By JOSH BOAK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stephen Miran, President Donald Trump’s pick to join the Federal Reserve board, said Thursday that he would remain a White House employee even if the Senate confirms him to fill an unexpired term as a governor for the central bank.

Miran, who was nominated to fill a term set to expire in January, made the disclosure at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

He said he would instead take an “unpaid leave of absence” as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers on the advice of his lawyers and would only resign from the administration if he were nominated for a longer term at the Fed.

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By KEN SWEET, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans would save roughly $100 billion a year in interest costs if President Donald Trump’s campaign proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10% were implemented, according to a paper published by Vanderbilt University on Thursday.

Further, the banks and credit card companies would be able to withstand, and even still be profitable, if there were to be a national cap on interest rates. While limited in scope, the paper gives some academic backing to President Trump’s campaign promise.

The paper found that banks would still be able to earn a profit on most of their customers even if credit card interest rates were capped at 15%, and if the banks continued to offer rewards and perks like points and airport lounge access. If interest rates were capped at 10%, the business model gets more difficult for the banks, but they could still make money off most card customers by cutting back on some rewards.

Usury laws are as old as the Bible but have gotten traction again through Trump’s populist politics. When he was a candidate in the 2024 election, Trump proposed a temporary 10% cap on credit card interest rates. He has not spoken about it since the election.

That said, politicians have seized on the idea. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a bill in Congress that would match Trump’s campaign proposal of capping interest rates at 10%. A similar bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York.

There are already some interest rate caps in effect in the U.S. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active servicemen and women more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions, the NCUA, has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.

The banking industry is adamantly against any caps on credit card rates. Historically, the industry has argued that any cap on interest rates would decimate the credit card business model and would threaten the viability of popular rewards and perks programs that millions of Americans use for free flights and hotel stays.

It was this rhetoric that made Brian Shearer, the author of the report, start to look into the issue. Shearer previously worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as the regulator’s assistant director of policy planning and strategy, working under Republican and Democratic administrations.

“I wanted to see if President Trump’s proposed cap could be taken seriously, and the idea appears that it could be seriously considered and it would not have the amount of downside that often the pundits assume there will be,” Shearer said.

Americans are carrying more credit card debt than ever before, to the tune of $1.21 trillion, or roughly $6,400 per person. The average credit card interest rate is roughly 21%, according to data from the Federal Reserve. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.

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Banks earn revenue from credit cards two different ways: the amount of money they charge merchants to process a credit card transaction, often referred to as interchange, and the interest and fees the banks charge customers. That could be the annual fee on a credit card, or the monthly interest that accrues when a customer carries a balance.

Shearer says the revenue earned from interchange is why banks would remain profitable, even if credit card interest rates are capped. Credit card rewards programs are largely funded through interchange. American Express, for instance, earned $35.2 billion in revenue from the fees they charge merchants.

Under Shearer’s analysis, if interest rates were capped at 15%, Americans would save roughly $48 billion in interest a year, while at 10%, that figure goes to $100 billion. In his analysis, Shearer assumed that banks would charge as close to the national cap as possible.

The Vanderbilt paper finds that banks, because they largely fund their rewards programs from interchange, would not likely universally cut back on rewards for Americans. Instead, the Americans who would likely see the biggest reduction in rewards would be those with low credit scores, because they are considered the riskiest borrowers. However, Shearer believes that any modest reduction in rewards for those customers would likely be made up in the interest they would save annually. Historically, bank customers with low credit scores tend to be “revolvers”, or those who carry a balance, instead of “transactors,” which are customers who pay off their credit cards at the end of each month.

“It is true that there would need to be some reward reduction, but it’s not the kind of sky-is-falling story that you often hear,” Shearer said.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The District of Columbia on Thursday sued to stop President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard during law enforcement intervention in Washington.

The city’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, said the hundreds of troops are essentially an “involuntary military occupation.” He argued in the federal lawsuit that the deployment is an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

A federal judge in California recently ruled that Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles after days of protests over immigration raids in June was illegal. The Republican administration is appealing that decision and Trump has said he is ready to order federal intervention in Chicago and Baltimore, despite staunch opposition in those Democrat-led cities.

That ruling, however, does not directly apply to Washington, where the president has more control over the Guard than in states.

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In St. Paul, property owners are about to feel the combined effects of sluggish downtown property values, limited economic development growth and cuts in federal funding.

Calling his new budget proposal the hardest he’s had to prepare in his eight years in office, Mayor Melvin Carter unveiled a no-frills budget plan for 2026 that expands investment in housing programs such as office-to-housing conversions and downpayment assistance while avoiding layoffs of city employees.

To accomplish those goals, the mayor’s proposal freezes hiring for dozens of open positions, shifting funding from vacancies to sustain existing city workers. The $887 million budget plan for the coming year would rely on a 5.3% property tax levy increase, roughly comparable to this year’s tax levy increase of 5.9% and about average for the past decade. The total levy would be $232.5 million, supporting a general fund budget of $404.9 million.

That increase comes on the heels of some difficult news for taxpayers. The Ramsey County Board of Commissioners unveiled a tax levy increase request this week of 9.75%, and the St. Paul Public Schools are asking voters to approve a 10-year, $37.2-million-per-year levy referendum that would raise property taxes by another $309 for a median-value home in St. Paul.

Taken together, many property owners could be in for some sticker shock, and city department leaders are likely to raise objections to the city council over important positions that will go unfilled, the mayor acknowledged. “This isn’t a year for us to pursue fun stuff or pet projects,” Carter said in an interview this week. “We’re going to really focus on public safety, housing and downtown.”

Carter, who was scheduled to give his budget presentation at Allianz Field on Thursday morning, said the city is navigating an array of pressures, from uncertainty at the federal level to the ongoing work of recovering from a cyber attack likely to cost the city well over $1 million in overtime and consultant fees, as well as fiscal challenges buffeting urban areas nationwide, ranging from the impacts of inflation to remote work.

Housing programs

The mayor’s budget proposal calls for sustaining key investments in housing programs that have rolled out over the past few years, and in some cases, expanding them.

With the goal of encouraging affordable housing, the city has long allowed residents to convert garages and other modest spaces into small housing units known as accessory dwelling units, but takers have been few. “We allow them, but we haven’t seen the growth in them we’d like,” Carter said.

To streamline “ADU” development, the city’s planning department will create a menu of pre-approved design plans that homeowners can choose from.

The Department of Safety and Inspections plans to sunset outdated, paper-heavy information platforms such as Amanda, STAMP and Eclipse and replace them with PAULIE, which will offer residents opportunity to submit permit applications and permit fees online, as well as look up records from home at all hours.

“You can’t apply for a single business license online right now,” said DSI director Angie Wiese, in an interview.

PAULIE, which is backed by $600,000 in the mayor’s budget proposal, is expected to jumpstart a related initiative — remote virtual inspections — aimed at allowing property inspections through a property owner’s smartphone. Both efforts are aimed at streamlining processes that can slow down housing development.

Other housing investments include:

• $5 million to fund the city’s office-to-housing conversion program, which seeks to incentivize the conversion of outdated office businesses into new residences. The program would support gap financing and permit fee waivers.

• A housing down payment assistance program would double in size, growing from $1 million to $2 million in annual city funding.

• Another $1 million would fund the city’s Inheritance Fund, which aims to support homebuying for direct descendants of residents displaced by the construction of Interstate 94 through the Rondo neighborhood and residents displaced from the West Side Flats.

• $1 million will continue the work of the city’s emergency rental assistance program.

Despite a difficult era for downtown, where several buildings have fallen into foreclosure or been put up for sale for as little as $1, St. Paul is on the cusp of a wave of new housing at Highland Bridge, The Heights and elsewhere throughout the city, Carter noted, pointing to the example of a Chicago firm that has purchased four residential buildings downtown.

Safety and community well-being

Using public safety aid from the state, the mayor said the city will continue to promote initiatives that address gun violence, add EMS staff to the St. Paul Fire Department and expand community outreach through the city’s Office of Neighborhood Safety. Also underway is a gun diversion program through the city attorney’s office.

The mayor’s budget includes $1 million as a one-time investment to expand citywide prevention, treatment and response to the opioid and fentanyl crisis.

Carter said the work of two ambulance units — providing Advanced Life Support and Basic Life Support — has helped shave response times in the city by a minute, which can be critical. Still, the BLS unit, which responds to minor medical calls such as sprained ankles, isn’t in much use overnight, said the mayor, who is looking to end its overnight services and while keeping it active during the day.

Another $175,000 will be cut from the city’s EMS Academy, a training program that will have to look to other resources, including outside funding such as foundation grants. The city’s two-person CARES unit, composed of two EMS workers from the St. Paul Fire Department who respond to mental health crises, would be folded into the existing BLS unit. “It won’t exist anymore as a stand-alone team,” the mayor said.

In the areas of community and economic development, the mayor’s budget proposal includes $1 million as a one-time investment in a Commercial Corridors Fund to support the city’s business districts, and $200,000 as a one-time funding increase to support the city’s District Councils.

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