NEW YORK (AP) — A top official at the Federal Reserve said Saturday that this month's stunning, weaker-than-expected report on the U.S. job market is strengthening her belief that interest rates should be lower.
Michelle Bowman was one of two Fed officials who voted a week and a half ago in favor of cutting interest rates. Such a move could help boost the economy by making it cheaper for people to borrow money to buy a house or a car, but it could also threaten to push inflation higher.
Bowman and a fellow dissenter lost out after nine other Fed officials voted to keep interest rates steady, as the Fed has been doing all year. The Fed's chair, Jerome Powell, has been adamant that he wants to wait for more data about how President Donald Trump's tariffs are affecting inflation before the Fed makes its next move.
At a speech during a bankers' conference in Colorado on Saturday, Bowman said that “the latest labor market data reinforce my view” that the Fed should cut interest rates three times this year. The Fed has only three meetings left on the schedule in 2025.
The jobs report that arrived last week, only a couple of days after the Fed voted on interest rates, showed that employers hired far fewer workers last month than economists expected. It also said that hiring in prior months was much lower than initially thought.
On inflation, meanwhile, Bowman said she is getting more confident that Trump's tariffs “will not present a persistent shock to inflation” and sees it moving closer to the Fed's 2% target. Inflation has come down substantially since hitting a peak above 9% after the pandemic, but it has been stubbornly remaining above 2%.
The Fed’s job is to keep the job market strong, while keeping a lid on inflation. Its challenge is that it has one main tool to affect both those areas, and helping one by moving interest rates up or down often means hurting the other.
A fear is that Trump's tariffs could box in the Federal Reserve by sticking the economy in a worst-case scenario called “stagflation,” where the economy stagnates but inflation is high. The Fed has no good tool to fix that, and it would likely have to prioritize either the job market or inflation before helping the other.
On Wall Street, expectations are that the Fed will have to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September after the U.S. jobs report came in so much below economists' expectations.
Trump has been calling angrily for lower interest rates, often personally insulting Powell while doing so. He has the opportunity to add another person to the Fed's board of governors after an appointee of former President Joe Biden stepped down recently.
FILE - Michelle Bowman, Vice Chair for Supervision of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, takes a seat for an open meeting of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve, in Washington, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian drone strikes killed at least two people in the Ukrainian city of Odesa overnight into Saturday, local authorities reported, ahead of a proposed ceasefire for Orthodox Easter.
A further two people were wounded in the attack on the Black Sea port city, when drones hit a residential area, damaging apartment buildings, houses and a kindergarten.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia targeted Ukraine with 160 drones overnight, of which 133 were shot down or intercepted, hours before a proposed Easter ceasefire was due to come into force.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said 99 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight across Russia and occupied Crimea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday declared a 32-hour ceasefire over the Orthodox Easter weekend, ordering Russian forces to halt hostilities from 4 p.m. Saturday until the end of Sunday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised Saturday to abide by the ceasefire, describing it as an opportunity to build on peace initiatives. But he warned there would be a swift military response to any violations.
“Easter should be a time of silence and safety. A ceasefire (at) Easter could also become the beginning of real movement toward peace,” Zelenskyy wrote in an online post on Saturday.
But he added: “We all understand who we are dealing with. Ukraine will adhere to the ceasefire and respond strictly in kind.”
Ukraine earlier proposed to Russia a pause in attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure over the Orthodox Easter holiday.
Previous ceasefire attempts have had little impact, with both sides accusing each other of violations.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday described Putin’s move as a “humanitarian” gesture, but said Moscow remains focused on a comprehensive settlement based on its longstanding demands — a key sticking point that has prevented the two sides from reaching an agreement.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that a prisoner swap Saturday brought home 175 of its soldiers.
Zelenskyy confirmed Saturday’s exchange, saying that 175 service members and seven civilians were returned.
“Most had been held in captivity since 2022. And finally, they are home,” he wrote on X.
At the exchange site in northern Ukraine, Svitlana Pohosyan waited for her son’s return. Asked about the ceasefire, she said: “I want to believe it. God willing, may it be so. We will believe and hope that everything will be fine, that a ceasefire will come on such a holy day, and that there will be peace — peace in Ukraine and peace in the whole world.”
“My celebration will come when my son returns,” she added. “I will hold him in my arms — and that will be the greatest celebration for me. And for every mother, every family."
Periodic prisoner exchanges have been one of the few positive outcomes of otherwise fruitless monthslong U.S.-brokered negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv. The talks have delivered no progress on key issues preventing an end to Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, now in its fifth year.
Separately, seven residents of Russia's Kursk region returned from Ukraine Saturday after they were captured by the Ukrainian army, Russian state media reported. They were greeted at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border by Russia's human rights ombudswoman, Tatyana Moskalkova.
According to Moskalkova, the returnees were the last of those who were taken to Ukraine from the Kursk region after the Ukrainian army took control of parts of the region in 2024.
Ukrainian forces made a surprise incursion into Kursk in August 2024 in one of their biggest battlefield successes in the war. The incursion was the first time Russian territory was occupied by an invader since World War II and dealt a humiliating blow to the Kremlin.
Zhyhinas reported from northern Ukraine. Morton reported from London.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
In this photo provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanised Brigade press service on April 10, 2026, a Ukrainian serviceman looks at FPV drone takeoff during a training at the polygon in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanised Brigade via AP)
In this photo provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanised Brigade press service on April 10, 2026, a Ukrainian serviceman prepares a machine gun on a combat ground drone during a training at the polygon in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanised Brigade via AP)
A rescue worker walks in front of residential building which was heavily damaged after a Russian strike in Odesa, Ukraine, Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Shtekel)
