US stock futures higher ahead of Fed interest rate announcement
Since Israel attacked Iran, oil prices have jumped to a near five-month high. Much of the world's oil comes from the Middle East, and if oil prices continue to climb or stay elevated for a while, that could ignite inflation.
Along with the Fed's policy announcement, central bankers will release their economic forecasts. Economists expect the Fed to raises its inflation outlook, lower its economic growth forecast and keep the unemployment rate fairly low. Investors will also be looking to see how many rate cuts the Fed expects to implement this year and next.
At 6:10 a.m. ET, futures linked to the blue-chip Dow rose 0.21%, while broad S&P 500 futures gained 0.27% and tech-laden Nasdaq futures added 0.35%.
Cryptocurrency
The Senate passed to regulate stablecoins, or a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable price, often by being pegged to a more stable asset like the U.S. dollar.
The Senate's legislation requires dollar-pegged stablecoins to hold dollar-for-dollar reserves in short-term government debt or similar products overseen by state or federal regulators.
The bill now goes to the House, which must decide whether it will take up the bill or negotiate a compromise.
Medora Lee is a money, markets, and personal finance reporter at USA TODAY. You can reach her at mjlee@usatoday.com and subscribe to our free Daily Money newsletter for personal finance tips and business news every Monday through Friday.
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The Herald Scotland
9 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Latino senator claps back at JD Vance for misnaming him 'Jose'
Padilla was the first Latino elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of California. Vance, who served with Padilla in the Senate, made the remark at a press conference the previous day during a trip to Los Angeles meant to defend the Trump administration's military response to protests over changes to immigration policies. Read more: Vance defends using military to quell protests, refers to Sen. Alex Padilla as 'Jose' "I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately, I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn't the theater, and that's all it is," Vance said. Read more: Sen. Alex Padilla handcuffed and forcibly removed from Kristi Noem's LA press conference On June 12, Padilla was handcuffed and forcibly removed from a press conference being held by Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary. Democrats condemned the incident and demanded an investigation. The Trump administration defended the actions of Noem's security detail that day and accused Padilla of engaging in political theater.
The National
12 hours ago
- The National
Ruth Wishart: Anti-abortion movement is well-funded and gunning for us
Her doctors and a midwife said such a course of action would be illegal under the then Irish law whilst a foetal heartbeat was detectable. Savita was just 31 when she died of sepsis in 2018. In the furore which followed, Ireland voted overwhelmingly to ditch the legal clause which prevented abortion. But it took six long years to pass the new amendment which did so. It became part of the Irish Republic's journey to unlock the stranglehold the church had previously held over the law, and subsequently, in 2015, another amendment endorsed same-sex marriage. READ MORE: Scottish Government announces £3 million in funding for 14 festivals More recently, when the US Democratic legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered by a self-styled evangelical 'Christian' earlier this month, police found a list of some 70 other potential victims in his vehicle. The link they shared is that they had all been vocally pro-choice. You might imagine it was enough for these ultras that they had killed off Roe v Wade in 2022, the landmark ruling which gave federal rights to termination in every US state. Evidently not. Since that ended, we have had tragic instances of rape, child and incest victims being forced to carry to full term, women bleeding to death in hospitals, and the better-heeled having to take flights to that handful of states which didn't take advantage of the new legal landscape and kept women's rights safe. It's almost as if all the male legislators who hollered loud and long for women to stay pregnant no matter the circumstances, collectively believed that all these pregnancies were somehow the result of immaculate conceptions. Unsurprisingly, there is not a four-deep queue of rogue fathers volunteering their financial or indeed any support. Men rule OK? Last week in the Commons, the weaker of two possible amendments was passed which 'allowed' women who self-terminated pregnancies, perhaps via online medication, to avoid prosecution. It did not exempt any medical staff who may have been involved. The author of the second, stronger amendment wrote in The Guardian that the House had chickened out of proper reform and had been altogether too timid. Yet again, some of the loudest voices raised in defence of the legal status quo belonged to men. Blokes like Tory Edward Leigh, whose features have always looked as if he were on the verge of apoplexy or worse. These men also have one thing in common. They will never, ever be pregnant. Which doesn't prevent them from telling women what they should think, or whether or not they should control their own fertility. So there is absolutely no reason to suppose that Scotland or the UK is safe from American lobbying. Just look at what happened when a modest law from Gillian Mackay MSP was passed stopping the Texan-based 40 Days For Life group assembling nearer than 200 metres from any facility offering terminations. Some commentators have suggested all they were doing was praying. Puleeze. Some of the professional posters displayed had come straight from the source of the protesting. Including pictures of aborted foetuses. And there was much shouting, not just at women but at the medical staff who worked there. READ MORE: Kate Forbes: Numbers prove that the world is ignoring those who talk Scotland down When a woman in her 70s was arrested, but never brought to court, she was immediately given heroine status by some US 'freedom of speech' groups. She had been picketing near Glasgow's Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, though not, to be fair shouting, and was demanding her 'right' to go to court despite the Procurator Fiscal recommending no further action. This is all of a piece with the well-funded, Europe-wide anti-abortion protesters who all demand their day in court to rubbish any laws to which they've taken exception. Rose Docherty's arrest, following police warnings about trespassing in buffer zones, came just days after the US vice-president, JD Vance, made a series of totally false accusations about the Scottish laws, including the assertion that people could be in trouble for privately praying in their own home. And referencing 'thought police'. All garbage of course, but not atypical of the current US administration's legendary inability to check their facts before their mouth is engaged. People who think getting rid of Donald Trump would herald a new relationship with the truth might consider that Vance is the constitutional heir apparent. Which is not to say that legitimate protest should ever be outlawed, including protests with which we fundamentally disagree. The Scottish legislation on buffer zones mentions the where of protest, but not the why. Its principal proposer received both death threats and abuse despite being pregnant herself. Nevertheless, it was the Irish nation rising up and voting for change which brought about two civilising laws in that country where the church had long held too much sway. Even in America, there are signs that decent folks are awakening from the slumber which brought us a second Trump term with all the many and increasingly obvious dangers that represents. Non-Elon-Musk-related social media is awash with images of a poorly attended military parade which 'happened' to coincide with the president's 79th birthday and contrasting these images with the millions across the USA who turned out for No Kings Day. The latter was a public riposte to Trump supposing that his presidential status gave him monarchical powers to do as he pleased. An assertion which followed a Time magazine cover this month featuring a back view of 'Trump' looking into a mirror where he wore a crown and lots of ermine. By long-standing Time artist Tim O'Brien, it was entitled King Me. The idea that the man who treats executive orders like bulk-bought confetti should be left to his own fantasies managed to unite and enrage millions of people, some of whom had sat on their hands on the day of the election. Hell mend them. It's become difficult enough to vote in America as it is without ignoring the hard-fought right to vote for which people once died. These barriers to polling rights have also crossed the pond, with new demands to present ID at polling stations despite there being minimalist evidence of voter fraud. No prizes for guessing which group is least likely to have a passport or driving licence. So we must stay alert at all times to prevent our own rules, regulations and values from being altered by foreign voices. Apart from Vance, Musk has also weighed in with his views on the UK Prime Minister and much else. The irony is that Musk himself is a migrant from South Africa, but the breath is not being held for those cuddly chaps from the US Immigration and Enforcement agency to deport him as they now have so many long-standing Americans who 'look foreign' (which is ICE speak for being brown.) If you think they're licensed thugs, you're not wrong. Meanwhile round about us, the world appears to be hellwards bound in any available handcart. There are many theories about why Trump is planning to take a fortnight before deciding whether or not to give more support to Israel by providing the necessary aircraft and their so-called 'bunker-busting' bombs to reach buried Iranian nuclear sites. I know the US president isn't much of a reader, but could I recommend several tomes which detail the effect of unleashing radio active materials from such sites? Not that he cares. It's a reasonably safe bet that the prevailing winds won't carry the nasties to the eastern seaboard in America. The bit that houses hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Like Gaza, really.
NBC News
12 hours ago
- NBC News
MAGA influencers fall in line behind Trump after U.S. airstrikes hit Iran
The MAGA movement's top influencers were divided over bombing Iran until President Donald Trump did just that Saturday night. Now, at least for the time being, the lay leaders in the president's base appear to be rallying around a position that spares Trump criticism: direct attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities are justified, as long as American troops aren't sent into a third full war halfway around the world in the last quarter of a century. "People don't want an escalation where ground troops are sent in, but this is not Iraq,' said Ryan Girdusky, a Republican consultant who worked for a super PAC that backed Vice President JD Vance's 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio. Girdusky predicted the MAGA base will swing in line behind the president. There is little appetite at the White House or anywhere else in Washington for a ground invasion of Iran, a mountainous nation in the Middle East that would be extraordinarily difficult to conquer in a conventional war. But it's hardly unusual for the start of hostilities — the airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear-enrichment facilities were the first direct American intervention in a week-old war between Israel and Iran — to create a rally-around-the-flag effect within a president's party. What's notable is just how dramatic and speedy the turn has been away from dissent to full-throated support. "Heavy smear campaign going on right now attacking America First Patriots as 'Isolationists,'" Jack Posobiec, a leading voice in the MAGA movement, posted earlier Saturday, before the bombings. "I hope everyone using this bad persuasion knows that it associate them with the worst Bush-era neocons," a slang for the so-called neoconservative George W. Bush administration officials who pushed for war in Iraq. He had previously warned that direct attacks on Iran would "disastrously split the Trump coalition." But after the airstrikes, Posobiec posted what looked like a sentiment of approval. "President Trump has clearly signaled, as he has all along, that he opposes a regime change war in Iran," he wrote. "This is about the nuclear program of Iran which he promised he would end from day one." He was hardly alone among anti-interventionist MAGA figures in holding off on criticizing the president after what Trump described as a highly successful mission that "completely and totally obliterated" Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons. Steve Bannon, a top adviser in Trump's first White House and host of the War Room podcast, made clear in a special broadcast Saturday night that he would have preferred for Israel to take the lead in striking Iran's nuclear facilities. But he stopped short of condemning Trump for sending U.S. forces to do the job. Instead he gave voice to the doubts some MAGA voters would have about the mission. "A big question is going to be why Israel did not take the lead and do this. Because right now this is back to the United States," he said. "Why are we engaging in combat operations in a war that's a war of choice?" But he ultimately concluded that Trump would bring the MAGA movement to his own position — perhaps an indication that influencers have more to lose by opposing Trump than he does by using force in Iran. "There are a lot of MAGA that are not happy about this," Bannon said. "I believe he will get MAGA on board for all of it. But he's got to explain exactly and go through this." An hour after Trump addressed the nation from the White House, Tucker Carlson, the most prominent anti-strike Trump ally, had said nothing to his 16.4 million followers on X. But Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump coalition of younger conservatives, had abandoned his long-running skepticism about the wisdom of hitting Iran. "America stands with President Trump," Kirk wrote on X. While Democrats pushed back on Trump, both on the wisdom of the strikes and the constitutionality of attacking another sovereign country without either congressional authorization or an imminent threat to the United States, most Republicans voiced approval or met the decision with silence. One anomaly: Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who had been , D-Calif., on a measure designed to prohibit Trump from using force against Iran.
