplomacy is more than just formal declarations worked out in embassy meeting rooms. On Sunday, President Trump demonstrated that fact by replying to a TruthSocial post, which suggested that Secretary of State Marco Rubio should be made president of Cuba. “Sounds good to me!,” he wrote.  

  • Trump’s post stoked fears that the U.S. might be preparing some sort of attack on the Caribbean nation, which has been in the White House’s crosshairs (more than usual) since Delta Force operatives captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro last weekend. 

  • Prior to suggesting that Rubio should rule the island nation, Trump posted another threat against Cuba. “Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela,” he wrote, adding, “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA - ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” So it looks like the Trump White House is currently planning to starve out Cuba (more than the U.S. already does) by cutting off its access to Venezuelan oil, as the country struggles to combat its massive economic and demographic issues. 

Kyiv’s Winter War

  • On Monday, emergency crews scrambled to restore electricity and heat across Kyiv. Ukraine’s capital suffered widespread outages over the weekend as a result of Russian strikes on local energy infrastructure, leaving hundreds of apartment blocks without heat in the dead of winter. Temperatures dropped to lows of -15°C (5°F) last night in Kyiv.

  • As the war with Russia has mostly ground to a stop due to the winter, a few stories are still developing in Ukraine. Next month, the U.S. and Ukraine are expected to sign an $800 billion deal at the annual World Economic Forum summit in Davos. The deal expands on last year’s “minerals deal” proposal, which handed U.S. firms preferential access to Ukraine’s vast mineral wealth – according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, the new deal will help Ukraine via “economic recovery, restoring jobs, and bringing life back to Ukraine,” and most of the money will come in the form of investment from U.S. companies.

  • Meanwhile, the U.K. has begun efforts to build new deep-strike ballistic missiles for Ukraine. On Sunday, the U.K. government announced Project Nightfall, which will hand three private companies £9 million (roughly $12 million) to develop missiles that can be launched from “a range of vehicles… allowing Ukrainian forces to hit key military targets before Russian forces can respond.”

Additional World News

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It’s The Land Of Lakes, Not The Land Of ICE

  • You probably remember that ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis last Wednesday, as anti-ICE protests and outrage have spread across the country like wildfire in response to the killing. On Monday, the governments of Minnesota and the Twin Cities filed a joint lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to get ICE agents out of the state. The suit seeks a temporary restraining order on the Department of Homeland Security (which oversees ICE), which will end or limit the agency’s immigration enforcement operations in the state.

  • “This is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and it must stop,” said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. “These poorly trained, aggressive and armed agents of the federal state have terrorized Minnesota with widespread unlawful conduct.” Since last Wednesday’s shooting, Minnesotans have engaged in large, peaceful protests calling for ICE to leave their state. The agency has responded by promising to send 2,000 more ICE agents into Minnesota, creating what ICE officials say will be their biggest-ever operation.

Cutting Costs To Raise Votes

  • Currently, just 39% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance as president. In order to fix those numbers, the president has turned his focus (when he’s not trying to take over other countries) towards policies designed to make life more affordable for the average American. 

  • After announcing a plan to block large investors from buying single-family homes last week, Trump made another affordability push last Friday. “Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%,” he wrote on TruthSocial. Currently, the average credit card interest rate  sits at 23.79%, and roughly 61% of people with credit cards have been in debt for at least a year. 

  • “A credit card rate cap is enormously popular with Americans,” said the chief credit analyst at online lending platform LendingTree. “That’s why we’ve seen big names on both sides of the aisle propose credit card rate caps in recent years, including President Trump, who also floated the idea while on the campaign trail in 2024.”

Additional USA News

 

Google Lands A Big Deal (And Becomes A Big Deal)

  • Yesterday, Alphabet – the parent company of Google – joined Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple to become the fourth-ever company to hit a valuation of $4 trillion. The company ticked past the milestone after Apple announced plans to use Google’s Gemini AI models and cloud computing services to build its own Apple Intelligence AI systems.

  • The exact details of the partnership haven’t been made public, but we do know a few bits and pieces. The deal will be a multiyear non-exclusive collaboration between the two tech giants, and a few previous reports suggest that Apple might be paying Google previous reports $1 billion for access to its Gemini models. 

  • The fact that Apple is willing to turn to another company to develop its Apple Intelligence tech indicates that the iPhone maker doesn’t want to over-index into AI. While other tech firms like Meta and Google doubled down on their AI investments last year, Apple’s efforts to improve its Siri personal assistant tool have been slow and lackluster. According to TechCrunch, a “more personalized Siri” is expected to launch sometime this spring.

Additional Reads

Peanut For Your Thoughts

If you get rugpulled by Eric Adams in 2026 I think you deserve it. Not really because that should never happen to anyone but, like, you deserve it a little bit.

Editor + Writer: Marcus Gee-Lim

Designer: Joe Stella