Although the U.S. Secret Service thwarted a gun-toting man’s apparent plan to shoot former President Donald Trump as he golfed on Sept. 15, the incident adds to prior security-lapse concerns, police officers with decades of experience told The Epoch Times.

Highly publicized security weaknesses, which surfaced after the first assassination attempt against the 45th president on July 13, could embolden copycats—especially amid the heated 2024 presidential campaign, Billy Ray Hunter, a former SWAT officer in Alachua County, Florida, said. “I pray that this is the last one [but] I’m really concerned because I don’t believe it’s over,” he said in a Sept. 17 interview, two days after the second incident. “Enemies have seen the inability to protect him.”

Both Hunter and James Tignanelli, president of the Police Officers Association of Michigan, told The Epoch Times that it’s apparent that agents failed to take some basic steps to secure the golf course and ensure Trump’s safety. Read the full story here›

A recent blend of easing inflation rates and cooling labor market trends could force the Federal Reserve to pull the trigger on its first interest rate cut since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. central bankers kicked off their widely anticipated two-day policy meeting on Sept. 17, which could officially be the beginning of the end of an era of high interest rates.

Last month, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium that “the time has come for policy to adjust.” After the economy endured 14 months of the highest interest rates in two decades, the financial markets are overwhelmingly betting that the institution will begin to trim the benchmark federal funds rate and signal that more cuts are coming in the home stretch of 2024 and into 2025.

Heading into the Sept. 18 announcement, there are two main debates on Wall Street and in economic circles. First, will the Fed kick off the fresh cycle with a quarter-point or half-point rate cut? Second, will the central bank be aggressive or conservative in loosening monetary policy? Read the full story here›

Many of the medical field’s approaches to health are bizarrely wrong, Dr. Marty Makary, surgeon and professor at Johns Hopkins University told our colleague, Jan Jekielek on American Thought Leaders.

“We’ve got to recognize now the best practices are exactly opposite of what the medical establishment pounded into pediatricians for 15 years,” Makary said. “The medical establishment created a dogma in 1955 that fat was bad for your health. It was based on one guy: Dr. Ancel Keys.”

In his interview with Makary, Jan digs into the culture of medical groupthink and cases where health recommendations have produced disastrous results: diabetes, peanut allergies, opioids, C-sections, and the low-fat diet. Watch the whole interview here›

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