WASHINGTON —  The Federal Reserve on Wednesday made another cut in interest rates, but dialed back expectations for lowering rates in the near future.

The rate reduction, the third in a row, had been widely expected, but where policymakers go from here is anything but certain.

Plans for several more rate cuts in 2025 have become muddied as progress the Fed made on curbing inflation has stalled and uncertainties abound about what impact the incoming Trump administration will have on the economy.

The Fed’s new quarter-point rate reduction, coming out of its last policy-setting meeting of the year, will give consumers a bit more relief on interest payments for credit cards, home equity lines and some other personal loans.

The cumulative effects of the three rate cuts since September, totaling a full percentage point, are more meaningful and could help households that are stretched financially. More Californians have fallen behind in making debt payments this year, with delinquency rates on credit cards and auto loans rising especially for millennials (ages 28-43), according to the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley.

The Fed’s recent rate cuts, however, haven’t done a whole lot for potential homebuyers and sellers. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate, while ticking down a little this month, most recently stood at 6.6% last Thursday — which is actually up from about 6% in mid-September, according to Freddie Mac. And analysts don’t see mortgage rates coming down significantly in the near term.

While Wednesday’s rate cut was expected — futures markets gave it a 95% probability before the announcement — the view ahead is clouded by uncertainty over what President-elect Trump might do, on trade as well as fiscal policy.

Trump has talked about cuts in taxes and regulations, which would likely stimulate economic activity. But he also has proposed tariffs on all imports and even higher levies on Chinese goods, which most analysts see as inflationary and a hit to economic growth.

Whether Trump will go through with his tariff threats, and if so, when and by how much, remain highly uncertain.

Beyond questions about the new administration’s intentions, Fed policymakers already had reason to slow their rate-cut plans. The American economy and jobs, while slowing a bit, have kept growing at a solid pace.

At the same time, consumer price inflation, which reached near double digits in the summer of 2022, has recently stopped trending down toward the Fed’s 2% target. Inflation edged up a notch in November, with prices rising 2.7% from a year earlier as consumers paid more for used cars and airline fares, but also staple items like medical care and foods purchased for home. Rising grocery prices, in particular, have gnawed at consumer sentiments, and were seen as a key factor in Trump’s victory in November.

“I think for lower- and moderate-income households, the budgetary battle continues, month in and month out,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com. “Inflation on everyday necessities continues to be an issue.”

In September, the Fed began its latest rate-cutting scheme by making a big half-point reduction, followed by two quarter-point moves. And based on the trajectory of inflation then, it had forecast four more smaller cuts next year.

But on Wednesday, the Fed’s updated projections showed officials expecting just two quarter-point cuts in 2025 and another two the following year. And analysts say policymakers are likely to pause at their next rate-setting meeting in January.

In their latest projections, most Fed officials said the U.S. economy would grow 2.1% next year, compared with 2.5% this year, which is up significantly from its previous September forecast. They see their preferred measure of core inflation as ending the year at 2.8% and at 2.5% in 2025. The nation’s unemployment rate, which was 4.2% in November, is expected to rise to 4.3% around this time next year.

Wednesday’s announcement takes the Fed benchmark interest rate down to a range of 4.25% to 4.5%. That’s a full percentage point lower than it was in September, but is still considered above the so-called neutral rate that’s neither stimulative nor restrictive for the economy.

President-elect Donald Trump has a new game plan for Herschel Walker, his longtime friend, ally and former football star.

Three years after Trump handpicked Walker to run for the Senate in his home state of Georgia in a crucial, combative, expensive and high-profile Senate race, the president-elect is now selecting his friend to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the Caribbean nation of the Bahamas.

“Herschel has spent decades serving as an ambassador to our nation’s youth, our men and women in the military, and athletes at home and abroad,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday night on social media, as he pointed to Walker’s resume, which includes serving as co-chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition during Trump’s first term in the White House.

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Walker is a former professional and college football star running back who won a Heisman Trophy and helped propel the University of Georgia to a national championship.

His friendship with the former and future president goes back to his days playing for the Trump-owned New Jersey Generals USFL football team in the 1980s. Walker also was a major Trump supporter and surrogate in the 2020 presidential election.

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In August 2021, Walker launched a Republican Senate campaign in Georgia after months of support and encouragement from Trump to run for office.

Walker, a first-time politician, was dogged during his Senate run by controversial statements and damaging revelations about his personal life and business career.

Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker of Georgia holds a campaign rally on Oct. 27, 2022 in Cumming, Georgia. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)

The race between Walker and Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock ended up being one of the most closely watched Senate battles in the 2022 midterms. The contest went into overtime, with Walker ending up narrowly losing to Warnock in a runoff election in December of that year.

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This year, Walker joined Trump on the campaign trail in Georgia days before Election Day, as the former president carried the key southeastern battleground state after narrowly losing it to President Biden four years ago.

Former NFL running back and former Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Herschel Walker addresses the crowd at a rally for former President Donald Trump, on Nov. 3, 2024 in Macon, Georgia. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Walker becomes the third Republican who lost a recent Senate race in Georgia to be nominated by Trump for a post in his second administration.

Former Sen. David Perdue, who lost his seat to Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff in the 2020 cycle, was selected by Trump to serve as ambassador to China, and former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who lost to Warnock in the 2020 cycle, was picked by Trump to run the Small Business Administration.

Trump’s naming of Walker as ambassador to the Bahamas is the second time this month the former football star made headlines.

This past weekend, Walker graduated from the University of Georgia, 42 years after he last attended the school.

Environmental advocates are cautiously optimistic after the Supreme Court left California’s nation-leading auto emissions standards in place — at least for the moment.

The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge from Ohio and 16 other conservative states that aimed to strip California of its authority to adopt vehicle emissions standards stricter than federal benchmarks. However, days earlier, justices announced they will decide whether red-state fuel producers have legal standing to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for alleged financial losses caused by California’s stringent fuel economy standards and electric vehicle mandate.

State policymakers and environmental advocates view the Supreme Court’s decision to leave California’s regulatory powers intact as a triumph. But, as an adversarial presidential administration is poised to take office, experts say they anticipate a flurry of legal objections over nearly all forthcoming California clean air policies.

“The Supreme Court was right to turn away this radical request by Republican-led states to upend decades of law letting California cut pollution and clean our air,” said Daniel Villaseñor, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom. “California’s authority was codified in the Clean Air Act by none other than Republican Richard Nixon, who recognized that California should continue serving as a lab for innovation to show the nation what’s possible with smart policy.”

The battle to alleviate air pollution and reduce planet-warming gases will be waged largely in the courts over the next four years, according to experts. And the legal strategy, they say, will need to focus on defending California’s aggressive clean air rules as much as it will be about ushering in new regulation.

“It’s good news, at least in the short term,” said Joe Lyou, president of California-based nonprofit the Coalition for Clean Air. “Everyone’s concerned about what’s going to happen in the long term. But this is a good start to what will undoubtedly be a long, long battle over clean air over the next four years. A lot of it is going to be up to the lawyers.”

Several industry groups have already filed litigation to contest California’s rules, including a ban on new sales of gasoline vehicles in 2035.

Last week, when the Supreme Court announced it would review a legal challenge over how California regulations affected fuel producers, it signaled its willingness to consider objections to California’s vehicle emission rules. However, the justices won’t be weighing the merits of the case, only whether the fuel companies have the right to sue.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals had previously ruled the lawsuit invalid, in part, because fuel producers are challenging California emission standards adopted in 2012. Because car manufacturers already comply with the standard, there is no feasible remedy for their claims, experts say.

Another part of the fuel producers’ argument is that the Clean Air Act only grants California the ability to regulate conventional vehicle pollution for clean air — such as smog-forming nitrogen oxides — not planet-warming gases such as CO2 to address global warming.

“Their argument is this authority was given to California because they have really bad smog problems, not because of climate change,” said Ann Carlson, the founding director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment at UCLA. “And therefore, they shouldn’t be able to regulate greenhouse gases under this special power they have.”

But many environmental advocates say that argument may be moot. California air regulators have long maintained that air quality issues in major California cities — including smoggy Los Angeles — are so severe that electric vehicles are necessary to meet pollution standards. Air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions go hand in hand, they say.

“You have a technology, in these zero emission vehicles, that can reduce the full spectrum of pollution,” said Alice Henderson, lead counsel for transportation and clean air policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization that has helped defend California rules. “And it is sort of laughable to think that these air agencies should be forced to ignore that technology.”

But the fight to enshrine clean air rules is not just legal sparring. For Lyou, it’s about the health consequences of inhaling air pollution. According to the California Air Resources Board, air pollution contributes to roughly 5,000 premature deaths each year in Southern California.

“It really comes down to whether people are going to have asthma attacks, whether people die prematurely or whether people have heart attacks,” Lyou said. “These are lives at stake.”