U.S. and world news for Sept. 19

Walkie-talkies: A day after setting off explosives hidden in 3,000 pagers used by Hezbollah militants, Israel touched off explosives hidden in walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah. At least 20 people were reported killed and an estimated 450 injured. In the pager explosions, at least 12 people were reported killed and an estimated 3,000 injured. The U.N. Security Council is expected to meet on Friday to discuss what Israel did. U.N. Secretary General Guterres condemned the attacks.

Trump: Donald Trump held a rally last night at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island and told the audience that if elected he would repeal the so-called SALT tax cap. The SALT cap restricts the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted on federal income tax returns. What Trump failed to tell his followers is that he is the one who signed the SALT tax cap into law and that he and his Republican followers in Congress have blocked Democratic attempts to repeal the SALT tax cap since he was defeated.

Springfield: The Wall Street Journal, a conservative Rupert Murdoch newspaper, reported that J. D. Vance knows that the stories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, that he and Donald Trump have been telling are lies. The Journal reported that Vance contacted officials in the Ohio city and was told point blank that what he and Trump have been saying is false. The most egregious lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield was reported to have been started by neo-Nazi groups.

Interest rates: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says that the Federal Reserve has not fallen behind when it comes to cutting interest rates and that the one-half point interest rate cut announced yesterday came in a timely manner. Powell told a news conference that additional cuts are likely and that the Fed is pleased that its policies have brought inflation down close to its 2% target. This was the Fed’s first interest rate cut since March 2020.  

Government shutdown: The prospect of a government shutdown on Oct. 1 looms larger after the House yesterday killed a bill that would have funded the government for six months. House Speaker Mike Johnson added to the bill a requirement that states require proof of U.S. citizenship when people register to vote. Johnson knew that the voting registration requirement would keep most Democrats from supporting the legislation. Donald Trump has told Republicans to kill any stand-alone bill that would keep the government open.

Hackers: The FBI has revealed that it staged a court-authorized operation that disrupted a Chinese operation that had hacked into 200,000 consumer electronic devices in the U. S. and other countries and planted software on those devices. The malware connected these thousands of infected devices into a network controlled by the Chinese that was used to conduct malicious cyber activity. The court-authorized FBI operation took control of the hackers’ computer infrastructure and, among other steps, sent commands through that infrastructure that disabled the malware on the infected devices.