Trump says firing Powell 'unlikely' after escalating attacks on Fed Chair
From the show
Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that it was "unlikely" he would fire the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, after reportedly floating the idea to Republican lawmakers. The US president has repeatedly criticised Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates fast enough, but is constrained in his ability to dismiss him. Also in this edition, Brazil calls for "urgent talks" with Washington over looming 50 percent tariffs that are set to take effect on August 1.
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France 24
15 minutes ago
- France 24
NFL players, employees fined for selling Super Bowl tickets: reports
ESPN reported that players who sold allotted tickets will be fined one-and-a-half times the face value of the tickets sold and be barred from receiving tickets to the next two editions of the Super Bowl. Players amongst those caught will be given the option of purchasing tickets if their team reaches the Super Bowl in 2026 or 2027. Players who decline to pay the fines face being suspended, ESPN cited league and union sources as saying. ESPN quoted an NFL memo sent to teams which said employees and players had sold tickets to "bundlers" working with a ticket resale site. Tickets to the Super Bowl are consistently one of the hottest -- and most expensive -- tickets in North American sport, fetching as much as $10,000 on resale sites. "Our initial investigation has determined that a number of NFL players and coaches, employed by several NFL Clubs, sold Super Bowl tickets for more than the ticket's face value in violation of the policy," NFL chief compliance officer Sabrina Perel wrote in the memo. Perel cited "long-standing league policy" which "prohibits League or club employees, including players, from selling NFL game tickets acquired from their employer for more than the ticket's face value or for an amount greater than the employee originally paid for the ticket, whichever is less." Perel added that the league will enhance mandatory training before Super Bowl LX for all league personnel to emphasize the rules and "the broader principle that no one should profit personally from their NFL affiliation at the expense of our fans." The league, meanwhile, also planned to improve training to avoid a repeat, with the possibility of stiffer sanctions for future offenses. "No one should profit personally from their NFL affiliation at the expense of our fans," Perel wrote in the memo.
France 24
an hour ago
- France 24
Trump administration expected to say greenhouse gases aren't harmful
A proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to change the so-called "Endangerment Finding" was sent to the White House on June 30, a spokesperson told AFP. An announcement is expected imminently. Here's what to know -- and what's at stake if the finding is overturned. What is the Endangerment Finding? The Clean Air Act of 1970 empowered the EPA to regulate "air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." For decades, the law applied to pollutants like lead, ozone and soot. But as climate science around the dangers of heat-trapping greenhouse gases advanced in the 2000s, a coalition of states and nonprofit groups petitioned the EPA to include them under the law, focusing on motor vehicles. The issue reached the Supreme Court, which in 2007 ruled that greenhouse gases qualify as air pollutants and directed the EPA to revisit its stance. That led to the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which declared greenhouse gases a threat to public health and welfare, based on overwhelming scientific consensus and peer-reviewed research. "That 2009 finding formed the basis for all of EPA's subsequent regulations," Meredith Hankins, a senior attorney on climate and energy for the activist Natural Resources Defense Council, told AFP. "They've issued greenhouse gas standards for tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles, smokestack emissions from power plants -- all of these individual rulemakings trace themselves back to the 2009 Endangerment Finding." What is the Trump administration doing? The Endangerment Finding has withstood multiple legal challenges, and although Trump's first administration considered reversing it, they ultimately held back. But the finding is now a direct target of Project 2025, a far-right governance blueprint closely followed by the administration. In March, the EPA under Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a formal reconsideration of the finding. "The Trump Administration will not sacrifice national prosperity, energy security, and the freedom of our people for an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas," he said. The government is expected to undo the earlier finding that greenhouse gases endanger public welfare. It will argue that the economic costs of regulation have been undervalued -- and downplay the role of US motor vehicle emissions in climate change. In fact, transportation is the largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions. "If vehicle emissions don't pass muster as a contribution to climate change, it's hard to imagine what would," Dena Adler of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University told AFP. "It's fatalistic to avoid taking the many actions that could cumulatively fix climate change, because none of them can individually solve the entire problem." Since 1970, the United States has emitted more vehicle-based greenhouse gases than the next nine countries combined, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Integrity that will soon be published in full. Could they succeed? In March, the EPA said it would lean on recent court rulings, including a landmark 2024 decision that narrowed federal regulatory power. Still, legal experts say the administration faces an uphill battle. "It will take a few years for the rule to be finalized and wind its way up to the Supreme Court for review," said Adler. "If EPA loses before the Supreme Court, it gets sent back, and EPA then gets it back to the drawing board" -- by which time Trump's term may be nearing its end. To succeed, the high court may need to overturn its own 2007 decision that led to the Endangerment Finding. None of the justices who wrote the majority opinion remain on the bench, while three dissenters -- John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito -- still serve, and could spearhead a drive to upend the original ruling. Even then, market forces may blunt the impact of any rollback. "Utilities making long-term investments and companies purchasing capital goods expected to be used for decades won't base those decisions on short-term policy changes," said John Tobin-de la Puente, a professor at Cornell University's business school. That's especially true when those swings run counter to business trends and could be undone by a future administration, he added.
AFP
an hour ago
- AFP
Explicit Fed chair resignation video spreading online is fake
"BREAKING: Total chaos erupts at the FED. Jerome Powell RESIGNS live on stage at FED emergency meeting," says a July 21, 2025 post on X. Image Screenshot from X taken July 25, 2025 The video purports to show Powell cursing the economy, inflation, Wall Street and the press before declaring that he is "out." Similar posts spread across X and media platforms as Powell faces intensified criticism from Trump, who has pushed the Federal Reserve chair to lower interest rates and lambasted the Fed's $2.5 billion renovation project. The two bickered over the price tag for the makeover during a July 25 meeting, with Powell correcting the president's false claim that the facelift would cost $3.1 billion. But the video purporting to show Powell lashing out and announcing his departure is fake, with its audio created using artificial The voice-cloning detection tool within the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, assessed that clip's audio is "very likely AI-generated." g the Federal Reserve's YouTube channel, AFP matched the visual to a March 22, 2023 press conference delivered after the Fed hiked interest rates (archived here). Specifically, the altered clip lifted footage from CNBC's live coverage of the event (archived here). AFP matched Powell's hand movements in the doctored video to a moment in the press conference when Powell, asked whether disinflation was occurring, responded that inflation on goods had been coming down for six months. Image Screenshot from X taken July 25, 2025 Image Screenshot of CNBC's YouTube channel taken July 25, 2025 No notice saying Powell had resigned appeared on the Federal Reserve's website as of July 25, 2025 (archived here). AFP previously debunked a fabricated resignation letter that bore signs of artificial intelligence but was nonetheless circulated by conservative commentators and a US senator. Trump, who appointed Powell to the role in 2017, has floated the idea of removing the chairman but also said he is unlikely to oust him before his term expires in May 2026. The Republican said following his July 25, 2025 meeting with the Federal Reserve chair: "To do that is a big move and I just don't think it's necessary, and I believe that he's going to do the right thing." AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about US politics here.
