US treasury chief urges Fed to cut rates
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday called on the US Federal Reserve to cut rates, saying yields on two-year rates were lower than Fed fund rates. He told Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” program:
We are seeing that two-year rates are now below Fed funds rates, so that’s a market signal that they think the Fed should be cutting.
Last night, Donald Trump resumed his attacks on Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, appearing to suggest he knew more about interest rates than him and that rates should be cut. The president told a White House event:
Mortgage rates are actually down slightly even though I have a guy in the Fed that I’m not a huge fan of. He should reduce interest rates. I think I understand interest a lot better than him, because I’ve had to really use interest rates.
Trump had also told bashed Powell at his his 100-day rally in Michigan on Tuesday:
Interest rates came down despite the fact that I have a Fed person who’s not really doing a good job, but I won’t say that… I want to be very nice and respectful to the Fed. You’re not supposed to criticize the Fed, you’re supposed to let him do his own thing, but I know much more than he does about interest rates, believe me.
Trump has repeatedly called on Powell to lower interest rates amid the market turmoil caused by his tariff announcements in April. He warned the Fed chair that he risks a US recession if he does not comply and at one point called Powell a “major loser”.
Powell has cited Trump’s massive tariffs on imports from nearly every country, except Russia, as a reason to fear inflation and so not lower rates.
Key events
Trump to sign executive order establishing ‘religious liberty commission’
Later today Trump will sign an executive order establishing a “religious liberty commission”, Leavitt says.
We’ll bring you more detail on what that means as we get it.
White House press briefing
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has been taking questions from the media at the morning press briefing alongside deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
In her opening remarks, she made a brief comment on the US-Ukraine minerals deal signed last night.
She said the agreement shows “why … Trump is our deal maker in chief”, hailing it as a “historic” development with “a first of its kind economic partnership for the reconstruction and long term economic success of Ukraine”.
President Trump has been clear from the beginning he wants the killing in this brutal war to end. This agreement shows how invested the president is in securing a truly lasting peace.
Tesla denies report claiming board looked to replace Elon Musk
Lauren Almeida
Tesla has denied a report that its board sought to replace Elon Musk as its chief executive amid a backlash against his rightwing politics and declining car sales.
Robyn Denholm, the chair of the board at the electric carmaker, said in a statement on Tesla’s social media account on X, which is owned by Musk:
Earlier today, there was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company. This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published). The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.
Musk also pushed back hard, with capital letters.
It followed a Wall Street Journal story (paywall) published on Wednesday that claimed “board members” had contacted headhunters to recruit a successor about a month ago.
The reported move came as tensions grew at Tesla around falling profits and criticism of Musk for spending much of his time in Washington, where he has been helping Donald Trump slash federal spending as de facto head of the “department of government efficiency” (Doge).
It is unclear in the report whether these members were acting on behalf of the board as a collective, or if it was only some of them taking steps to find a new chief executive. The Tesla board is made up of eight people, including Elon Musk himself, his brother, Kimbal Musk, and James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Bessent and Hassett’s comments are the latest optimistic Trump administration suggestions that some level of negotiations are underway with Beijing. But the source of their optimism is unclear and US officials have remained cagey on any details, such as who in the administration is negotiating, or where, or with which Chinese counterparts.
Meanwhile Chinese officials, though they have consistently stated that Beijing is open to talks with the US (with a caveat that “dialogue and negotiation must be based on equality, respect and mutual benefit”), they have repeatedly denied Trump’s claims that Beijing and Washington have been negotiating. “As far as I know, there have not been any calls between the two presidents recently,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Guo Jiakun, said on Wednesday.
Bessent says he’s confident China wants to reach deal on tariffs
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday the United States will likely revisit Donald Trump’s phase one trade deal with China from his first administration, and said he was confident Beijing will want to reach a deal on tariffs. In an interview with Fox Business Network:
I am confident that the Chinese will want to reach a deal. And as I said, this is going to be a multi step process. First, we need to de escalate, and then the over time, we will start focusing on a larger trade deal.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett also said he was hopeful for progress with China on trade, citing “loose discussions” between both governments while noting that he personally had not had any talks with Chinese officials. Hassett told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program:
We’re hopeful for progress. I think that the fact that the tariffs came off last week shows that we’re very close to making the kind of progress we need to move the ball forward.
The phase one trade deal signed in January 2020 stipulated China would buy an additional $200bn in US exports over 2020 and 2021, though it fell short of those levels and was unable to import enough from the US to meet its pre-trade war import levels from 2017.
It also featured other agreements, such as China committing to remove technical barriers to US agricultural exports, protecting the intellectual property rights of US firms and ending forced technology transfers.
Bessent told Fox on Tuesday the administration would “take into account” that China “didn’t adhere to the phase one deal”:
I think we’ll have to take into account that they didn’t adhere to the phase one deal and, you know, I note with great interest that the Biden administration liked the tariffs, but they didn’t enforce the purchase agreements.
US treasury chief urges Fed to cut rates
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday called on the US Federal Reserve to cut rates, saying yields on two-year rates were lower than Fed fund rates. He told Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” program:
We are seeing that two-year rates are now below Fed funds rates, so that’s a market signal that they think the Fed should be cutting.
Last night, Donald Trump resumed his attacks on Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, appearing to suggest he knew more about interest rates than him and that rates should be cut. The president told a White House event:
Mortgage rates are actually down slightly even though I have a guy in the Fed that I’m not a huge fan of. He should reduce interest rates. I think I understand interest a lot better than him, because I’ve had to really use interest rates.
Trump had also told bashed Powell at his his 100-day rally in Michigan on Tuesday:
Interest rates came down despite the fact that I have a Fed person who’s not really doing a good job, but I won’t say that… I want to be very nice and respectful to the Fed. You’re not supposed to criticize the Fed, you’re supposed to let him do his own thing, but I know much more than he does about interest rates, believe me.
Trump has repeatedly called on Powell to lower interest rates amid the market turmoil caused by his tariff announcements in April. He warned the Fed chair that he risks a US recession if he does not comply and at one point called Powell a “major loser”.
Powell has cited Trump’s massive tariffs on imports from nearly every country, except Russia, as a reason to fear inflation and so not lower rates.
Trump’s bid to host golf tournament in Britain could violate US constitution, experts warn
Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Kiran Stacey
The British government’s attempts to curry favor with Donald Trump by nudging golf executives to host one of the world’s most prestigious golf tournaments at a Scottish venue owned by the US president could ultimately lead to a violation of the US constitution, ethics experts have warned.
The Guardian reported this week that officials in British prime minister Keir Starmer’s government have asked senior executives at R&A, which organizes the Open championship, whether they would host the golf championship at the Turnberry golf resort in 2028.
Trump, sources have told the Guardian, has raised the issue “multiple times” with Starmer. One person with knowledge of the British government’s moves said in connection to the championship that the UK was “doing everything it can to get close to Trump”.
But US ethics experts say any decision by R&A to choose Turnberry as its 2028 venue may break the spirit, if not the letter, of the US constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officials from accepting benefits from foreign or state governments without congressional approval.
Jessica Glenza
The federal government has slashed research since Donald Trump took office – hacking away at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its grants, staff and long-held partnerships with academia.
Now, some private companies said they want to pick up strands of research that might have otherwise been funded by the federal government. The effort has stoked little optimism among experts, who caution that private efforts cannot remotely replicate the breadth, depth or public service provided by federal funding.
“We can’t wait four years to do any women’s health research,” said Priyanka Jain, co-founder and CEO of the start-up Evvy. The company sells at-home vaginal microbiome tests – a product the company argues can help women better understand common conditions such as bacterial vaginosis.
Jain said Evvy is funding a small trial to identify biomarkers, or physical indicators, of how the vaginal microbiome can impact in vitro fertilization (IVF) success rates.
“There are companies like Evvy raising venture dollars and doing the work the government is not doing,” said Jain. “Women step up and actually solve this problem.”
In contrast, health policy insiders such as Sean Tipton, chief policy officer at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said the many small projects that hope to keep research alive cannot remotely match the retreat of federal government research.
“It is absolutely not realistic to think that the resources of the federal government can be replaced through some combination of philanthropic and for-profit entities trying to fill the gap,” said Tipton.
Trump has launched more attacks on the environment in 100 days than his entire first term
Oliver Milman
Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented assault upon the environment, instigating 145 actions to undo rules protecting clean air, water and a livable climate in this administration’s first 100 days – more rollbacks than were completed in Trump’s entire first term as US president.
Trump’s blitzkrieg has hit almost every major policy to shield Americans from toxic pollution, curb the worsening impacts of the climate crisis and protect landscapes, oceans, forests and imperiled wildlife.
In all, the second Trump administration has launched 145 actions – a dizzying rate of more than one a day since the 20 January inauguration – to repeal or weaken environmental rules and escalate the use of planet-heating fossil fuels, a Guardian analysis has found. The total is derived from research by Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School and administration announcements.
While many of these initial moves are far from complete and face severe legal challenges, or years of further rule-making, the pace of the rollbacks is already set to outstrip Trump’s entire first presidency, which saw about 110 environmental rules scaled back or revoked.
“What we’ve seen in this first 100 days is unprecedented – the deregulatory ambition of this administration is mind-blowing,” said Michael Burger, an expert in climate law at Columbia University.
“They are doing things faster and with less process than last time, often disregarding the law. The intent is to shock, overwhelm and to overcome resistance through sheer force of numbers.”
Through executive orders, agency memos and other policy moves, the Trump administration has deleted a swath of Joe Biden-era green policies, frozen climate spending, removed the US from the Paris climate accords and set about rewriting pollution standards for cars, trucks and power plants.
The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, defended his handling of the measles outbreak in Texas during Wednesday night’s NewsNation town hall, in which Donald Trump also spoke.
According to the Hill, Kennedy briefly called into the town hall during the second hour and argued that the US is “doing better at managing the measles epidemic than probably any other country in the world”. He said the US has about 842 cases of measles, while Canada has roughly the same amount with a smaller population and Europe has “10 times that number”. He told the town hall: “Our numbers have plateaued.”
Measles cases in Texas rose to 663 on Tuesday, according to the state’s health department, an increase of 17 cases since 25 April, as the US battles one of its worst outbreaks of the previously eradicated childhood disease.
With one-fifth of states seeing active measles outbreaks, the US is nearing 900 cases, according to figures posted Friday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC’s confirmed measles cases count is 884, triple the amount seen in all of 2024.
Kennedy also spoke about vaccinations. “That’s one of the things that [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] has not done,” he said. “CDC has said the only thing that we have is vaccination. There’s all kinds of treatments for when people do get sick, and those people should be treated with compassion.”
