Hello and welcome to background briefing available 24-7 at background briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the Fed lowering interest rates today from 4.3% to 4.1%

with an expectation that two more rate cuts will follow in response to the recent precipitous

drop in the labor market, announcing that, quote, downside risk to employment have risen.

Joining us is Dean Baker, senior economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research,

a progressive economic think tank based in Washington, D.C.

He is the author rigged, How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy,

was structured to make the rich richer,

and writes the popular

economics blog, Beat the Press, where his latest articles include cheap advice for the Fed.

Then we'll investigate the monetization of the presidency by the most corrupt and criminal president

in the nation's history, who was raking in billions out of foreign policy deals he and Whitkoff are making

with the world's worst despots. We'll examine the New York Times revelations that Trump and

Whitkoff, whose son co-founded Trump's crypto scam World Liberty Financial, got the UAE to give the Trump

family $2 billion in exchange for handing over the latest AI chips

against the pleas from Trump's own National Security Council that our latest AI technology will end up with China.

Trump ignored his own intelligence officials and then fired them.

Joining us is Ben Freeman, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Previously, he was director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for

International Policy and a National Security Fellow at the project on government oversight

where he spearheaded the foreign influence database.

...