Even a hopeful inflation report is unlikely to have an immediate impact on the Fed’s decision about interest rates. “Officials are widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged, no matter what happens. But the fresh inflation reading could help shape officials’ estimates of how many times they will cut rates this year, because policymakers will have a chance to update their forecasts in response to the data,” writes Jeanna Smialek, The New York Times‘ Federal Reserve reporter.

However, “a well-behaved May inflation report is a likely prerequisite for the Fed to consider lowering interest rates after that, as officials have said they want to see a series of readings that rebuilds their confidence inflation will head lower,” The Wall Street Journal explained.

Americans are understandably eager to see both inflation and interest rates fall toward the historically low levels that were enjoyed before the COVID-19 pandemic. We are likely still a long way from that point, but today may turn out to be a significant turning point in the ongoing battle against higher prices and more expensive debt.

Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was convicted of three felony gun crimes on Tuesday. All three counts are related to the younger Biden’s 2018 purchase of a handgun, which he was not legally allowed to own because of his track record of using illegal drugs.

Biden was never accused of threatening or harming anyone with the handgun, and he likely never would have been prosecuted at all if he hadn’t revealed in a 2021 memoir that he’d been addicted to crack cocaine around the time that he’d bought the gun. (Never memoir, kids.) Yes, there’s arguably a good reason for the government to try to prevent reckless drug abusers from owning guns, but this overly broad intersection of federal anti-gun and anti-drug laws doesn’t make much practical sense, as Reason‘s Jacob Sullum explained yesterday: