President and Chairman of the Kennedy Center Board Donald J. Trump hosted the Kennedy Center Honors Sunday evening.
WEDNESDAY 12/10/25
Fed to Cut Rates – The Federal Reserve is expected to cut interest rates by a quarter-point Wednesday, though with a rare split vote, given persistent inflation that refuses to come down to the central bank’s preferred 2%.
But ‘inflation is stopped’ … So said President Trump at a campaign rally-style visit to a casino in Mt. Pocono, Pennsylvania, late Tuesday. Despite economic indicators to the contrary, Americans, and Pennsylvanians in particular, are doing very well, he said, according to The New York Times’ report.
“Our prices are coming down tremendously,” Trump said.
The president spoke about his economic initiatives and shutting down immigration, and at one point, the NYT reports, compared the United States’ sealed borders to North Korea’s. He also said he saved U.S. Steel, home-based on the other side of the state in Pittsburgh. It was sold to Nippon Steel earlier this year, though with a “golden share” going to the US government.
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Democrat is Elected Mayor of Miami – Eileen Higgins will become the first Democrat elected mayor of Miami since 1997. She beat President Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Emilio González, 59.64% to 40.54% in Tuesday’s runoff election, The Palm Beach Post reports. Voter turnout was just 21.34%, according to the Miami-Dade County Elections Department. –TL
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TUESDAY 12/9/25
From Democratic ‘Hoax’ to Democrats’ Fault – President Trump is attempting a reset on his attempt to cast the word “affordability” as residual inflation from the Biden administration, with a visit Tuesday evening to a casino in Pennsylvania’s Poconos, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has promised a $12 billion bailout using funds received from import tariffs to help farmers hit by those very tariffs.
Grade inflation … Meanwhile, Trump gives his economy’s performance an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” in a wide-ranging interview with Dasha Burns for Politico Tuesday, insisting that prices are falling across the board. Read the interview HERE.
Burns’ interview with Trump for Politico’s The Conversation describes the president’s answer as a quick “yes” when asked whether he would make cutting interest rates a litmus test for his nominee to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell next May.
Speaking of the Fed … Powell leads its two-day rate-setting meeting beginning Tuesday, after which the independent, for now, central bank will announce interest rates for up to its first 2026 meeting. A quarter-point cut in interest rates to 3.5%-3.75% is expected, The Wall Street Journal reports, though “as much as half the room may not want a cut.”
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Unitary Executive Theory Advances – Much of the analysis of the US Supreme Court’s oral arguments Monday on Trump v. Slaughter assumes, based on the justices’ questioning, that the court’s 6-3 conservative majority will rule for the president and give him full authority over erstwhile independent agencies including the Federal Trade Commission. Trump fired FTC member Rebecca Slaughter earlier this year, triggering her civil case.
SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe tells Morning Edition Tuesday a big SCOTUS tell of its likely ruling is that no justices asked attorneys for both sides what a remedy might be for Slaughter if the court were to rule in her favor.
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The Trump Doctrine – Europe is a “decaying” group of nations lead by “weak” people, President Trump said in that Politicointerview, The Conversation, Tuesday.
“I think they’re weak. But I also think that they want to be so politically correct.”
Trump signaled he would endorse political candidates who align with his own vision for Europe, Burns writes. In other words, make it Viktor Orbán-like, which by extension is Vladmir Putin-like.
National Security Strategy … The president’s interview with Politico comes as international alarms ring over Trump’s National Security Strategy released in November in which the White House stands “for the sovereign rights of nations, against sovereign-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations” – read: the European Union – “and for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty and further American interests.”
“What Do We Want In and From the World?” … The strategy calls for ensuring “that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.”
There’s lots more, and you can read all 33 pages HERE. –Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa