A Republican-led US House panel voted Wednesday to launch contempt of Congress proceedings against Bill and Hillary Clinton over their refusal to testify before its probe into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The Oversight Committee advanced resolutions accusing the Democratic ex-president and former secretary of state of defying subpoenas to appear in person to explain their links to the disgraced financier, who died in custody in 2019.The full House of Representatives, also majority Republican, will now decide — at a date yet to be announced — whether to formally cite the couple for contempt and refer them to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution.”No witness, not a former president or a private citizen, may willfully defy a congressional subpoena without consequence,” committee chairman James Comer said.”But that is what the Clintons did and that is why we are here today.”The vote underscored how the Epstein affair continues to cast a long shadow over Washington, entangling some of the most prominent names in US politics and highlighting the sharp partisan battles that have shaped the scandal.Lawmakers are examining how authorities handled earlier investigations into Epstein, whose 2019 death in custody as he awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges was ruled a suicide.Democrats say the probe is being weaponized to attack political opponents of President Donald Trump — himself a longtime Epstein associate who has not been called to testify — rather than to conduct legitimate oversight.Trump spent months trying to block the disclosure of the files linked to Epstein, who moved in elite circles for years, cultivating ties with billionaires, politicians, academics and celebrities to whom he was suspected of trafficking girls and young women for sex.Democrats on the committee noted that the Justice Department was itself violating the law, having released only a fraction of the case files it was required to make public more than a month ago.  – ‘White House cover-up’ -“Donald Trump is leading a White House cover-up right now of the Epstein files, and we all know Epstein himself said Donald Trump was his best friend for over 10 years,” said Robert Garcia, the committee’s top Democrat.”It is shameful, illegal and unconstitutional that the Department of Justice has released one percent of the files.”Neither Trump nor the Clintons have been accused of criminal wrongdoing related to Epstein’s activities.But Republicans say the Democratic couple’s past links to the business tycoon, including Bill Clinton’s use of his private jet in the early 2000s, justify in‑person questioning under oath.In letters refusing to appear in Washington, the Clintons argue that the subpoenas are invalid because they lack a clear legislative purpose.Instead, the couple submitted sworn written statements describing their knowledge of Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a prison sentence for sex trafficking.Comer announced that Maxwell had been scheduled to give a deposition on February 9, although he said he expected her to assert her constitutional right to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination.Bill Clinton acknowledged flying on Epstein’s plane for Clinton Foundation-related humanitarian work, but said he never visited his private island. Hillary Clinton said she had no meaningful interactions with Epstein, never flew on his plane and never visited his island. The full House vote could expose divisions among Democrats, some of whom privately acknowledge that their party has long argued no one should be beyond scrutiny in efforts to uncover the full scope of Epstein’s crimes. Others fear that advancing the contempt resolutions plays into a partisan strategy to shift attention away from Trump’s own past contacts with Epstein and from criticism that his administration has moved slowly to release all related records.

A winter storm bringing icy temperatures will slam a massive stretch of the United States this week, with more than 175 million people facing the prospect of heavy snowfall, power outages and travel disruption.Winter Storm Fern is forecast to engulf an area stretching from Texas and the Great Plains region to the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states. Forecasters warned it could be 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers) long — well over half the length of the continental US. The storm’s peak is expected to come Thursday and Friday, with Texas already having declared an emergency. More than a foot of snow could be seen across the mid-Atlantic region, the forecasters warned, with Virginia and Maryland likely to bear the brunt as arctic air blows in.US weather channels were running apocalyptic predictions of “crippling ice,” and a 1,500-mile (2,414-kilometer) “snow zone” liable to see record-breaking snowfall, while warning that freezing rain could damage power infrastructure and trees.New York City, the US financial capital and the country’s most populous urban area, could see as much as 12 inches of snow, the Weather Channel warned.In New York, the current cold snap has caused temperatures to collapse. On the morning of January 20, the National Weather Service’s observatory in Central Park recorded a temperature of 16F (-9C) — or 2F (-17C) accounting for wind chill — the coldest temperature that the city has seen so far this winter.- ‘Sub-zero’ -“Frigid temperatures will expand across the eastern two-thirds of the country behind an Arctic cold front,” the National Weather Service said in an advisory. “Frigid sub-zero and single digit temperatures will expand from the Northern Plains Thursday into the Mid-Mississippi Valley, Ohio Valley and Northeast by Sunday. “This Arctic blast will be accompanied by gusty winds, leading to dangerous wind chills. The coldest wind chills may fall below minus 50 Fahrenheit (minus 46C) across the Northern Plains. An extremely cold air mass, combined with a frontal zone to its south will produce a major winter storm from the Central-Southern Plains region to the East Coast starting Friday and lasting into the weekend, the advisory added.Some areas likely to be affected were bracing for the arrival of severe weather.In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday declared a state of emergency and activated emergency resources including the state’s national guard and transport department assets to help ease the pressure on roads.A combination of snow, rain and sleet could make travel almost impossible, local media warned.The Monroe County Road Commission, which covers a large area outside Detroit, Michigan, warned “there is a shortage of salt.””This year we’ve used more than we have the last four Decembers combined,” David Leach, the commission’s managing director, told CBS News.In past years, rural areas in the northeast have been entirely cut off as snowplows struggled to clear roads.

The US Supreme Court appeared skeptical Wednesday of President Donald Trump’s effort to fire a Federal Reserve governor, in a case testing the central bank’s independence.Trump sought in August to dismiss Fed governor Lisa Cook, a key official on the bank’s interest rate-setting committee, accusing her of mortgage fraud. She denies the allegations.The conservative-dominated Supreme Court barred the Republican president in October from immediately removing Cook, allowing her to stay on the job until it could hear the case contesting her dismissal.During two hours of oral arguments Wednesday, a majority of the nine justices on the top court — both conservatives and liberals — expressed doubts that the president had shown sufficient cause to remove Cook or had provided her with appropriate due process.Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, said setting a “very low bar for cause” could allow presidents to dismiss Fed governors at will and “weaken, if not shatter, the independence of the Federal Reserve.””All of the current president’s appointees would likely be removed for cause on January 20, 2029 if there’s a Democratic president,” Kavanaugh said, referring to the next inauguration day.Justice Samuel Alito, another conservative, took issue with the “hurried manner” in which the court was being asked to decide the case while the facts remain in dispute.Solicitor General John Sauer, representing the Trump administration, pushed back, saying the allegations against Cook merited her dismissal.”Deceit or gross negligence by a financial regulator in financial transactions is cause for removal,” Sauer said.”The American people should not have their interest rates determined by someone who was, at best, grossly negligent in obtaining favorable interest rates for herself.”Trump has accused Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the central bank’s board of governors, of making false statements on one or more mortgage agreements, allegedly claiming two primary residences, one in Michigan and another in Georgia.Paul Clement, Cook’s lawyer, said she had “at most” made an “inadvertent mistake” on her loan documents and noted that no previous US president has ever tried to remove a Fed governor.”It’s less important that the president have full faith in every single governor, and it’s more important that the markets and the public have faith in the independence of the Fed from the president and from Congress,” Clement said.- ‘Political pressure’ -In a sign of public support for Cook, Fed Chair Jerome Powell personally attended the hearing, which comes as the Trump administration intensifies its pressure on the central bank.Powell revealed this month that prosecutors had launched a criminal inquiry into him over an ongoing renovation of the Fed’s headquarters.Powell has dismissed the investigation as a politically motivated attempt to influence the central bank’s interest rate setting.Trump’s bid to fire Cook and the Powell probe are a dramatic escalation of his efforts to control the Fed, which he has repeatedly criticized for spurning his demands to slash interest rates more aggressively.By ousting Cook, the president could potentially add another voice to the Fed’s board to try and shift interest rates in his favored direction.The Supreme Court has overwhelmingly sided with Trump since he returned to office and it recently allowed him to fire members of other independent government agencies.But it created a carve-out for the “quasi-private” Fed in its ruling.Cook became a Fed governor in 2022 and was reappointed to the board in 2023.In a statement released after the hearing, she said the case “is about whether the Federal Reserve will set key interest rates guided by evidence and independent judgment or will succumb to political pressure.””For as long as I serve at the Federal Reserve, I will uphold the principle of political independence in service to the American people,” Cook said.