Good morning. It is Friday, May 29th, 2026, and this is your Morning Brief.

COHOST: Today has a very Friday kind of split. Markets are acting confident, but several of the stories underneath that confidence are getting more complicated.

HOST: The biggest national development overnight is the tariff fight, because it went from a legal rebuke to uncertainty. Reuters reports a federal appeals court temporarily restored President Trump's tariffs on Thursday after the Court of International Trade had ruled that he exceeded his authority by using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify sweeping import duties.

HOST: That matters because the immediate market story is not just whether tariffs stay or go. It is whether businesses, importers, and investors are back in the position they keep finding themselves in with this White House, where the policy can be announced dramatically, challenged dramatically, and then half-restored while everybody waits for the next court step.

COHOST: So the why-now angle is not trade theory. It is operational whiplash.

HOST: Exactly. A clean ruling one way or the other would at least give companies something solid to model. A temporary stay keeps the economic question alive and the legal question alive at the same time. That means retailers, manufacturers, and shipping planners are still making decisions in a fog, and markets are still trying to price the odds that this turns into a lasting policy tool or a shrinking one.

HOST: It also overlaps with inflation and rate psychology. If traders think the tariffs eventually stick in a broad form, the conversation about imported costs comes back quickly. If they think the courts narrow the president's reach, some of that inflation anxiety cools. So the significance this morning is not only constitutional power. It is the return of price uncertainty to an economy that was just starting to feel more settled.

COHOST: And it fits the broader pattern of this year. The administration keeps presenting forceful policy as certainty, while institutions keep reminding everyone that certainty is still up for appeal.

HOST: A second national story that is still moving this morning is the administration's campaign against Harvard. Reuters reports a federal judge extended an order blocking the government from enforcing President Trump's proclamation barring most foreign students from entering the United States to attend Harvard, at least while the legal fight continues.

HOST: We have talked before about how this is bigger than one campus. The continuity point today is that the White House keeps widening the pressure campaign through immigration, funding, and accreditation levers, while the courts keep slowing at least part of that effort. The fresh piece is the extension of the judicial block, which means the administration again ran into a legal limit before it could turn a pressure tactic into immediate policy reality.

COHOST: And the economic angle is easy to miss if you only hear this as a culture-war fight.

HOST: Right. International students are part of the research pipeline, university finances, and the talent pipeline for science, medicine, and technology. So when Washington treats student mobility as a pressure tool, the effect is not contained to a campus dispute. It reaches into research competitiveness, local economies, and the message the country sends to highly skilled people deciding where to study and work.

HOST: The watch into next week is whether the administration changes tactics again, perhaps leaning harder on money or compliance reviews, or whether courts continue forcing it to narrow the highest-impact moves. Either way, it remains one of the cleaner examples of how executive pressure, institutional resistance, and economic consequences are all colliding in the same story.

HOST: On foreign policy, the Iran story is still active enough to stay on the board, but the meaningful update is what has not been resolved. Reuters reports the Trump administration extended the temporary ceasefire with Iran by another sixty days even after this week's sanctions move against an Iranian military-linked shipping network.

HOST: That keeps the contradiction we have been tracking very much alive. The White House wants the market benefit of saying escalation is contained and diplomacy still has runway. At the same time, it keeps using sanctions and military posture in ways that make the diplomatic claim harder to judge as stable policy rather than rolling tactical improvisation.

COHOST: Which means the story this morning is not peace or war. It is whether the administration has a genuine off-ramp or just a longer pause.

HOST: Exactly. Oil has been relatively restrained compared with worst-case fears, and that helps both markets and household inflation expectations. But the longer this sits in a state of unresolved pressure, the more every energy trader has to ask whether the next headline is another extension, another sanction, or something more disruptive. Into the weekend, that remains the practical lens.

HOST: The most important Ohio and Central Ohio story this morning is still the data-center subsidy fight, and now it has a more concrete policy edge. Ohio Capital Journal reports lawmakers used a legislative hearing this week to dig into the roughly one-point-six-billion-dollar cost of the state's data-center tax exemption in 2025, and separate legislation would pause new sales-tax exemption approvals for data centers for two years while the state reviews the program.

HOST: That is a material change from the earlier version of this story. Until recently, the debate was mostly retrospective: how did the tax break get so expensive, and who failed to forecast it? The new angle is prospective. Lawmakers are no longer only asking for explanations. Some are starting to ask whether the state should slow the incentive machine itself before approving more projects under the same terms.

COHOST: And for this audience, that is not abstract. Central Ohio is where a lot of the visible buildout pressure lands.

HOST: Right. The land use, transmission needs, construction traffic, and water-and-power debates do not happen in a spreadsheet. They show up around Columbus-area communities in real time. So when the legislature starts talking about a pause, the local significance is immediate. This is not an argument about whether AI infrastructure is real. It is an argument about whether Ohio set the public price too low for private access to that infrastructure boom.

HOST: The watch into next week is straightforward. Do lawmakers demand more detailed disclosures from the Department of Development and tax officials? Does the pause proposal gain real traction? And do major backers of the subsidy start defending it with harder numbers on jobs, payroll, and broader tax spillovers instead of the older general-growth language?

HOST: Staying local, the housing accountability story around Sawyer Towers still deserves continuity mention, even without a dramatic new turn overnight, because the public test remains live. WOSU's latest reporting says the demolition is expected to last about six months while Columbus points to its rental registry, relocation assistance, and housing-stability efforts as evidence that it has changed how it handles severe landlord failure.

HOST: The reason to keep this in today's brief is credibility. As long as those buildings are still coming down, city leaders are making an implied promise that the next housing crisis will be caught earlier and handled more forcefully. That is a short-horizon political claim, not just a long-horizon redevelopment story.

COHOST: So this stays active because residents can evaluate it in real time, not because the demolition footage itself is new.

HOST: Exactly. And in practical terms, the next five days matter because officials will keep being asked for measurable proof: inspection staffing, enforcement speed, relocation follow-through, and whether the city's newer systems are strong enough to act before conditions become a spectacle.

HOST: On home lending and mortgages, the fresh national datapoint is that relief still is not really here. Freddie Mac's survey released Thursday showed the average thirty-year fixed mortgage rate at six-point-five-three percent, up from six-point-five-one percent a week earlier. Mortgage News Daily said day-to-day rate movement on Thursday was essentially flat, but flat at these levels still means expensive financing.

HOST: The continuity line for Central Ohio is important. Inventory has improved compared with the most frantic years, and that helps buyers with selection and negotiating room. But the monthly payment problem remains severe enough that better choice does not feel like affordability. A small move from six-point-five-one to six-point-five-three is not dramatic on paper. In the real world, it is another reminder that the market is normalizing faster in pace than it is in payment comfort.

COHOST: Which is why people can hear that the market is healthier and still feel no personal relief at all.

HOST: Exactly. If you are buying into a Columbus-area market where prices remain elevated and property-tax and insurance costs are not trivial, the rate story still dominates the budget conversation. The watch item here is simple: not whether analysts can sketch a softer path for year-end, but whether any near-term move gets borrowing costs low enough to change actual household decisions in June.

HOST: On AI and technology, the cleanest fresh development is from Dell. Reuters reports Dell raised its annual profit outlook after another surge ...