Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has stated that he anticipates the US Federal Reserve chairman to maintain interest rates low and never “disagree” with him.
Trump made his remarks on Tuesday as candidates for the vacancy in Jerome Powell’s place began interviews.
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Trump stated in a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform that “I want my new Fed Chairman to lower interest rates if the Market is doing well, not destroy the Market for no reason whatsoever.”
“The United States should be compensated for success rather than its downfall.” “The Fed will never be the Chairman if anyone disagrees with me.”
Trump has repeatedly pressed the Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank, to lower interest rates since taking office in February in an effort to promote economic growth in the US economy.
Trump also threatened to fire Fed Chairman Powell in public for not following his policy’s cut-off, calling him a “numbskull” and “major loser.” Concerns about the Fed’s future independence from political interference, a long-standing convention in the US, have been fueled by the president’s remarks regarding Powell’s replacement.
The Fed’s benchmark interest rate has already been reduced three times this year, starting at 3.5% to 3.75 percent in mid-December. However, Trump has previously suggested that the ratio should be as low as 1%.
Lower interest rates lower borrowing costs and encourage spending, but cutting rates too quickly or cutting them too sharply increases the risk of inflation.
Trump is addressing the next Fed chairman with a clear message, according to Michael Sandel, the chief investment officer at Potomac River Capital and a historian of the Federal Reserve.
“Evidence is drawn attention to which of the finalists will do what Trump wants,” Powell’s successor’s statement, “undoubtedly.” Or, to put it another way, who can persuade Trump that their plan serves his best interest, Sandel said.
According to the CNBC news outlet, Christopher Waller, a current Fed governor, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Warsh, a financier, and Kevin Hassett, are the top candidates to replace Powell.
Hassett claimed this week that the Fed should keep cutting interest rates despite recent economic indicators that many analysts had previously assumed the US economy was performing better.
CNBC reported that the US Commerce Department reported 4.3 percent growth in its gross domestic product (GDP) for the months of July and September, which is higher than the 3.2% growth that Dow Jones analysts had predicted for the third quarter of 2025.
According to the Bureau of Economic Affairs, consumer spending and exports contributed to much of that growth.
Hassett appeared to be the strongest candidate, according to Sandel, who had a working relationship with Trump prior.
Kevin Hassett, who is closest to Trump and the NEC chair, is probably the final choice and the one who can make his case the best, he said.
Hassett added that he possesses the “rare” ability to “teach Trump’s economics and propagandize Trump’s own unwavering ideas.”
On December 16, 2025, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett addresses the media in Washington, DC, United States. [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]
According to the Russian Investigative Committee, two police officers and a third person were killed in a southern Moscowblast.
The two traffic police officers were killed overnight on Tuesday into Wednesday when an explosion occurred as they attempted to apprehend a suspect, according to a statement released on Wednesday.
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As the officers approached the suspect who was driving near their service vehicle, “an explosive device was triggered,” according to the statement.
According to the statement, “Two police officers died from their injuries,” adding that the other person standing next to them also perished in the explosion.
According to the report, an investigation into “attempted murder” of law enforcement officers and “explosives trafficking” has been launched.
Several large police officers were present in the area, according to images that were filmed on Russian television.
A Russian general was killed earlier this week when the incident took place on Yeletskaya Street in southern Moscow.
An explosive device placed underneath a car on Monday claimed the life of Sergei Sarvarov, the head of the Russian General Staff’s operational training division.
Numerous Russian generals, local officials, and prominent individuals who support the offensive have died in explosions in Russia or the occupied region of Ukraine since the Russian offensive began in February 2022. Sometimes, Kyiv has claimed responsibility for these attacks.
Given the circumstances in the Gaza Strip, it is understandable that the wedding reception for Mustafa and Nesma al-Borsh was a modest affair.
Nesma photographed with her groom, Mustafa, at a beauty salon and rented a white dress. Only 40 people showed up for the ceremony and party in the Tuffah neighborhood in eastern Gaza City.
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Given the harsh conditions we are living in, we tried to steal a few happy moments, and we did, Nesma said, “but I won’t say it was the wedding day I had always dreamed of.”
Mustafa and Nesma were the ones who stole those happy moments.
Israeli shelling struck a building right next to the tent as the celebration on Friday came to a close.
The Ministry of Education in Gaza operated a vocational training facility, but during the war, it had been converted into a shelter. After the wedding, the couple planned to reside there.
Dust, smoke, and screams abound at the scene, and flames erupted from the area.
As their wedding day turned into a tragedy, the newlyweds were astonished and unable to comprehend what was happening to them.
A photo from Mustafa and Nesma’s wedding photo shoot [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera] just before their home was bombed.
From groom to rescuer
“I grabbed my bride’s hand and sent her with my just-departed female relatives.” After that, I removed my wedding suit jacket and rushed to safety with the other men inside the building, according to Mustafa, 29, from Halawa, a displacement camp in Gaza City near Tuffah.
The second floor of the school, where Mustafa’s family and others were staying, was directly hit by the shelling. Additionally, it struck the couple’s planned classroom. Everything they had planned for their wedding was destroyed.
My nephew, who was critically injured all over his body, was taken out by me, Mustafa said.
Although there were calls for ambulances, Israeli assistance was required for the entry of emergency personnel.
The ambulances were not permitted to enter from the Israeli side, he continued, adding that we had to wait more than two hours before they arrived. The circumstance was “incredibly terrifying.” Around us, there were strikes and shelling.
After more than two hours, ambulances were finally permitted to eject the dead and injured.
The victims were retrieved after civil defense teams ordered everyone to leave the building and instructed them to relocate to a safer location.
All their belongings were relocated to shelters inside the city, where families were relocated, once more.
The groom pointed to his white shirt and trousers as evidence that “I’m still wearing my wedding suit” as of that day.
Mohammad, my eight-year-old nephew, passed away two days later from his injuries, according to Mustafa.
After their shelter was bombed and they lost everything, Mustafa al-Borsh and his bride Nesma are now living together in separate tents with their respective families [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera].
repeated backtracking
Before Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza started in October 2023, Mustafa tied the knot with the now 22-year-old Nesma.
That month was the couple’s wedding date.
The kitchen, sofa set, and bedroom were all ready for me. In a photo of the apartment that had once been a part of his family’s home in Jabalia, northern Gaza, Mustafa said, “My fiancée and I put great effort into choosing every piece. Later, it was destroyed.
The couple’s wedding proposal sounded impossible because they had been bombarded, starved, and repeatedly relocated from their families.
Our families occasionally put pressure on us to get married because the war was dragging on, but we both agreed to disagree,” Nesma said, with Mustafa nodding in agreement. In the midst of war and displacement, “we kept asking ourselves how we could celebrate or organize a wedding.”
After losing two of his older brothers during the war, one in December 2023 when their home in Jabalia was bombed, and another in March 2025 during the second half of the conflict, Mustafa’s grief added distance to the idea of marriage.
As his mother listened in the conversation, Mustafa said, “Losing my brothers cast an overwhelming shadow of grief over us, especially my mother, who cannot stop crying whenever she remembers them.”
The couple believed the war had ended when the couple’s engagement was resumed on January 19, 2025. But it quickly resumed.
“At that time, my uncle’s house in Jabalia was still standing, so we made the decision to rent an apartment there and begin building it.” My bride started getting ready and putting on her outfits.
However, “we were shocked when the war broke out again in the middle of March 2025,” Mustafa said.
Both were forced to flee from northern Gaza to the west of Gaza City after the war’s end, where they had to spend their days in tents there until a second ceasefire was in place on October 10, 2025.
[Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera] This is Mustafa and Nesma’s third marriage preparation, but they both lost everything.
Refuge
About 50 kilometres (0, 30 miles) from the so-called “yellow line,” which Israel still controls in Gaza, Mustafa and his family moved to a shelter in the Tuffah neighborhood after the ceasefire was announced in October.
Despite our concerns about the school’s proximity to the yellow line, he said, “We wanted to escape life in the tents during the winter. We decided to move in.”
Both families agreed to hold the wedding on December 19 with a small ceremony in a tent close to the shelter following family discussions.
“I prepared everything I could once the date was decided. I was helped by other displaced families who also provided a classroom for us at the shelter. According to Mustafa, everything appeared to be going well.
Because the shelter was a large number of displaced families, the neighborhood was densely populated, and the area was located outside the yellow line, Mustafa claimed he never anticipated it would be attacked.
In accordance with the ceasefire agreement, the educational center was situated in a region where Israeli forces had withdrawn.
Despite the truce, hundreds of Israeli violations have been reported, with more than 400 Palestinians killed in recent attacks.
He claimed that there were eight fatalities in the shelling of the building next to the wedding tent, all of whom were Mustafa’s family’s neighbors and relatives.
Youssef, 7, Mustafa’s nephew, was seriously injured in the airstrike on the shelter shortly after leaving the nearby wedding tent [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera].
once more displaced
A mother, her husband, their child, and my young nephew, who had just begun to dance with joy, were among those killed, according to Mustafa.
What justification exists for pursuing these individuals? And what crime did I commit in order to steal our wedding day from my bride and I?
Due to the couple’s recent displacement and lack of a place to live together, they are now living separately from their families once more.
“Every time, I have to start from scratch.” Is this the extent of suffering? Adds despair to Mustafa.
“My bride and I are displaced, our families are displaced, and we live in tents with relatives.”
Nesma said, “We insisted on holding our wedding while the war was in full swing,” and then suddenly it returned on the day of our wedding.
This Christmas holiday is special for Alice Kisiya, a Palestinian Christian activist from Beit Jala in the occupied West Bank.
Following an Israeli court ruling in June that eventually forced Israeli settlers to leave the land and destroy an illegal outpost, Kisiya was able to set foot on her family’s land in the Christian village of al-Makhrour on Tuesday for the first time since 2019.
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Despite all the tactics they used to pressure me and my family into leaving the land, Kisiya told Al Jazeera, “This victory, which forced the settlers to dismantle their outpost in preparation for leaving for good, confirms that one must never tire of continuing the struggle.”
After winning the court case [Ahmad Jubran/Al Jazeera], Alice Kisiya is standing on her land on December 23.
After four months, they moved on to build an outpost on land owned by our family and left our family’s land. However, I have prevailed once more because it strengthened my resolve to fight my legal battle, she said, “because every time I saw them on my land, I saw them on my land.”
After an Israeli settler group claimed to have purchased the land from “other owners” and provided ownership documents, the Kisiya family’s legal battle became arduous and costly. An Israeli court recently rejected the settlers’ claim and determined that the documents presented were fake after years of legal proceedings. The Kisiya family had the right to reclaim the 5 dunams (0. 005 km2) of land in al-Makhrour, according to the court.
The Israeli court’s decision is significant because it affirms my legal rights and property rights and exposes the illegal erasure of the occupation and settlers’ fictitious obtaining of property documents, according to Kisiya, who was detained in 2024 for alleged settler land grabs.
On Friday, August 2, 2024, in the West Bank town of Beit Jala, Alice Kisiya, center, confronts Israeli soldiers after they declare her family’s land a military-only area.
Kisiya continues to live on her land despite winning the Israeli-occupied West Bank, feared by settler attacks and violence.
According to Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, the court ruling granted my family and I the right to reclaim the land, the home, and the restaurant that the occupation destroyed. However, we are now avoiding permanent presence due to settler violence, supported by the right-wing government and its ministers, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.
After years of leading a civil, legal, and popular campaign to confront Israeli occupation policies and illegal settlement expansions, Kisiya’s family home, which Israeli forces destroyed when she was a child, has since grown into a symbol of resistance in her Christian community and among other Palestinians.
[Monjed Jadou/Al Jazeera] Alice Kisiya claims that the Israeli government is persecution of Christians and that she needs more support from world church leaders.
encourage illegal settlements
The success of Kisiya gives hope to return. However, the so-called “Greater Jerusalem” plan continues to support Israel’s settlement expansion, which aims to link the Gush Etzion bloc south of the occupied West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is leading Israel’s far-right government, which is urging the creation of more settlements and the confiscation of Palestinian land.
Smotrich, a settler himself, wrote in a social media post that “we continue to write history in the State of Israel and the settlements we have legalized in three years.” We are preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state in the field. With faith in the cause of our ancestors, we continue to develop, construct, and settle in the land where we were born.
Under the current Israeli government, there are currently 210 settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, up nearly 50% from 141 in 2022.
While an Israeli government authorizes a settlement, an outpost is constructed without the consent of the government. Both constructions on occupied land are prohibited by international law.
7.7 million Jews make up these settlements, or nearly 10% of Israel’s total Jewish population.
In another attempt to divide Palestinian land from neighboring countries and thwart any chance of forming a contiguous Palestinian state, Israeli authorities are expected to advance plans to construct 9, 000 new housing units in a settlement on the site of the abandoned Qalandiya airport in occupied East Jerusalem.
The District Planning and Building Committee on Wednesday approved the plans for the so-called Atarot neighborhood in northern East Jerusalem, which is reminiscent of the , E1 plan to undermine Palestinian statehood.
A form of resistance against Palestinian farmers
Palestinians are finding their own ways to stop the Israeli land grab, though not in vain.
Despite Israeli plans to seize 2,800 dunams (2,800 km2) of agricultural land, farmer Bashir al-Sous, who is 60 years old, has continued to cultivate and preserve his land in al-Makhrour.
He explained to Al Jazeera that Road 60, which divided the land in two, and its subsequent reconstitution plans, first targeted his village in the 1990s. Palestinian farmers repeatedly object to Israeli authorities’ requests to issue building permits and to establish electricity and water pipelines.
Al-Sous wants to challenge Israel’s claim that the area is made up of Palestinians.
Al-Sous told Al Jazeera, “I think we can conserve our land by maintaining our presence 24 hours a day and planting it with grapes and olives.”
Farmers rely on historical wells and historic agrarian structures to cultivate the land, he said, adding that keeping our presence visible will dispel the myths that these lands have no owners.
He declared, “We will not leave our land.”
Concerns about legal evasion
Palestinian legal experts warn against eschewing court decisions because Israeli officials and settler leaders could avoid doing so.
“It is obvious that the settler expansion in the West Bank is accelerating.” According to Hassan Breijieh, head of the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission’s international law division, “what is happening is part of an Israeli policy that aims to end the notion of a Palestinian state.”
He claimed that “Israeli actions circumvent laws and court orders, especially in strategic areas” that are crucial to the Gush Etzion settlements’ connection to Jerusalem’s “Greek Jerusalem.”
Breijieh added that the Israeli government wants to use American support to carry out its grand settlement plan.
A message to the world of Christians
Kisiya still believes her legal victory offers a glimmer of hope, and it has come at a crucial time for Christians. Those worries are very real for her.
This Christmas brings strength and steadfastness to Kisiya and her family.
She told Al Jazeera, “I pray that God strengthens our faith and keeps us steadfast in our land.” According to Wikipedia, “Palestinian Christians are a key component of the national struggle and are subject to systematic displacement in an effort to portray the conflict as purely religious.”
She continued, “I want the world to know that we are not separate from the Palestinian cause.” We, along with our Muslim brothers and sisters, are a fundamental component of it. To allow Israel to portray the conflict as one between itself and Muslims, we are subject to systematic persecution that aims to expel Christians from the Holy Land and force them to flee.
Kisiya stated that she is interested in meeting with world leaders who were Christians, particularly those who were world leaders.
She urged the church to step up and make a wider effort to safeguard the Christian presence in Bethlehem and throughout Palestine, along with all other church leaders and clergy.
A draft law that would have criminalized France’s colonial rule from 1830 to 1962 has been in the hands of the country’s parliament. What we know about the bill, according to Nada Qaddourah of Al Jazeera.
