Minnesota Prosecutors Quit, Trump in Detroit, Inflation Report

It's great to see A. Martinez. Normally I don't see A. Martinez. No, I normally... You're well lit. I turn off all the lights here at NPR West. Well, it just kind of has that... Somewhere between cinema verite and film noir. I'm not sure which French. I'm more cartoon than those other options you mentioned. I'm more like an animated short. That's me.

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota are resigning. They faced pressure to investigate the widow of Renee Macklin-Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent last week. How are partisan politics shaping a criminal investigation? I'm Steve Inskeep with A. Martinez, and this is Up... First, from NPR News. President Trump is selling his economic record. In the coming weeks, I will be laying out even more plans to help bring back affordability. And again, remember, that's a fake word. by Democrats.

How is the president promising to fix the problem that he says does not exist? And we'll hear about what the Department of Labor's inflation numbers actually show about affordability. I mean, nationally, gas is cheaper, but grocery prices and other bills keep climbing. The president says there's almost... No inflation, but does it add up? Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. At least six federal prosecutors in Minnesota have quit. The six have one big reason. Justice Department officials pressured them to twist the investigation of a shooting in Minneapolis. Rather than focus on the federal agent who shot Renee Macklin-Good in the head, political leaders wanted an investigation to find dirt on Good's widow.

The resignations have disrupted other federal probes, such as an investigation of social service fraud the Trump administration says it cares about. Minnesota Public Radio's Matt Sepik has been covering both the fraud cases and the shooting death. Matt, one of the six attorneys... design.

The attorneys aren't speaking publicly, but there are several reasons, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. That person asked that we not use their name because they're not authorized to talk to the media. One of those reasons is tied to last week's fatal shooting of 30...

seven-year-old Renee Macklin-Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Trump administration officials say the agent fired in self-defense, but many state and local officials are pointing to video taken from multiple angles that contradicts claims that Good posed. any threat. The person with knowledge of the situation I spoke with says there's pressure from DOJ leaders to investigate Good's widow Becca Good for ties to activist groups, which is not illegal.

The group also objects to the DOJ's reluctance to investigate Agent Ross and to exclude state police from the investigation. And the same source tells me that the veteran prosecutors are concerned that Trump's focus on immigration has drawn resources away from the fraud investigations. Yeah, you mentioned their veteran prosecutors have been around a while. What's significant about their decision?

Well, it's a loss of big talent. The attorneys spent their careers with the Justice Department and prosecuted many major cases. One of them is Melinda Williams, an assistant U.S. attorney who led the criminal division here. Another is Joe Thompson. He's been key in the government's prosecution of fraud, particularly the infamous Feeding Our Future case.

Thompson charged 78 people with stealing around $300 million from federal child nutrition programs during the pandemic. 58 have been convicted. Investigators also uncovered massive Medicaid fraud. Last month, Thompson estimated that around $9 billion may have been stolen. Taxpayers deserve to know the truth of the fraud. The fraud is not small. It isn't isolated. The magnitude cannot be overstated.

The convicted food fraud ringleader is white, but nearly all of the other defendants are Somali-American. Even though the majority are U.S. citizens, President Trump is using the fraud as a pretext for his immigration crackdown. I would imagine leaders in Minnesota have a lot to say about these resonations. Yeah, they do. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry, a Democrat, is calling the prosecutors heroes. In a statement, he adds, quote, the people pushing to prosecute Renee's widow are monsters.

And U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, also a Democrat and a former prosecutor herself, says DOJ is politicizing the investigation into goods killing. The first way they did it was cutting out the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. That was such a bad sign that there was more bad to come because our Minnesota Bureau has seasoned professionals. They've always worked together and they cut them out. What about the Justice Department, Matt? What are they saying?

Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche says in a short statement, quote, there is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation. The DOJ tells me ICE is running its own investigation that's parallel to, quote, any FBI investigation. But the same source not authorized to speak on the record calls that a lie and says ICE is not investigating the shooting. That's Matt Sepik of Minnesota Public Radio. Thanks. You're welcome.

Voters say affordability is a top concern, so it makes sense that the economy is expected to be one of the main issues in this year's midterm elections. President Trump has started traveling around the country giving speeches about the economy. He was at the Detroit Economic Club yesterday.

although he did not exactly stay on topic. And now after less than 12 months in office, this is the easiest speech to make. I have great people, and all I'm doing is spewing off what the hell we've done. Even Venezuela wasn't too bad, was it, huh? NPR's senior White House correspondent Tamer Keith is here to break it all down. Tam, the president is kind of proud of what he calls the weave. Is that what we just heard here?

Yes. Yes, it is. He was really all over the place in this speech, changing topics mid-sentence and boasting about being off the teleprompter 80 percent of the time. The speech included insults for more than. half a dozen politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike. And then there was his impression of his predecessor. Remember the speeches, Joe? First of all, they'd last a matter of seconds, you know. Thank you very much.

You ever notice Joe would always cough before a speech? State of the Union, he gets, ah, ah, ah, ah. And picture the president making contorted facial expressions to go along with the sound effects. Okay, so beyond the impersonations, what did the president actually say about the economy?

First off, he said it is great. He boasted that grocery prices are, quote, starting to go rapidly down. That was on the same day that the government announced that in December, grocery prices had their biggest spike since 2020. He went into some detail about his view that when gas prices come down, other prices will come down as well.

Of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, he said that jerk will be gone soon. And then he teased new proposals. In the coming weeks, I will be laying out even more plans to help bring back affordability. And again, remember, that's a fake word. By Democrats, prices were too high. They caused the high price.

And these regular riffs about affordability being a con job or a fake word really risk undercutting his message and are also out of line with the pain that people say they're feeling. Trump mentioned laying out... even more plans. Any idea what those plans are? He said he's going to outline a proposal at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week to bring down home prices by getting private equity companies out of the US housing market. And Trump has started talking about a plan to cap credit.

card interest rates at 10% for a year. Thus far he is just talking about asking the companies to voluntarily make that change. And yes, these absolutely sound like ideas you've heard before from Democrats, not Republicans. Trump even called Senator Elizabeth Warren this week to talk ideas.

But the response from Republicans on the Hill has been pretty tepid so far. OK, now one other thing happened at the Ford truck plant that Trump toured before the speech and involved the president giving the middle finger. Yet TMZ posted a video of the incident. Someone shouted what sounded like.

pedophile protector, presumably about the Epstein files. In response, Trump appeared to mouth an expletive, then gave the middle finger to the person who was shouting. In a statement, White House Communications Director Stephen Chung said, quote,

wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage, and the president gave an appropriate and unambiguous response. Okay. NPR's Tamara Key, thanks a lot. You're welcome. As President Trump talks about ways to lower prices, we have new data on how high they actually are. The Department of Labor's latest inflation report was out on Tuesday and it shows inflation overall...

neither improving nor getting worse from November to December. NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now. Scott, so let's start with one section of the report. Nationally, gas. Gasoline might be getting cheaper at the pump, but what did the report say about other energy costs? Well, they're generally going up. The Labor Department said yesterday natural gas prices are up more than 10% over the last year.

Nearly half the country heats with natural gas, so that's driving up winter heating bills. We also use lots of natural gas to generate electricity, so those prices are climbing too. Mark Wolf heads a group of state agencies that help low-income families cover their energy costs, and he says about one out of six households is now falling behind on its utility bills. We're hearing from families that we helped last year that need more help.

because the bill isn't going up. Then secondly, we're hearing from families who are working-class families who earn too much money to qualify for help, but are now finding these bills unaffordable. Grocery prices were also up sharply last month, along with airfares and the price of clothing. Overall, the cost of living in December was up 2.7% from a year ago, the same annual inflation rate we saw in November.

We're kind of in a holding pattern. Okay. Now, we know the high cost of living is a big concern for a lot of families, legitimately so. So how is the Trump administration handling that? Well, the president generally downplayed concerns about affordability when he was in Michigan. Instead, he boasted about the strong GDP growth we saw this summer. We have quickly achieved the exact opposite of sagflation.

Almost no inflation and super high growth. Now, to be sure, GDP growth was strong in the third quarter, but it's not the case. We have almost no inflation. Prices are still going up faster than most people would like. What's more, that GDP growth has not come with a lot of new jobs. You know, the president toured a Ford Motor plant yesterday, but U.S. auto manufacturers lost 28,000 jobs last year. Manufacturing overall lost 75,000 jobs.

So the economic picture is not quite as rosy as the president would like us to think. Now, in a couple of weeks, the Federal Reserve is going to meet to talk about interest rates. The central bank has been getting a lot of pressure from the president to lower those rates. How is that working?

Yeah, the Fed is cutting interest rates, but not as quickly as Trump would like. Most forecasters think the Fed's going to hold rates steady when policymakers meet later this month because inflation is still too high. And yesterday's cost of living report just cemented that. expectation.

Trump wants much lower interest rates, and his administration's gone to extraordinary lengths to push the Fed in that direction. An ominous example came over the weekend with news the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation of the central bank.

which Fed Chairman Jerome Powell dismissed as an effort to intimidate him and his colleagues. Since then, a number of lawmakers and business people have come to Powell's defense, including the nation's top banker, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase. I don't agree with everything that is done. I do have enormous respect for Jay Powell, the man.

Diamond warned the White House pressure campaign could actually backfire if people start to think the Fed's independence is in jeopardy. It could ultimately lead to higher inflation and higher interest rates. All right, that's NPR's Scott Horsley. Scott, thank you. You're welcome.

And that's Up First for Wednesday, January 14th. I'm Amy Martinez. And I'm Steve Inskeep. Up First gives you the three big stories of the day. Our colleagues at Consider This take a different approach. One big story in less than 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Rebecca Metzler, Gigi Dubon.

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