TODAY’S ECONOMY story

Fed cuts interest rates a quarter point

What happened
The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee yesterday trimmed its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point, its first cut since President Donald Trump took office. It was the Fed’s first meeting since Trump tried to fire one of its governors, Lisa Cook, as part of his campaign to assert control over the traditionally independent central bank.

Who said what
The Fed judged that “labor-market softness outweighed recent setbacks on inflation,” said The Wall Street Journal. A “narrow majority” of the board also “penciled in at least two additional cuts this year,” suggesting a “broader shift toward concern about cracks forming in the job market.”

All but one of the Fed officials voted for the quarter-point cut. “Lone dissenter” Stephen Miran pushed for cutting a half-point, CNN said, which is “hardly a surprise” since he is on unpaid leave from Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers and the president “fervently” wants sharply lower borrowing costs. Miran is “Trump’s wholly owned subsidiary,” the Journal’s editorial board said, and the president also “owns” this rate cut, “having staked so much on his political assault on the Fed.” Maybe "everything works out fine," but the rate cut can’t “offset” either of the economic “negatives” the Fed identified yesterday: Trump’s tariffs and immigration crackdown.

What next?
The “well-telegraphed” rate cut, to between 4% and 4.25%, is “unlikely to bring much relief to borrowers,” The Washington Post said. And given the economy’s “stagflation-lite” signals, “what comes next” isn’t clear.

TODAY’S CRIME Story

3 officers killed in Pennsylvania shooting

What happened
Three police officers were shot dead and two others seriously wounded yesterday in rural southeastern Pennsylvania while serving a warrant in a “domestic-related” investigation, Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Christopher Paris said at a news conference. The two wounded officers were in critical but stable conditions, he said, and the shooter was killed in the gun battle.

Who said what
The shooting attack, near North Codorus Township in York County, marks “one of the deadliest days for Pennsylvania police this century,” The Associated Press said. It “drew the attention of federal and state officials, and a visit by the governor,” Josh Shapiro (D), said The New York Times, but it “left its deepest mark on the residents of this county of farms,” where a 30-year-old officer was shot deadin February while responding to a hostage situation at a local hospital.

“This is an absolutely tragic and devastating day,” Shapiro said at the evening news conference. “We need to do better as a society” and “help the people who think that picking up a gun, picking up a weapon is the answer to resolving disputes.” It was Shapiro’s third gun-related event in two days, after he attended a gathering outside Philadelphia earlier in the day to mark progress in reducing gun homicides and delivered a speech on political violence at Tuesday’s Eradicate Hate Global Summit in Pittsburgh.

What next?
Paris did not share the identities of the officers or the slain suspect, nor the motive or the focus of the still-active investigation.

It’s not all bad

California has passed legislation to ban ultraprocessed items from schools. Advocates hope it inspires other states to approve similar measures. The bill, which passed with bipartisan support, established one of the world’s first legal definitions of ultraprocessed foods: high in additives, sugars and fats. Examples include sodas, chips and packaged snacks. Along with the dietary benefits, research has shown that school districts that switch to healthier alternatives also save money.

Under the radar

How clean-air efforts fueled global warming

Scientists have struggled to explain the rapid acceleration of global warming over the past 15 years, with temperatures now regularly breaking records. It’s “among the biggest questions in climate science today,” said atmospheric professors Laura Wilcox and Bjørn H. Samset at The Conversation.

Suggested causes include a cleanup of sulphur emissions from global shipping, as well as changes in cloud cover. But “one factor that has not been well quantified” is the “monumental efforts” by East Asian countries, particularly China, to combat air pollution, the researchers said. East Asia’s “aerosol cleanup” is likely a “key reason” for the temperature surge, as the polluted air “may have been masking the full effects of global warming,” according to a recent study by Wilcox and Samset.

“In the early 2000s, China had extremely poor air quality as a result of rapid industrialization, leading to a public outcry in the runup to the 2008 Beijing Olympics,” said New Scientist. The government began concerted and highly effective efforts to reduce air pollution, but there’s a “sting in the tail of this environmental success story” — China’s dirty air had “inadvertently been cooling the planet.”

Reducing air pollution didn’t actually cause additional warming, but it “removed an artificial cooling” effect, said Wilcox and Samset at The Conversation. Air pollution “shields the Earth from sunlight,” said Wilcox. The aerosol particles also reflect sunlight into space or influence cloud formation so that they reflect more sunlight. Reducing air pollution means removing “this artificial sunshade,” she said. And since greenhouse gas emissions (the main driver of global warming) have continued to increase, the Earth’s surface is “warming faster than ever before.”

On this day

September 18, 1947

The Central Intelligence Agency was officially established by President Harry Truman. The CIA was created to act as an independent civilian foreign intelligence agency and is charged with a variety of matters concerning national security. The CIA has also come under fire for its decades of foreign interference, including helping overthrow governments.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Diseases will return’

“Ex-CDC chief sounds alarm at hearing,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says on Thursday’s front page. “Fired chief details vaccine pressure,” says The Washington Post. “Diseases will return,” says the Chicago Tribune, quoting Susan Monarez at her Senate hearing. “Fired CDC chief says Kennedy assails science at CDC,” The New York Times says. “As vaccine battle rages, Mass. makes guarantees,” The Boston Globe says. California “to roll out its own vaccine rules,” says the Los Angeles Times. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer “orders vaccine access,” says the Detroit Free Press. “Nation grapples with how to talk about Kirk’s beliefs,” the Arizona Republic says. “Disney pulls Kimmel after Kirk remarks,” says The Wall Street Journal.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Nuns on the run

In defiance of their diocese, three octogenarian nuns in Austria fled from their retirement home to return to the convent and school in Salzburg where they had lived for decades. The convent lacks electricity and running water, and former students came with generators and other supplies. The nuns and church officials are now in a standoff. “Before I die in that old people’s home, I would rather go to a meadow and enter eternity that way,” Sister Bernadette told the BBC.

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Harriet Marsden, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.