By admin 
It’s been a big day for your wallet—and maybe your democracy, too.
Back up! What happened?
The Federal Reserve left interest rates between 3.5 and 3.75 percent, where they’ve been since last year. It did so because Fed officials are worried about stubborn inflation, which spiked to a three-year high after Trump attacked Iran.
Read more The Text of Trump’s Iran Deal Is Out. It’s Worse Than I Thought.
OK…so you’re telling me interest rates are staying the same? Thanks for wasting my time.
Give me a little credit! The bigger news is that almost every Fed official who gets to vote on setting interest rates thinks they’re likely to stay high this year—and half expect them to go higher.
What does that have to do with my wallet?
Higher interest rates make it costlier to borrow money, which acts as a brake on spending, employment, and economic growth. Think of it as tough medicine the Fed can administer to help control inflation. So keeping interest rates higher for longer means getting a business loan, a mortgage, and even a job may be harder for the foreseeable future.
Bummer. But what does this have to do with American democracy?
As is often the case these days, it goes back to Donald Trump. The president wants the Fed to lower rates, even though his policies (including but not limited to the war in Iran) are a big reason they remain elevated. He thinks Democrats are ginning up Americans’ concerns about affordability to hurt him and he wants to juice the economy. And as he often does when he wants something, Trump is going places no previous president would. He tried to browbeat the previous Fed chair, Jerome Powell, into lowering rates. When that didn’t work, his administration launched a nakedly pretextual criminal investigation into Powell.
As I remember it, the administration dropped that investigation in exchange for getting a new chair confirmed.
Right. The new chair Trump nominated, Kevin Warsh, is now in charge. Trump seems to have picked Warsh, a longtime Fed official, because he has been advocating lower interest rates for a while.
Then why didn’t rates come down today?
The Fed makes decisions by committee. And that committee agreed that lowering rates with inflation still running hot is a bad idea—no matter what the president thinks.
So is this good news?
So far, yes. A Fed that acts independently from the White House, most experts agree, is a good thing because it lets the central bank make economically necessary but politically painful decisions, like raising interest rates to tame inflation. But if rates stay high, Trump could redouble his efforts to trample on the central bank’s independence.
Read more The Dumbest Way Pete Hegseth Is Draining the Military
How has he reacted so far?
Trump was initially dismissive. But when a reporter noted that rates might go even higher this year, the president sounded piqued. “It just keeps a country down,” he said. And while he added that “we have a very good guy over there now,” referring to Warsh, Trump was also the president who nominated Powell—only to try to put him in prison after he refused to knuckle under. So Warsh might want to watch out. It doesn’t take an economist to do that math.
OK! It’s fork-in-the-road time for the rest of the day. Here are some great options for evening entertainment.
What about a movie to look forward to? I was skeptical that the world needed a fifth installment of the Toy Story franchise, but then I read Dana Stevens’ write-up of a film that “wrestles with an existential threat to the franchise—and triumphs.” The movie comes out on Friday.
Or a personal essay that’ll leave you with plenty to think about? Writer Sammi LaBue explains that millennials were sold a fantasy about consequence-free consumption of marijuana, but new research suggests it’s all more complicated. The piece isn’t an anti-drug screed (anyone who went through D.A.R.E. has heard enough of those for a lifetime) but a plea to approach the new world of weed with your eyes open.
Perhaps a break for your eyes and a treat for your ears? Today I learned about the “Tootsie Shot,” a famous and often-used mini-scene that features a busy midtown street with everyone going somewhere—and the protagonist smack in the middle. It’s been used in famous movies including Working Girl, Midnight Cowboy, Wall Street, Heartburn, Elf, Bridget Jones’s Diary, The Devil Wears Prada, and The Wolf of Wall Street. But it’s typically only a few seconds long, so why is it so ubiquitous, influential, and memorable? Slate’s Decoder Ringpodcast breaks it down.
How about another can’t-miss podcast? Slate’s ICYMI podcast has a great episode today about how apps such as Instagram, Substack, and Spotify are making the leap from smart phones to smart TVs. It’s changing what you see on TV, and what your TV knows about you.
And why, yes, we do have more World Cup for you. Ghana and Panama play at 7 Eastern, while Colombia and Uzbekistan face off at 10. And you’d probably also enjoy watching the replay of England–Croatia, a game that’s absolutely stacked with top talent. Even if you’re not into soccer, don’t miss this essay from Jeremy Stahl about Iran’s national team and how it has divided the Iranian diaspora.
Read more The Supreme Court Will Decide Whether ICE Can Hold People Indefinitely. We Should All Be Worried.
That’s all for us. Have a worthwhile evening.