By James P. Sutton,Natalie Behring,Peter Gattuso,Ross Anderson
Copyright thedispatch
The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced a cut of 0.25 percentage points to its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday from 4.25 percent–4.50 percent, down to 4.00 percent–4.25 percent, while signaling that it plans to lower rates further throughout the rest of the year. The FOMC’s statement noted higher inflation and rising unemployment as “risks to both sides of its dual mandate” to maintain maximum employment and stable prices, but stated that it judged “downside risks to employment have risen.” Projections from the Fed also indicated that it anticipates making two further quarter-percentage-point cuts by the end of this year. The only dissenting vote on the committee was from Stephen Miran, a recent appointment of President Donald Trump, who advocated for a half-percentage-point cut.
Susan Monarez, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—who was confirmed by the Senate in late July and removed in late August—testified before the Senate on Wednesday, claiming that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked her to pre-commit to approving changes in vaccine recommendations before seeing scientific evidence. Monarez, testifying alongside Dr. Deb Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer who resigned in August, also said that Kennedy had told her that the CDC was the “most corrupt federal agency in the world” and that CDC employees were “killing children and they don’t care.” Several Republicans on the committee criticized Monarez, including Sens. Rand Paul and Roger Marshall (both doctors), who questioned various vaccine recommendations and mandates. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, claimed Monarez was lying about the conversation with Kennedy that led to her firing, based on tapes of the conversation, before retracting his accusation while saying that he had been “mistaken” about the existence of such tapes.
ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air “indefinitely” on Wednesday, citing comments the comedian made during his Monday night monologue about the killing of Charlie Kirk. Nexstar Media Group—which is seeking Federal Communications Commission approval for a pending $6.2 billion merger with Tegna—said its ABC-affiliated stations would not run the show “for the foreseeable future.” Sinclair Broadcast Group, another large ABC affiliate owner, also suspended the show, demanding that Kimmel apologize to Kirk’s family and make a “meaningful personal donation” to them and his right-wing student activist group Turning Point USA. FCC Chair Brendan Carr appeared on political commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast earlier Wednesday, saying Kimmel’s remarks were “truly sick” and that there was a “strong case” for action against ABC and its parent company Disney. Trump celebrated the news on Truth Social, saying “That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News NBC.”
Parents who accused AI chatbots of encouraging their teenage children to commit suicide testified before both houses of Congress on Tuesday. Matthew Raine, whose lawsuit against OpenAI alleges that ChatGPT mentioned suicide 1,275 times to his 16-year-old son, Adam, and provided him with specific methods to kill himself, said that ChatGPT validated his son’s suicidal ideation rather than encouraging him to get help. Megan Garcia, whose 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III killed himself last year, testified about her lawsuit against AI company Character Technologies, arguing that its AI chatbot caused her son to isolate himself from others while engaging in sexualized conversations. Shortly before the hearings, OpenAI announced it was developing a range of safety measures aimed at teens, including age-detection software, parental controls, and stronger protections against engaging in sexualized or self-harm-inducing conversations.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Wednesday that he will run for governor of the state in 2026. Raffensperger resisted pressure from President Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, surviving a primary challenge in 2022 from Trump-endorsed candidates. “I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions. I follow the law and the Constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what,” he said in a video announcing the decision.
The Guardian reported on Wednesday that the Trump administration has cut back on executive branch programs aimed at reducing child sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Agents at the Department of Homeland Security, formerly tasked with investigating trafficking, have been moved to deportation operations, according to the report while personnel at the State Department office who monitor human trafficking have been reduced by 70 percent. Meanwhile a report on U.S. and global trafficking, required by law to be provided to Congress by June 30, has yet to be released. A White House spokeswoman called the investigation “total nonsense.”
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of dead Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, said Wednesday that tests from two independent labs have shown that her husband was poisoned before he died in a Russian prison in February 2024. Navalnaya claimed in a social media video that samples from her husband’s body were sent to two labs outside Russia, which had not publicly released their findings due to “political considerations.” She also shared images allegedly from her husband’s cell on the day he died that she claimed showed vomit on the floor. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that he had not heard Navalnaya’s claims and had no comment. The Russian government maintains that Navalny died from numerous separate diseases while in prison.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that before the January collision of an American Airlines jet with an Army helicopter that killed 67 people, government officials had been warned about the routine overcrowding of runways and airspace above Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. Publicly released records from the government showed that the Federal Aviation Administration’s local managers had warned that Reagan National was becoming dangerously overcrowded on a regular basis, with another FAA review finding that the airport was often in “noncompliance” with safety standards regarding distances between planes lining up to land.
Three police officers were killed and two were injured while serving a warrant Wednesday afternoon in York County, Pennsylvania. Authorities have yet to release the shooter’s name or other details. CNN reported that the officers were going to arrest the shooter on charges of stalking and criminal trespass but that he was “lying in wait” when they arrived, firing from a cornfield. The state’s police commissioner, Col. Christopher Paris, told reporters that the shooter was shot and killed at the scene, and that the two surviving officers are in critical but stable condition.
