NAHUNTA, Ga. (AP) — A wildfire that has charred dozens of homes in southeast Georgia prompted officials to order more evacuations Friday as the growing blaze threatened a wider area and fire crews helped residents hose down properties in a scramble to limit the damage.
The fire burning in rural Brantley County has spread across more than 8 square miles (20 square kilometers) since it ignited Monday, fanned by gusty winds into pine woods that are dry as tinder. Nearly 90 homes have been destroyed, some with scorched husks of abandoned cars nearby, among blackened tree trunks and heat-blistered road signs.
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The burned out remains of the Wedding Chapel at covenant acres is seen near the Brantley Highway 82 fire, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
A burned vehicle sits near a destroyed home as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
A burned trailer sits near a destroyed home as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
A firefighter works the Brantley Highway 82 fire, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
The Georgia Forestry Commission said the Brantley County blaze was 15% contained Friday. Local officials have ordered evacuations across an expanding area almost daily, including Friday.
“If you receive a mandatory evacuation notice, we need you to evacuate just as quickly as possible,” Joey Cason, county manager for Brantley County, said in a Facebook video Friday. “That containment can move from 15% to 0% in a matter of minutes with the wind."
Firefighters are battling more than 150 other wildfires in Georgia and Florida that have sent smoky haze into places far from the flames, triggering air quality warnings for some cities.
Scientists say the Eastern U.S. is at greater risk of intense wildfires due to factors such as climate change, record drought and dead trees still littering some Southern forests after being toppled by Hurricane Helene in 2024.
Local officials estimate roughly 200 Brantley County residents have been ordered to evacuate, leaving those displaced to worry about animals left behind and whether they will have homes to return to. No deaths or injuries have been reported.
While crews with bulldozers work to clear fire breaks around the burning areas, firefighters from dozens of local agencies have focused on protecting nearby homes and other structures — clearing away dry brush and using hoses and sprinklers to keep houses and yards wet.
"We’ve definitely had the local fire guys out there literally hosing stuff down,” said Seth Hawkins, a Georgia Forestry Commission spokesperson dispatched to the Brantley County fire.
Farther to the west, Georgia’s biggest fire in a sparsely populated area near the Florida state line has burned about 50 square miles (129 square kilometers), an area twice the size of Manhattan.
In Florida, firefighters were battling more than 120 wildfires Friday, mostly in the state’s northern half. Fire crews in Georgia responded to 31 new and relatively small blazes Thursday, the state forestry commission said.
Officials say soaking rain is needed to snuff out the larger fires. Areas where the two big wildfires are burning in Georgia have a 20% to 40% chance of showers and possible thunderstorms over the weekend.
That might produce enough rain to slow the big fires down, Hawkins said, but won't extinguish them. And lightning from thunderstorms could spark more fire, he said.
“We’re going to need several inches of rain, and then maybe another blast of several inches, to extinguish this thing,” Hawkins said.
The burned out remains of the Wedding Chapel at covenant acres is seen near the Brantley Highway 82 fire, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
A burned vehicle sits near a destroyed home as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
A burned trailer sits near a destroyed home as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
A firefighter works the Brantley Highway 82 fire, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has ended its investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of his successor, Kevin Warsh.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannine Pirro said on X on Friday that her office was ending its probe into the Fed’s extensive building renovations because the Fed’s inspector general would scrutinize them instead.
The move could lead to a swift confirmation vote by the Senate for Warsh, a former top Fed official whom President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated in January to replace Powell. Powell's term as chair ends May 15. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, had said he would oppose Warsh until the investigation was resolved, effectively blocking his confirmation.
Republicans praised Warsh during a Tuesday hearing even as Democrats questioned his independence from Trump, the lack of transparency around some of his financial holdings, and what they said was his flip-flopping on interest rates. Still, Trump's previous appointment to the Fed's board of governors, Stephen Miran, was approved by the full Senate just 13 days after his nomination.
The probe was among several undertaken by the Justice Department into Trump’s perceived adversaries. For months it had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct. Other efforts by the department to prosecute Trump's adversaries, including New York state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, and former FBI Director James Comey, have also been unsuccessful.
A prosecutor handling the Powell case conceded at a closed-door court hearing in March that the government hadn’t found any evidence of a crime, and a judge subsequently quashed subpoenas issued to the Federal Reserve. The judge, James Boasberg, said prosecutors had produced “essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime. Boasberg branded prosecutors’ justification for the subpoenas as “thin and unsubstantiated.”
The investigation was the most brazen attempt yet by the Trump administration to pressure the Fed to cut its short-term interest rate, which indirectly affects other borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans and business loans. Trump has obsessively attacked Powell for not cutting the rate from its current level of about 3.6% to 1%, a level that no Fed official supports.
Instead, Fed policymakers, including Powell, have said they want to keep rates unchanged while they evaluate the impact of the Iran war, which has sent gas prices soaring, pushing up inflation. The increase could be a one-time shift but could also lead to more sustained inflation. The Fed seeks to restrain rising prices by keeping interest rates high, cooling borrowing and spending.
Powell said in January that the investigation was not really about the renovation or his testimony but “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.”
More recently, prosecutors made an unannounced visit to a construction site at the Fed’s headquarters but were turned away, drawing a rebuke from a defense attorney in the case who called the maneuver “not appropriate.”
Warsh said during a hearing by the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday that he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates, even as the president renewed his calls for the central bank to do so.
“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Kevin Warsh, a former top Fed official, said under questioning by the Senate Banking Committee. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had. ... I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”
Warsh’s comments came just hours after Trump, in an interview on CNBC, was asked if he would be disappointed if Warsh didn’t immediately cut rates and responded, “I would.”
Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said during the hearing that Warsh would be a “sock puppet” for Trump. When she asked if Trump had won the 2020 presidential election — which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden but incorrectly claims was decided by fraud — Warsh said only that the Senate had certified Biden as the winner. When asked for an example of an economic policy on which he disagreed with Trump, Warsh did not name one.
The decision to abandon the Powell investigation represents a rare pullback for a Justice Department that over the last year has moved aggressively, albeit unsuccessfully, to prosecute public figures the president does not like.
Robert Hur, an attorney for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, didn’t immediately respond Friday to an email seeking comment.
Trump has taken other unprecedented steps to try to pressure the Fed, including an attempt last August to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Fed's governing board, who was appointed by Biden. Yet courts have temporarily blocked the firing, and, at an oral argument in January, the Supreme Court appeared sympathetic to the argument that Cook should keep her job.
A key question still to be resolved is whether Powell will remain on the Fed's board even after his term as chair expires next month. Powell, who serves a separate term as a governor that lasts until January 2028, has said he wouldn't leave until the investigation was dropped. Yet he did not promise to do so if it was. By remaining on the board, Powell would deprive Trump of the opportunity to fill another seat among its seven members, three of whom are Trump appointees.
Other presidents have pressured the Fed to keep borrowing costs low, notably Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, though rarely as publicly as Trump. Johnson’s and Nixon’s demands for lower rates, however, are considered key contributors to the 15-year outbreak of high inflation that only ended in the early 1980s after then-chair Paul Volcker ratcheted the Fed's rate to an eye-watering 20%.
Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.
Follow the AP's coverage of the Federal Reserve System at https://apnews.com/hub/federal-reserve-system.
FILE - The Federal Reserve Board Building is seen as it undergoes renovations, Jan., 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
FILE - President Donald Trump listens to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speak during a visit to the Federal Reserve, July 24, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
FILE - Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addresses students at Harvard University, March 30, 2026, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
Kevin Warsh is sworn in during his nomination hearing to be a member and chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell leaves after the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) meeting during the World Bank/IMF spring meetings at the IMF headquarters in Washington, Friday, April 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
