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Top 5 US news stories

December 10 2025

Greg Loving

10 Dec 2025 • 7 min read

President Trump spoke Tuesday night in Mount Pocono, Pa. ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

Trump Launches Affordability Campaign To Reset Economic Narrative

Fed Convenes Today To Likely Enact Quarter-Point Cut Despite Growing Internal Split

Record Private Investment Fuels Nationwide Push To Domesticate Critical Mineral Supply Chains

Taiwan Raids Former TSMC Engineer To Block Trade Secret Transfer To Intel

1. Trump Launches Affordability Campaign To Reset Economic Narrative

President Trump touted the performance of the economy under his administration as he delivered the first of what is likely to be several speeches to address voters’ concerns about affordability, telling a Pennsylvania crowd Tuesday night that the Biden administration was to blame for rising prices. “They gave you high prices, they gave you the highest inflation in history, and we’re giving you, we’re burning those prices down rapidly,” Trump said of Democrats. For nearly two hours, he listed what he called his successes in his first 10 months in office and also meandered into several issues away from the economy, such as national security, immigration policy and attacks on his predecessor, former President Joe Biden. The speech is part of an administration-wide bid to change Trump’s messaging on the economy, as many advisers worry that voters’ concerns about high prices are dragging down his presidency and hurting Republicans. In recent weeks, Trump has dismissed concerns about the economy. In a Politico interview published Tuesday, Trump said he gave himself an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” on the economy. “They have a new word, you know they always have a hoax, the new word is affordability,” Trump said. “Democrats talking about affordability is like Bonnie and Clyde preaching about public safety.”

WSJ

2. Fed Convenes Today To Likely Enact Quarter-Point Cut Despite Growing Internal Split

It's Fed Day, and the central bank's policymakers are unusually divided. The chances of another quarter-point cut remain high, but any dissenters and how Chair Jerome Powell explains the Federal Reserve's thinking could make for a volatile trading session later today. Investors have grown less confident about cuts next year, partly due to cautious comments by Kevin Hassett, the favorite to be Powell's replacement. That casts extra attention on the "dot-plot" projections due Wednesday. Hassett, currently National Economic Council director, said Tuesday he wouldn't bow to any potential political pressure to lower rates if he gets the role. President Trump, who has said he wants the next chair to be committed to cutting, plans to hold final interviews in the coming days.

WSJ

Rahm Emanuel, who is mulling a presidential run, is pushing for the United States to follow Australia’s lead in banning children under 16 from most social media. Alarmed by the addictive nature of social media apps and the attendant health and safety risks for young users, Emanuel wants to amp up public pressure on American lawmakers to restrict access to some of the world’s most popular platforms. In a bit of irony, the potential 2028 White House hopeful plans to issue his call to action Tuesday, as Australia’s ban takes effect, in a video he’ll post on his social media accounts, according to plans the Democrat shared first with POLITICO. “We’ve got to make a choice when it comes to our adolescents: Who’s going to be a kind of moral guiding light? I put my thumb on the scale for adults over algorithms,” Emanuel said in an interview, accusing Big Tech of prioritizing profits over “protecting our adolescents.” It’s the latest in a series of policy stances Emanuel is sharpening as the former ambassador, who worked for three Democratic presidents and was mayor of Chicago, calls out his party’s messaging from education to public safety ahead of a critical midterm election. It also comes as Democrats are embracing social media influencers and encouraging political leaders and candidates to spend more time online to promote their messaging and reach younger voters.

Politico

4. Record Private Investment Fuels Nationwide Push To Domesticate Critical Mineral Supply Chains

Gabbro is an unremarkable rock, so cheap and abundant it is used for gravel and building roads. It may also be part of how America breaks its dependence on China’s critical minerals. On an industrial stretch on the west side of Oakland, Calif., a startup called Brimstone is processing gabbro with proprietary chemistry and off-the-shelf equipment to produce aluminum, magnesium and other minerals frequently imported from China. Its lab, with a row of bikes parked inside the front door, hums quietly with workers in protective gear moving between beakers, kilns and mineral samples being tested for durability and composition. Bags of gabbro and similar calcium-bearing silicate rocks fill a shed out back and dot the office. Brimstone’s efforts, which haven’t been previously reported, are part of a nationwide push to develop American sources of raw materials that the U.S. desperately needs and which China has long dominated. Startups from Silicon Valley to North Carolina and the U.K. are offering up new solutions to China’s crackdown on critical mineral exports, propelled by record levels of private investment and advances in artificial intelligence. Scientists who worked on self-driving cars in Silicon Valley are applying their mathematical formulas to critical-mineral discovery. Entrepreneurs are using AI applications to improve the success rates of mining exploration and create metal alloys that mimic the properties of critical minerals.

WSJ

5. Taiwan Raids Former TSMC Engineer To Block Trade Secret Transfer To Intel

In July, the Taiwanese engineer Wei-Jen Lo left his job after 21 years at the world’s leading computer chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. He soon started work at one of TSMC’s rivals: Intel, the struggling Silicon Valley chip maker that the Trump administration has wagered $8.9 billion to transform into the U.S. national champion. Intel said that Mr. Lo’s decision to hop from one job to another was routine in a competitive industry. But in Taiwan, government prosecutors saw it as potential threat to national security and started an investigation. Late last month, officials raided Mr. Lo’s homes in Taipei and Hsinchu, the heart of Taiwan’s chip industry, where they took computers and flash drives. A court also approved the seizure of Mr. Lo’s stocks and real estate. The case is part of a new push by Taiwanese prosecutors to protect the trade secrets of the island’s world-beating chip makers. Taiwan is the source of most of the world’s advanced computer chips, which are essential to virtually everything from iPhones to cars. But as countries try to boost their domestic chip makers, the authorities in Taiwan are taking a stronger hand in protecting its prized technology. For the first time, the government is invoking a 2022 law that made chip makers’ trade secrets subject to protection on national security grounds.

NYT

December 10 1869: Wyoming first state to grant women the right to vote

Western states led the nation in approving women’s suffrage. Though some men recognized the important role women played in frontier settlement, others voted for women’s suffrage only to bolster the strength of conservative voting blocks. In Wyoming, some men were also motivated by sheer loneliness–in 1869, the territory had over 6,000 adult males and only 1,000 females, and area men hoped women would be more likely to settle in the rugged and isolated country if they were granted the right to vote.

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