Welcome to meet the press now.

I'm Garrett Haake on a day in which the health of the American economy, the health of American democracy, and the health of Americans in general is in focus.

And we'll get to all of it, but we begin with

the economy, the growing concern from the Federal Reserve about a slowdown in the U.S. labor market.

Spurring the central bank, led by Chairman Jerome Powell, today to announce it was slashing interest

rates for the first time in nine months in order to spur growth. The federal funds rate,

which is seen as a benchmark for lending

rates, was cut by a quarter point, as most economists had predicted, despite calls from President

Trump for an even larger cut. The Fed also signaled that additional cuts are coming this year.

Wall Street's response to today's news was fairly muted with the Dow up roughly half a percentage point.

Speaking to reporters this afternoon, Chairman Powell painted the portrait of an economy that is on

uncertain footing after recent data showed the first monthly loss of jobs since the pandemic,

and with overall economic growth stagnant and prices creeping higher.

Over the course of this year, we've kept our policy at a restrictive level, and people

have different views, but a clearly restrictive level, I would say.

And we were able to do that over the course of this year because the labor market was in very

solid condition with strong job creation and all those things.

I think if you go back to April and now look at the revised job creation numbers for May, June, July, and August, you can kind of, I can no longer say that.

The Fed's meeting was the first since President Trump's newest Fed governor, his economic advisor, Stephen Myron, was installed to the board.

Myron still technically holds his White House role the first time that's ever happened to the Fed.

He was the sole dissenter in today's decision, echoing the president's view that rates need to be cut more aggressively.

Meanwhile, Lisa Cook, the Fed governor who the president is trying to fire over allegations

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