By JOSH BOAK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — White House budget director Russell Vought suggested in a Thursday letter that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is in violation of government building rules in the renovation of the Fed’s headquarters.

Vought, in a letter he shared on social media, called the initial renovation plans featuring rooftop terrace gardens, VIP dining rooms and premium marble an “ostentatious overhaul.” Vought also suggested that Powell misled Congress by saying the headquarters had never had a serious renovation, saying that a 1999-2003 update of its roof and building systems counts as a “comprehensive” renovation.

It appears part of a larger pressure campaign by the Trump administration to pressure the Fed chair into departing before his term ends in May 2026. Powell has declined to reduce interest rates until the U.S. central bank has a better understanding of the impact that President Donald Trump’s import tax hikes could have on inflation.

Fed officials did not respond to an email seeking a response to the White House letter. Powell said in Senate testimony last month that some of the elements in the 2021 plan such as the dining rooms and rooftop terraces are no longer part of the project for the 90-year-old Marriner S. Eccles Building.

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The Supreme Court said in May that it could block any attempts by the White House to dismiss Powell, noting as part of a separate ruling that the Fed “is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity.”

Trump said at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting that Powell “should resign immediately” and be replaced by someone who would lower rates, as the U.S. president believes that high inflation is no longer a risk to the U.S. economy.

As Trump sees it, a rate cut would reduce the costs of government borrowing in ways that make mortgages, auto loans and other forms of consumer debt cheaper. But a rate cut could also lead to more money flowing into the economy and push up inflation, worsening affordability as the financial markets ultimately determine the interest charged on the national debt.

In Thursday’s letter, Vought sent Powell a series of questions about whether the renovation project complies with federal standards. Vought said that Powell’s testimony about changes to the 2021 plan “appears to reveal” that the renovation is not in compliance with the National Planning Capital Act.

The Fed sees political independence as an essential value for setting monetary policy, allowing it to act without the interests of elections and focus instead on its dual mandate of stabilizing prices and maximizing employment.

Trump has repeatedly berated Powell on his social media site Truth Social, nicknaming the Fed chair “Too Late.” On June 30, Trump sent Powell a handwritten note saying that his decision to hold rates steady had “cost the USA a fortune” in the form of higher servicing costs on the national debt.

The risk of prematurely lowering rates is that higher inflation could be ignited. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures price index, is at 2.3%, slightly higher than the Fed’s 2% target.

Inflation has fallen after spiking to a four-decade high in June 2022, but the uncertainty on the size and impact of Trump’s tariffs and how they flow through the U.S. economy has caused the Fed to pause after multiple rate cuts last year.

“Right now, New York City’s energy grid is working overtime to keep up with demand that is rising more quickly by the day because of electric devices, electric vehicles, and AI. That puts the city at real risk for more blackouts, like we saw in 2019, and that risk will only grow.”

The Ravenswood Generating Station in Queens, which represents more than 20 percent of New York City’s generation capacity. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

Next to skyrocketing rents and economic shockwaves created by the federal government, New York City’s mayoral candidates might not think clean energy is an urgent problem, or a problem they can fix.

They’re wrong on both accounts.

Right now, New York City’s energy grid is working overtime to keep up with demand that is rising more quickly by the day because of electric devices, electric vehicles, and AI. That puts the city at real risk for more blackouts, like we saw in 2019, and that risk will only grow.

The most likely outcome is that Con Ed will be required to increase the use of so-called “peaker plants” this summer. This is bad news for New York City residents.

Peaker plants use oil or natural gas to produce energy, spewing much higher rates of greenhouse gases into the air. Not surprisingly, they’re mostly located in the same low-income communities of color already dealing with higher rates of asthma or other problems because of energy production. They’re also expensive, at a time when New Yorkers are facing potential double-digit rate hikes for power costs. 

Other solutions, like the city’s mandated building retrofits or building new nuclear plants, could help solve the energy grid problem. But they’ll take decades to really get off the ground, assuming safety concerns about nuclear plants can be met.

But believe it or not, there’s a straightforward solution to the energy grid problem that we can advance in a few years, not a few decades. And if we do it right, it will return much-needed dollars to the communities that have been most affected by the pollution caused by energy creation.

We can build coalitions and communities of people who simply agree to use less energy. 

This is called “demand flexibility.” For example, if enough building owners and tenants agree to allow a utility to raise the temperature (via the internet) in their building a few degrees on a hot day or allow the utility to tap into their EV car or solar battery, this has the same effect as having an additional power plant to supply energy. 

Organizations that put together such agreements between building owners, community residents, and utilities are called Virtual Power Plants (VPPs).

Here’s where the next mayor comes in. With a focused effort, New York City’s mayor could relieve significant pressure on the energy grid, save New Yorkers money, ease pollution in communities of color and light the way forward for more communities. 

New York City has many assets that could be assembled into VPPs. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has 177,000 apartment units, the Housing and Preservation Department has subsidized 150,000 apartments over the last 10 years alone, and 1,100 school buildings could be added, as well as CUNY campuses. As the city transitions to EV school buses, seldom used in the summer, their batteries could also feed the grid. 

Altogether, the city could organize a municipal VPP that would go a long way towards stabilizing the grid—at least for now. 

In addition, the city has an abundance of community and tenant organizations who are trusted in their communities that could do outreach to sign-up residents to join community-owned, or “CIVIC VPPs.”

A little over five years ago, these same community organizations worked with the City to convince residents to fill out the Census, with great success. Civic VPPs could partner with local tech start-up companies emerging in the VPP space to connect resident households to the grid. 

Even if only a small portion of people joined right away, this Civic VPP effort could immediately relieve pressure on the grid, allowing closure of peaker plants, which create such serious health risks that the state has ordered them to shut down.

Not only would that keep communities healthier, it will also save people a lot of money. Over the past 15 years, Con Ed has charged ratepayers around $5 billion to operate these peaker plants. 

Once VPPs are put in place, and peaker plants closed, some of the savings should be returned to VPPs that help maintain the grid. Some of the savings could also be used to beef up public school vocational education in needed green construction skills, helping to meet the city’s coming green workforce needs. It might also support civic education to help strengthen the underlying civic capacity that will be needed to broaden such efforts over time.

A city-supported clean energy planning initiative could also enable larger, more effective, and more inclusive clean energy collaborations beyond VPPs. For example, Boston Medical Center (BMC), a safety net hospital, not only retrofitted its buildings for energy efficiency (lowering its energy bill), it also partnered with MIT to build a solar field in North Carolina. Revenue from the solar field is being used to subsidize utility bills for patients in Boston unable to afford air conditioning or heat. New York could create projects like BMC’s hundreds of times over, but only if there is leadership from City Hall. 

By providing leadership and support, City Hall could even help stem the effects of the Trump Administration’s move to strip $2 billion worth of EPA “Community Change grants” designed to support exactly this kind of organizing and work.

A stable grid and clean air for the city’s future will depend on the next mayor. With the right leadership from City Hall, it can be reality, and sooner than we think.

J. Phillip Thompson is a professor of urban planning at MIT and the former deputy mayor for strategic planning initiatives under the de Blasio administration.

The post Opinion: NYC’s Next Mayor Can Make a Clean Energy Grid a Reality appeared first on City Limits.

A DACA recipient who has lived in Central Florida for nearly 25 years has been detained in the Alligator Alcatraz detention facility in the Everglades after being picked up for driving with a suspended license.

The 36-year-old man who is legally in the United States was transferred from the Orange County Jail early Saturday, his attorney told the Orlando Sentinel.

The man is a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a 2012 program that shields undocumented people who arrived here as children from deportation.

Josephine Arroyo, his Orlando-based attorney, declined to name her client fearing retaliation against him at the Everglades facility. She’s only spoken to him once since his arrival there early Saturday, and Arroyo said the man described swarming mosquitoes, non-working toilets and “horrific food.”

“It’s not a detention facility that is going to be up to par with the requirements necessarily, so yeah, it’s horrible,” she said. “Never in a million years did I think our client would be there, especially given his legal status and his charge of driving with a suspended license.”

The man’s circumstances deepen the emerging questions about the use of the new detention center in the Everglades, which President Donald Trump said would hold “the worst of the worst” when he visited upon its opening last week.

Reporting by many media outlets suggests multiple detainees sent to that facility have committed only minor crimes in the U.S., and Arroyo contends her client should not be in detention at all.

Arroyo said her client was issued a citation in Florida’s Seminole County last year for driving with a suspended license and the court mailed him a notice to appear to an address where he no longer lived.

Because he missed the court hearing, a warrant was issued, she said.

Earlier this year, he was pulled over for having a broken mirror in Orange County, where she said the law enforcement officer saw the warrant for his arrest in the court system and took him into custody.

Arroyo said she has since provided the court with the man’s valid driver’s license, and the charge was lessened to a civil citation. She has petitioned Immigration and Customs Enforcement to issue the man a bond so he can be released, but wasn’t sure if that would be granted or how long the process would take.

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement did tell her Alligator Alcatraz wasn’t yet able to support attorney visits, which she found concerning.

She spoke to her client by phone after he called his brother, who included her on the call.

“Those that are inside are literally voiceless, and it’s important that they have access to their attorneys who can be that voice,” Arroyo said. “Immigrants have constitutional rights and rights to due process solely by being here on American soil, and a lot of people forget about that.”

Florida’s Division of Emergency Management and ICE’s press office didn’t respond to a request for comment prior to publication.

First announced on June 19, the immigration detention facility was swiftly set up by the DeSantis administration at an airport used for training flights deep in the Everglades. It is expected to eventually have capacity for about 3,000 detainees.

The Miami Herald reported earlier this week on similar reports of dire conditions at the detention facility, citing conversations with the wives of men detained there. A spokesperson for the Division of Emergency Management denied the Herald’s reporting, stating “Bug and environmental factors are minimized in the facility,” and that “all plumbing systems are working and operational.”

The Orange County Jail confirmed this week that some number of people detained at the jail – which has an agreement with ICE to house federal inmates, including those on immigration detainers – were subsequently transferred to Alligator Alcatraz.

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An Orlando woman who did not want to be identified because of fears of retaliation said one of her family members has been transferred to the Everglades detention center from a county jail.

She said he was detained during a routine immigration field office check-in after the Trump administration revoked his temporary legal status.

The woman said he was able to call her from the detention center and told her he doesn’t know when he’ll get a hearing before an immigration judge or how long he could be at the facility.

The man told her it was difficult to tell if it was day or night inside the facility, which is made up of large tents, and mosquitoes and sweltering heat made it difficult to be outdoors.

“There is no rhyme or reason for who they pick up or why they pick them up,” she said. “I am devastated. What makes it worse is the comments people make. They forget these are human beings and people’s loved ones.”

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, one of several Democratic lawmakers prevented from entering Alligator Alcatraz last week, said she had concerns about a tour scheduled by the state this upcoming weekend.

“We’re glad to see public pressure forcing the state of Florida to open its doors,” she said. “But let’s be clear: this isn’t a field trip — it’s oversight. The law grants us the right to enter these facilities unannounced, at any time. … Floridians deserve genuine transparency, not curated photo opportunities, and we will continue to push for that type of unfettered access.”

rygillespie@orlandosentinel.com, sswisher@orlandosentinel.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Ford is recalling more than 850,000 of its cars across the U.S. because the low-pressure fuel pump inside the vehicles may fail — and potentially cause an engine stall while driving, increasing crash risks.

The recall covers a wide range of Ford and Lincoln-branded vehicles made in recent model years. That includes certain Ford Broncos, Explorers and F-150s, as well as Lincoln Aviators and Navigators, documents published this week by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration note.

Ford plans to send out notification letters to affected owners starting this Monday (July 14), to warn of safety risks related to potential fuel pump failure. But a remedy is still “under development,” the NHTSA’s recall report notes.

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It wasn’t immediately clear if there was an estimate for when a fix would become available. But this week’s recall report noted that owners will receive an additional letter with instructions to take their car to an authorized dealer for that service when the time comes — and that there will be no charge.

The Associated Press reached out to Ford for further comments Thursday.

The Michigan-based automaker isn’t aware of any accidents or injuries related to this recall, this week’s report notes. But owners should look out for potential warnings. Prior to fuel pump failure, customers may encounter poor engine performance, for example, a check engine light or a decrease in engine power.

Fuel pump failure is “more likely to occur” during warm weather or if there’s low fuel in the tank, the recall report notes. And loss of fuel pressure and flow can be caused by internal contamination of a car’s jet pump, amid other factors. Ford also identified supplier changes during a review of the manufacturing process, the report adds.

Ford estimates that 10% of the 850,318 vehicles it’s recalling in the U.S. have this fuel pump risk. The recall covers certain Ford Broncos, Explorers and Lincoln Aviators between the 2021 and 2023 model years, in addition to 2021-2023 model year F-250 SD, F-350 SD, F-450 SD and F-550 SD vehicles. Select 2021-2022 Lincoln Navigators, Ford Mustangs and F-150s are also impacted, as well as some 2022 Expeditions.