Price Spikes and Power Struggles: Week in Review | U.S. News Decision Points

Memorial Day – the unofficial start of summer – beckons, but first, the news. Seth Cline here with what you may have missed this week.

And a programming note: Decision Points will be back in your inboxes on Tuesday – enjoy the long weekend!

Filling in for Olivier, Scott Ward started the week with a look at how Emanuel Leutze’s famous 1851 painting, “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” captures the state of the Federal Reserve after Kevin Warsh was confirmed to lead the body.

As in that painting, the Fed’s destination is uncertain and the conditions are choppy, with inflation on the rise and dissent over whether the Fed should cut interest rates fracturing the Federal Open Market Committee. How Warsh navigates the transition could have a major impact on stocks – and investors.

Next up, U.S. News’ senior data editor Evan Comen mined 10 data-driven takeaways from the revamped Best Countries rankings launched last week.

The rankings showed that geography and income weren’t the only determinants of countries’ rankings – policy mattered too. Estonia’s tech focus saw it score highly in the Infrastructure and Opportunity categories, for example, and Morocco’s solar energy investments drove its strong performance on energy and environment measures.

The U.S. scored poorly in categories around environmental and civic health, but still cracked the the top 20 overall thanks to strong scores in the economic and culture categories.

On Wednesday, Tim Smart took stock of the U.S. economy in President Donald Trump’s second term.

By many metrics, the economy is humming along nicely: U.S. economic output is growing, the labor market is improving and the stock market has been hitting record highs.

“But inflation is the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” Tim writes, with recent reports showing the biggest price spikes in years. That’s largely because the costs of Trump’s war with Iran and his sweeping import tariffs have trickled down to consumers. “In other words, Trump’s economy would be doing even better if it weren’t for, well, Trump,” Tim reports.

A recent Gallup poll found seven in 10 Americans oppose the construction of AI data centers in their area, with many citing environmental pollution and the facilities’ “excessive use of resources” as reasons for opposing their construction.

Those resource demands are at the center of a power scramble in the resort town of Lake Tahoe, California. The town’s 50,000 residents need a new source of electricity after their energy supplier, NV Energy, said it will cut them off next year, at least partially because of the power needs of nearby data centers.

And in Utah, rural residents are fighting a massive new AI data center development backed by “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary. County officials approved the project despite local protests, so residents are now hoping to put the issue on the ballot in November.