The latest bimonthly report, which tracks prices in western Riverside County as well as the cities of Ontario and San Bernardino, shows the region’s Consumer Price Index rose 0.8%. Officials pointed to a steep jump in gasoline prices as the primary factor behind the increase.

Gas prices surged roughly 30% between late February and the end of March, pushing the overall energy index up 15.4% during the same period. That spike alone accounted for most of the region’s inflation gains, underscoring how closely local costs remain tied to global energy markets.

Beyond fuel, modest increases were also recorded in other categories. Prices for general goods and services rose 2.2%, while recreation-related costs — including entertainment and theme park activities — climbed 3.2%.

There were, however, a few areas where consumers saw relief. Food prices, both at grocery stores and restaurants, dipped slightly across February and March, falling about 0.4%. Education-related expenses also declined, dropping 3.9%, according to the report.

On a broader scale, inflation trends in the Inland Empire largely mirrored what’s happening nationwide. The national Consumer Price Index rose 0.9% in March alone, again fueled by energy costs.

“The index for energy increased 10.9%, the largest monthly increase since September 2005,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its report. “The gasoline index increased 21.2% over the month, the largest monthly increase since the series was first published in 1967.”

Looking at the longer-term picture, prices in the Inland Empire are up 3.1% compared to a year ago. Energy and healthcare costs have been among the biggest contributors to that increase, rising 13.4% and 5.9%, respectively.

Nationally, inflation stands at 3.3% over the same 12-month period.

Much of the recent pressure on energy prices can be traced back to geopolitical developments overseas. Escalating conflict involving Iran and disruptions in the Persian Gulf have rattled global oil markets. In particular, concerns over restricted access through the Strait of Hormuz — a key shipping route for roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply — have pushed prices higher.

Although a tentative ceasefire was announced earlier this week, oil markets remain volatile. U.S. benchmark crude is still trading just under $100 per barrel, reflecting ongoing uncertainty.

Economists also point to broader domestic factors contributing to inflation, including federal spending levels and monetary policy. The national debt currently stands at approximately $38.98 trillion, according to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. Rising interest payments — now estimated at about $88 billion per month, based on recent reports — continue to add pressure to the overall economic outlook.

For Inland Empire residents, the immediate impact is clear: higher prices at the pump and across key sectors, even as some everyday expenses show slight signs of easing.

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The president said his administration is considering a concept to send 20 percent of the savings produced by DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts back to Americans, and another 20 percent to paying down the national debt.

DOGE advisor and Azoria Investment Firm CEO James Fishback pitched the idea of a “DOGE Dividend” on X.com (formerly Twitter), based on the department’s anticipated $2 trillion in savings.

Musk wrote on his social media platform Tuesday that he “will check with the President.”

Despite what the president may want to do in terms of the money, Congressional approval is still required for any and all initiatives to redistribute federal savings. And as Forbes noted, there are “significant obstacles” related to a potential DOGE dividend, including understanding the economic impact it would have and legal challenges.

Speaking at an investment conference in Miami on Wednesday, Trump said the potential for dividend payments would incentivize people to report wasteful spending.

“They’ll be reporting it themselves,” Trump said. “They participate in the process of saving us money.”

These efforts to shrink the federal government and slash spending have lead to massive layoffs and budget cuts across a number of agencies.

Fishback later told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo that the dividend program is “totally reasonable,” and checks would be dispersed in 2026 after DOGE hit its target.

“This isn’t a handout. This was taxpayers’ money that was sent to D.C. in the first place,” Fishback told Cuomo. “It wasn’t sent to D.C. to then be quickly sent to Myanmar for a DEI musical or Colombia for a transgender opera.”

Some financial experts criticized the idea, saying it would drive prices even higher. Preston Brashers, a research fellow for tax policy at the Heritage Foundation, said it was a “bad idea” to send dividend checks out.

“The dividend we get from slashing spending is that it brings inflation into check,” he said in a social media post. “But if the government sends out stimmy checks, inflation will come back with a vengeance.”

Fishback pushed back on inflation concerns, saying that tax-paying households would be more likely to save that payment.

The initiative would also require approval from Congress to redistribute the savings.

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The rest of the state, however, is being destroyed by rampant crime, sweeping homelessness and unauthorized immigrants — and it’s spurring a mass exodus, Trump said at a press conference today.

“The state of California is a mess,” said Trump. 

“We cannot allow Comrade Kamala Harris and the communist left to do to America what they did to California,” said the former president, who had held a fundraiser in Los Angeles on Thursday night and plans one later today in the Bay Area community of Woodside to cash in on California’s lucrative trove of donors.

Attacking California is something Trump didn’t even do once in his first — and he says only — presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris Tuesday night in Philadelphia. Political experts perceived it as a missed opportunity: After all, his allies have for decades decried California as too liberal for the rest of the nation — partly why there has never been a California Democrat elected president. 

The jury is still out on how much Harris’ California ties could hurt her chance among undecided voters. For most Michigan and Arizona voters who spoke to CalMatters last month, Harris’ record in the White House mattered more than her California brand. 

Trump, who repeatedly mispronounced Harris’s first name, also blamed Harris for federal economic and border policies and insisted he outperformed her during the debate.

The Harris campaign’s rapid response team posted about some of Trump’s statements, but has not directly responded to what he said about her record or her home state. 

How much of the many, many things Trump said about California and Harris’ record is accurate? Here’s our fact check on some notable claims:

State of the state

What Trump said:
“California has the highest inflation, highest taxes, the highest gas prices, the most illegal aliens, the most regulations, the most expensive utilities, and it ranks as the third worst state to start a business.”

Facts:

• Inflation: Inflation rates fluctuate month to month. Florida had the highest inflation at 4% as of March, while California had the seventh highest, at 3.6%, according to an analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data by Moody’s Analytics. Even according to U.S. Senate Republicans’ own inflation tracker, as of August, California ranked 5th for increased monthly inflation costs since January 2021 and had a cumulative inflation rate lower than Florida and other states in the West region.
• Taxes: California does have the highest state sales tax at 7.25%, but ranks 8th in total state and local sales tax rates this year, according to the Tax Foundation. California’s property tax rate is at 0.75%, the 34th highest of all 50 states. The state also has a progressive income tax rate while other states have a flat rate for all. 
• Gas prices: It is true. California does have the highest gas price of all states, at $4.76 a gallon as of today, according to the AAA. The national average is $3.23. 
• Unauthorized immigrants: California is estimated to have the largest population of undocumented immigrants, at 1.8 million, based on a Pew Research Center estimate of 2022 Census figures. But California is also the only state where that population decreased from 2019 to 2022, while the populations in Republican-led Florida and Texas grew the most. 
• Utility rates: As of June, Hawaii — not California — had the highest electricity rates, averaging 42.4 cents per kilowatt hour for residential customers, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In California, residential customers paid an average of 33.0 cents per kilowatt hour. A Forbes analysis of monthly utility bills by state ranked Alaska the most expensive, followed by Hawaii, Connecticut, West Virginia and Georgia.
• Worst state to start a business: It depends which ranking you look at, but according to Forbes, California is the 37th best state to start a business this year.   

Crime in California

What Trump said: Trump blamed the “destruction” of San Francisco on Gov. Gavin Newsom and Harris. He said murders rose “significantly” and car thefts “went through the roof” while Harris was state attorney general. He argued that Harris was lenient in prosecuting several cases, that she had endorsed defunding the police and that “the police don’t endorse her.”

Facts:

• Crime stats: When Harris was California attorney general between 2011 and 2017, homicide rates fluctuated, with an average of 1,819 homicides per 100,000 people each year, according to the state Department of Justice. Vehicle thefts ebbed and flowed, averaging 164,000 per 100,000 people. Both rates were far lower than during the 1990s.
• Leniency: Despite claims she’s soft on crime, Harris has a mixed record. As a local prosecutor, Harris did not pursue the death penalty against a cop killer — a case Trump used during the press conference to justify his claim. But years later, Harris prosecuted a woman with mental illness for assaulting police officers. As California’s attorney general, Harris defended the state’s death penalty even though she personally opposed it. Harris remained neutral on various ballot measures about reducing penalties for low-level offenses and allowing earlier release for more offenders.
• Defund the police: It is true that Harris expressed support for redirecting some money and “reimagining” public safety during her 2020 presidential campaign, weeks after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, sparking waves of protests against law enforcement. “This whole movement is about rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities,” she said at the time. After President Joe Biden tapped her as his running mate, however, she denounced the “defund” movement.
• Police endorsements: More than 100 law enforcement officials — including sheriffs, former and current police chiefs and FBI agents — endorsed Harris last week.

Immigration and the border

What Trump said: He lambasted Harris for supporting “sanctuary cities” for undocumented immigrants while she was San Francisco’s district attorney, claiming she shielded “illegal aliens” who committed murders and refused to deport them. 

Facts: 

• Sanctuary city policy: The San Francisco city ordinance — which prevented officials from handing over unauthorized migrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement even if they committed a felony — dates to 1985. It was originally aimed at protecting asylum seekers from El Salvador and Guatemala, but was extended in 1989 to cover all immigrants. Harris — who was district attorney from 2004 to 2011 — supported changing the policy to report undocumented immigrants arrested on suspicion of a felony in 2008. 
• Prosecuting unauthorized immigrants: Trump said Harris offered sanctuary in 2008 to Edwin Ramos, a Salvadoran migrant who was charged with three counts of murder and who had prior convictions for assault and attempted robbery. Similarly, Trump mentioned the case of Rony Aguilera, a Honduran immigrant who murdered a 14-year-old boy in 2008. It is true city officials did not turn him over to federal agents at the time — under the sanctuary city policy that Harris helped change that year. Ramos was sentenced to life in prison in 2014, and Aguilera was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison in 2013.

Homelessness  

What Trump said: “After Kamala Harris and Gavin Newscum took charge of San Francisco, homelessness increased by over 200%.” 

Facts: Homelessness has grown in California, but not by that much. From 2007 to 2023, the number of people experiencing homelessness grew by 30.5%, according to a report to Congress. In San Francisco, the point-in-time count of homeless people this year reached the lowest level since 2015, according to the city. Nearly 186,000 Californians live on the streets or homeless shelters, up 8% from 2022, according to a new CalMatters analysis. As of last year, California accounted for nearly 30% of the nation’s homeless population and roughly half of the unsheltered population.

California exodus

What Trump said: He claimed the state has the most number of people leaving. 

Facts: It is true that California shed the most people last year — 75,423, according to the Census Bureau. But it’s not just a California problem: New York lost the most population between 2020 and 2022, losing 2.6% of its population, according to Census data. The reasons for California’s shrinking population are complicated: Some died, some moved to other states due to the high cost of living, and some left the country altogether. 

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That is the body language of a man who knows how to wield a magic wand, and how to cast a spell. Trump is a wizard, a very powerful one, and he has magical powers. He will use his magic to make all these complicated issues disappear as soon as he is elected as our next president. We know his magic is very effective, because for the last decade or so, he has kept millions of people spellbound, worshipping him, thinking of him as a divine being, doing whatever he’s commanded them to do, even committing crimes in his name. He has made them drink the Kool-Aid and show unquestioning obedience to him. A whole party has disgraced itself in his loyalty. Some of the smartest and most intelligent politicians have ruined their own legacies to propagate his lies and to defend his most indefensible acts. Even hardcore Christians have ignored the teachings of the Bible, just to kiss his behind, in a totally hypocritical way. All those people tolerating his morally, spiritually, ethically, and legally bankrupt actions, must be under a spell. Otherwise, they’ll see right through his crimes against this nation.

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The Chesapeake, Va.-based company, which operates hundreds of Dollar Tree and Family Dollar stores in California, announced Wednesday that it had taken control of the leases at 170 recently shuttered locations of 99 Cents Only, which announced last month that it was going out of business.

As part of the deal, which Dollar Tree executives said was approved by a bankruptcy court in Delaware, it also acquired 99 Cents Only’s North American intellectual property and some furniture and equipment from inside its stores.

“Dollar Tree looks forward to welcoming customers from 99 Cents Only Stores as early as fall 2024,” the statement reads.

The development, first reported by the Orange County Register, involves a handful of stores in Arizona, Nevada and Texas, but the vast majority are in Southern California, including in Lancaster, North Hollywood, Burbank, Long Beach and Riverside, according to a LinkedIn post from Bill Read, executive vice president of the real estate firm Retail Specialists.

A representative for 99 Cents Only could not be reached.

The 99 Cents Only chain — a longtime icon of L.A.’s discount retail world — started in 1982 with a single store on La Tijera Boulevard and expanded rapidly.

Before the City of Commerce company abruptly announced its closure in April — citing several factors, including shifting consumer demands and inflation — the chain had 371 locations.

But shelves quickly emptied out during liquidation sales, and several of the locations today are covered in graffiti.

Dollar Tree has faced financial turmoil of its own.

In 2014, Dollar Tree Inc. announced a plan to buy its big rival Family Dollar Stores Inc. for more than $8 billion — an acquisition that, according to the company’s website, brought its total to 15,000 stores. But this year, Dollar Tree announced a plan to close nearly 1,000 locations, including about 600 Family Dollar stores, in the first half of 2024, as well as several other Dollar Tree stores in the years ahead.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Riverside County government’s income will be higher than originally expected — by almost $100 million — as the current fiscal year draws to a close, but “financial pressure” continues to build as priorities demand more outlays, according to a report that the Board of Supervisors will review Tuesday.

The Executive Office’s 2023-24 third-quarter budget report will be among the top items on the board’s agenda. It will be the final analysis of existing finances prior to the start of 2024-25 budget hearings next month.

“While the near-term financial outlook appears stable, challenges are looming in the years to come,” the EO stated in the 50-page report. “While we are projecting increases this fiscal year and next, it should be noted that the pace of growth is slowing, while costs continue to rise to maintain the status quo, let alone increase service levels. Additionally, the need to maintain or replace our aging facilities adds financial pressure.”

Aggregate discretionary revenue is projected to reach $1.224 billion, just over $80 million more than first estimated at the beginning of the current fiscal year, when officials expected inflows by June to total $1.14 billion.

According to the report, property tax revenue, motor vehicle in lieu of property taxes and interest earnings on county treasury pool investments are all coming in at higher levels, driven in part by inflation.

There was no reference in the third-quarter update to the state’s sizable budget deficit, which the California Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated to be $68 billion, and how that may impact funding levels for a number of state-supported programs countywide going into 2024-25.

The board generally has a free hand in allocating discretionary funds, as opposed to programmed, or non-discretionary, appropriations, which are earmarked for a range of social, health and other budget mechanisms.

The 2023-24 budget is roughly 15% larger than 2022-23’s, which was about $7.45 billion.

A bright line in the midyear budget report issued in February was that aggregate reserves would likely reach $677 million, as opposed to the initial prediction of $555 million, by June.

The county received almost $500 million in 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief & Economic Security Act allocations and another $480 million in 2021 American Rescue Plan Act money. Just under 10% of the federal infusions have been applied to “budget stabilization.” Some of the revenue remains available and is being allocated to community development and related programs.

The funds were previously used for homeless and rental assistance programs, along with other social welfare efforts, but they’ve also been appropriated for capital improvement projects.

Hearings on the proposed 2024-25 fiscal year budget are slated for June 10-11.

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Among the 15 largest US metro areas, Riverside had the highest share of respondents facing key measures of financial stress. In addition, one in seven said there was sometimes or often not enough to eat at home in the previous seven days, the latest Census household pulse survey shows.

Located about 50 miles east of Los Angeles, Riverside is at the heart of a warehousing-industry hub that boomed during the pandemic but has been showing signs of slowdown more recently. The metro area’s unemployment rate has jumped in the past two years to 5.5%, above the national average, and inflation there is also higher than the country’s average.

The Census Bureau began the survey at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic to provide policymakers with near real-time data on how Americans are doing. It includes measures of extreme poverty, such as whether respondents and their families are having trouble everyday bills, as well as employment, housing and wellbeing.

The picture is mixed across California. More than 85% of adults in San Francisco didn’t have an issue paying their energy bill, but more than a quarter said Los Angeles households couldn’t pay an energy bill in full during the previous year.

Food scarcity was the worst in Houston, a metropolitan area that also ranked high on other measures of poverty in the survey, which was conducted March 5 to April 1 and had about 70,000 respondents. By contrast, the share of people facing financial stress in Boston, Seattle and Washington, DC, was lower than the US overall.

Nationwide, 23.3% of the adult population live in households that struggled to pay an energy bill, and more than one-third of adults said it had been somewhat or very difficult to pay for usual household expenses in the last seven days.

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The agency’s bimonthly report, which covers northwestern Riverside County as well as the cities of Ontario and San Bernardino, indicated that the metro area’s Consumer Price Index shifted to an upward trajectory compared to the start of the year, when a mix of increases and offsetting decreases left the CPI flat.

BLS officials said the energy sector was the primary driver of pocketbook pressure from the beginning of February to the end of March. Gasoline prices jumped 8.8%, while electricity costs rose 3.2%, and natural gas prices notched up .6%, figures showed.

Property rents also went up, reflected in the index’s “shelter costs,” which increased .9% over the two-month period.

Longer term, the regional CPI was 4.3% higher over the previous 12 months, with rents leading the advance at 7.4%, according to data.

Energy prices were up 3.1%, led by electricity costs, which leapt 10% year-over-year. The BLS said food prices rose 2.6% during the period, and health care expenses were 5.5% higher.

Price tags on some items fell over the last 12 months, including those for household furnishings, which rated a 4.4% drop, and costs on motor vehicles, which declined 3.4%, according to the index.

The report showed inflation was up .4% nationwide in March, and 3.8% from March 2023 to March 2024.

The current rate of inflation reflects the elevated price trajectory impacting most sectors of the economy.

Accelerating consumer price hikes have been blamed by the Biden administration on the war in Ukraine and consequent energy supply disruptions, but critics have pointed to what they call the administration’s restrictive domestic energy policies, as well as excessive spending, including the flood of dollars contained in relief packages, as root causes.

The national debt is at $34.6 trillion, after passing $33 trillion just seven months ago, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Estimated annualized interest rate payments on the country’s debt passed the $1 trillion mark in November, according to Bloomberg News. That same month, Moody’s Investors Service lowered its outlook on the U.S. credit rating from “stable” to “negative.”

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee started gradually increasing its benchmark, or target, lending rate in spring 2022, though the FOMC suspended hikes beginning last summer, leaving the rate at roughly 5.5% on the belief that the pace of inflation had slowed satisfactorily.

The hikes were an attempt to soak up excess liquidity and slow spending. The upturn in inflationary pressure reflected in the latest BLS report for the nation might push FOMC decision-makers to reconsider earlier announcements regarding expectations for rate cuts, according to financial analysts.

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We can get the national analysis out of the way: There was a higher than expected increase in the employment numbers (275,000) while the even higher initially released January numbers were revised downwards to more reasonable levels (229,000). Yes, the unemployment rate did increase from 3.7% to 3.9%, but that was due to healthy employment growth being outpaced by an even larger increase in the labor force.

Since then, the inflation numbers have also been published, and while they did not improve further and by the magnitude we’d hoped for, the U.S. economy continues to be on a path for a soft landing (reducing inflation rates to 2% without creating a recession).

This is important, because the Federal Reserve would be less likely to lower interest rates during summer if the job market was as hot as initially estimated and inflation remains sticky above the 2% target. The central bank left interest rates unchanged after its meeting last week, but indicated it is close to start lowering the interest rates as policy makers become confident that “it will be appropriate to dial back.” Chairman Jerome Powell said they were “not far from it.” As the UCLA Anderson Forecast put it in its most recent report, we are on a path to normalcy.

Now let us focus on our state and region. For the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario Metropolitan Statistical Area, some of the annual revisions were substantial. In the Inland Empire, the Logistics industry lost significantly more jobs (some 5,000 depending on which month you focus on) since last summer than originally assumed and shows a steeper downward trend. On the other hand, Education and Health Services has gained more jobs than previously thought, roughly 10,000 more and the numbers are trending upward, confirming it as the sector with the largest share of labor in the Inland Empire.

The headline news for the Inland Empire is that the unemployment rate jumped up by half percentage points, increasing significantly from 5.0% to 5.5%. Since the Inland Empire’s economy is often described as “first in, last out,” shall we take this as the first sign of the national economy tanking after all, resulting in a “hard landing” (decrease in inflation coinciding with a recession)?

The initially bleak picture is simply an artifact of the data, generated by regularly occurring seasonal patterns. Without getting too technical, we will try to convince you that you should look at seasonally adjusted data rather than the raw data from the EDD. While for some months the difference is negligible, in January it is particularly high, since there are layoffs every year due to the post-holiday season. It is not surprising that the largest raw data (non-seasonally adjusted) employment losses for the Inland Empire came in Retail Trade, Logistics, and Leisure and Hospitality. Filtering out these effects is important since they give a misleading picture of the underlying economy. Total employment reported did not go down 32,300 (which would represent an alarming 2%); instead, it went up by 4,850.

The increase in employment reported by households (+9,100) aligned with the increase in establishment employment (+4,850). Residency measured employment increased by more than what establishments reported. This is probably due to commuters, most of whom work in the coastal areas. The employment status of these commuters is reported by households in the region, not by establishments. This means that significant job growth among commuters could explain the difference for January.

Let us get more specific. Compared to the bleak picture painted by the raw establishment data (decreases of -8,200 in Retail Trade, -7,400 in Logistics, -6,500 in Professional and Business Services, and -3,700 in Leisure and Hospitality), the numbers we get after accounting for seasonal patterns are more positive. The biggest decrease was seen in Professional and Business Services (almost -1,200), at only roughly a fifth of what non-seasonally adjusted data indicated. For Retail Trade (-500), Logistics (+250), and Leisure and Hospitality (-700) numbers also look less worrisome. Bottom line: Do not make major decisions based on non-seasonally adjusted data.

Applying standard statistical techniques to remove seasonal regularities results in the (seasonally adjusted) unemployment rate actually falling by 0.1 percentage points from 5.7% to 5.6% in the Inland Empire.

The change came in the healthiest way possible: through a simultaneous increase in employment and labor force, the former outpacing the latter (+9,100 and +6,200, respectively). After six consecutive months of increases in the civilian unemployment rate, this is encouraging. The result holds despite the fact we only observed significant employment increases during three months in 2023.

The Inland Empire will need more time to recover from the very concerning decreases of 12,800 for the labor force and 13,600 for employment observed between November and December. Despite this, the Inland Empire continues to be the poster child of the economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession,. While we will continue to see some structural adjustment between the industries of the region, we are on a positive path as far as the economy is concerned.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve officials acknowledged at their most recent meeting in January that there had been “significant progress” in reducing U.S. inflation. But some of the policymakers expressed concern that strong growth in spending and hiring could disrupt that progress.

In minutes from the Jan. 30-31 meeting released Wednesday, most Fed officials also said they were worried about moving too fast to cut their benchmark interest rate before it was clear that inflation was sustainably returning to their 2% target. Only “a couple” were worried about the opposite risk — that the Fed might keep rates too high for too long and cause the economy to significantly weaken or even slip into a recession.

Some officials “noted the risk that progress toward price stability could stall, particularly if aggregate demand strengthened” or that the progress in improving supply chains could falter.

Officials also cited the disruptions in Red Sea shipping, stemming from the conflict in the Middle East, as a trend that could accelerate prices.

The sentiments expressed in Wednesday’s minutes help explain the Fed’s decision last month to signal that its policymakers would need more confidence that inflation was in check before cutting their key rate. At the January meeting, the Fed decided to keep its key rate unchanged at about 5.4%, the highest level in 22 years, after 11 rate hikes beginning in March 2022.

At a news conference after the meeting, Chair Jerome Powell disappointed Wall Street by indicating that the Fed was not inclined to cut rates at its next meeting in March, as some investors and economists had hoped. Rate cuts by the Fed typically lower a wide range of borrowing costs, including for homes, cars and credit card purchases, as well as for business loans.

The Fed’s aggressive streak of rate hikes was intended to defeat spiking inflation. Consumer prices jumped 9.1% in June 2022 from a year earlier — a four-decade high — before falling to 3.1% in January.

Several Fed officials have said in recent speeches that they were optimistic that inflation would continue to slow. In December, the officials projected that they would cut their rate three times this year, though they have said little about when such cuts could begin. Most economists expect the first reduction in May or June.

A shift toward rate cuts could put the Fed under scrutiny in this year’s presidential race, with the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, declaring that if he won the election, he wouldn’t reappoint Powell when his term as chair expires in 2026. Trump has called Powell “political” for considering rate cuts that Trump said could benefit President Joe Biden and other Democrats. Powell was first nominated to be Fed chair by Trump in 2017.

Since January’s meeting, there have been signs that inflation may take longer to return sustainably to the Fed’s target than many economists had expected. A gauge of consumer prices that excludes volatile food and energy costs rose much more than expected in January. And a measure of wholesale prices also picked up in January after several months of nearly flat or declining readings.

Some Fed officials who have spoken since those reports were released have reiterated their view that inflation is still steadily declining. But they have added that upcoming economic reports will be critical in determining the Fed’s next moves.

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