Author: News Room

On March 4, a Trump appointee at the Department of Veterans Affairs circulated a memo to senior leadership. The agency, it said, would “move out aggressively” to improve efficiency, with an “initial objective” of cutting the work force to 2019 levels.The next morning, someone posted a copy of this “reduction in force” memo to a Reddit group called VeteransAffairs, an online community of 19,000 members. The copy was difficult to follow, a sequence of photos taken of the memo on a screen, but the message was clear enough: Some 80,000 jobs would be cut.Questions and comments poured in, some bewildered,…

President Trump has never been shy about criticizing the Federal Reserve, frequently seeking to pressure the nation’s central bank into reducing interest rates more swiftly.“Interest Rates should be lowered, something which would go hand in hand with upcoming Tariffs!!!,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social last month, adding: “Lets Rock and Roll, America!!!”But the Fed is expected to see things differently on Wednesday — choosing to hold rates steady in the face of rising prices and slowing growth — in a move that seems destined to stoke Mr. Trump’s anger.At the heart of the tension are Mr. Trump’s tariffs, which…

President Trump has said that tariffs will bring a flood of revenue for the United States. But corporate executives are having trouble navigating the volume of tariff pronouncements and the president’s on-again, off-again approach to trade policy.Many are turning to the same metaphor: The situation, they say, is “fluid.”“The tariffs are very fluid right now,” Ron Vachris, chief executive of the retail giant Costco, recently told analysts on an earnings call. “It’s hard to really give any predictions on what we can do, but we are prepared.”Others feel the same way about the ebb and flow of tariffs:“It’s very fluid…

The protests against President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia had been growing in intensity and size when an unusual guest showed up in its capital this month to meet with the embattled European leader: Donald Trump Jr., the oldest son of President Trump.The quick visit by Mr. Trump, which included a meeting with Mr. Vucic to talk about U.S. foreign aid to Serbia, came as the Trump family and Jared Kushner, the American president’s son-in-law, were moving ahead with plans to build a Trump International Hotel in Belgrade, the first such property in Europe.The hotel is slated to be built atop…

Elon Musk has made the maximum allowable donation to Republican members of Congress who support impeaching federal judges who are impeding actions taken by President Trump, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.Mr. Musk has given the maximum hard-dollar donations he could to the campaigns of seven Republicans who have either endorsed judicial impeachments or called for some form of “action” in response to recent rulings against the Trump administration, including a weekend decision by Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court in Washington. The combined federal limit for primary and general elections is $6,600.On Saturday, Judge…

new video loaded: Federal Reserve Extends Pause on Rate CutstranscriptBacktranscriptFederal Reserve Extends Pause on Rate CutsThe Trump administration’s tariffs most likely mean “further progress may be delayed” on getting inflation back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target, the central bank’s chair said.Labor market conditions are solid and inflation has moved closer to our 2 percent longer-run goal, though it remains somewhat elevated. In support of our goals, today, the Federal Open Market Committee decided to leave our policy interest rate unchanged. We do not need to be in a hurry to adjust our policy stance, and we are well-positioned…

The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged on Wednesday for a second straight meeting. The March meeting was the central bank’s most direct acknowledgment to date that President Trump’s policies are set to have a real impact on the economy, stoking significant uncertainty about where inflation, growth and — ultimately — interest rates are headed. Here are the takeaways:Tariffs took center stage during the news conference with Jerome H. Powell. The Fed chair went as far as saying that tariffs likely mean “further progress may be delayed” on getting inflation back to the central bank’s 2 percent target. That recognition…

K.W. Lee, a pioneering Asian American journalist whose reporting led to the release of a Korean immigrant on death row in California, and who covered the Koreatown community targeted in the Los Angeles riots of 1992, died on March 8 at his home in Sacramento. He was 96.His death was confirmed by his daughters, Sonia Cook and Diana Regan.Mr. Lee was an immigrant who found his way to West Virginia in the 1950s, beginning an extraordinarily broad journalism career by covering election fraud and poverty in Appalachia.His articles for The Sacramento Union in the 1970s about the death-row inmate Chol…

The Social Security Administration said on Tuesday that people who wanted to file for benefits or change the bank where their payments were deposited could no longer do so by phone and must first verify their identity online or go into a field office.The change, which takes effect on March 31, is expected to add stress to the agency’s already thinning work force, which is being significantly downsized as part of the broad effort to aggressively shrink the federal government. At the same time, the change would also make things more difficult for older and disabled beneficiaries who might have…

The Federal Reserve is expected to keep its key rate steady on Wednesday, after a series of cuts that lowered rates by a full percentage point last year.That means consumers looking to borrow are likely to have to wait a bit longer for better deals on many loans, but savers will benefit from steadier yields on savings accounts.Economists don’t expect another rate cut for a while, as the central bank waits for more clarity on an increasingly uncertain outlook given President Trump’s policies on tariffs, immigration, widespread federal job cuts, among other things.The Fed’s benchmark rate is set at a…