Corinne Ramey (2:49)

Both sides celebrated the parts of the ruling that were in their favor. On Truth Social, Trump praised the court for its Courage and Letitia James noted the fact that the court upheld some business restrictions and also said that her office would appeal to the state's highest court.

Sabrina Siddiqui (3:07)

What happens next?

Corinne Ramey (3:08)

This almost certainly goes to the court of Appeals, which is the state's highest court. In fact, this court, this intermediate appeals court, explicitly said that in the decision that even though the justices couldn't agree on some things, they came together with the goal of not ordering a new trial and sending this back to the trial court, but allowing it to move forward to the high court.

Sabrina Siddiqui (3:32)

And what does this mean for Trump.

Corinne Ramey (3:34)

In the short term? It's certainly good for Trump. I mean, this was a massive financial penalty and it takes this really big headache away for him in the long term. I think it remains to be seen. We don't know what the high court will do or how they'll come down on this ruling.

Sabrina Siddiqui (3:53)

That was the Wall Street Journal's Corrine Ramey. Thank you, Corinne.

Corinne Ramey (3:56)

Thanks, Sabrina.

Sabrina Siddiqui (4:02)

Sales of existing homes in the US Increased unexpectedly in July, raising hopes that the long stalled housing market may be improving and that activity can gain more momentum in the fall. The National association of Realtors NAR said today that home sales were up 2% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.01 million. The slight gain surpassed the expectations of economists who had estimated a monthly decrease in sales of 0.5%. Will Parker, a Wall Street Journal reporter writing about the housing and residential rental market, has the story. Will, what's behind the unexpected pickup in home sales?

Will Parker (4:41)

There's a couple of things going on. Mortgage interest rates which have been so much higher than what people had been used to for a few years now they've come down enough to get more people into buying. That's one. And the thing that analysts have also seen is a pickup in activity from investors who may be buying homes to rent out or those who are buying vacation homes. So those couple of factors gave us a slight increase in sales.

Sabrina Siddiqui (5:05)

In July, you reported that the housing market is still depressed. Why is that?

Will Parker (5:10)

Home buying has been held back by really high prices for houses. Number one, we hit a record in price in June. You have home prices that have gone up 50% in some parts of the country over a span of five years or so. And mortgage interest rates are still quite high in combination with that, at least compared to where they were, say, five years ago. And until either of those two things changes significantly, sales are going to be below where they once were. Now a few things are heading in the right direction for buyers there's more inventory. So the number of homes available to buyers when they go out and look, there's more of them. So that's going to help buyers. It's going to keep price increases in check to some extent. And some people are hopeful that in the fall there will be even more of those homes available and more people can find a home to buy at a price that works for them.

Sabrina Siddiqui (6:01)

So what is the outlook moving forward?

Will Parker (6:04)

It depends a lot on if mortgage interest rates come down any further, they're still right above 6.5%. If they can get down closer to 6, you probably see more sales happen. That's a big if. The pricing is still really high. No one is predicting that home prices would fall super meaningfully, right? Maybe you get a little bit of a decline, but the ratio of the cost of a home to people's income is not improved. It's just gotten worse over the last decade or so. And things might get less bad in the near future, but probably not tremendously better.

Sabrina Siddiqui (6:38)

Will Parker is a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you, Will.

Will Parker (6:41)

Thank you.

Sabrina Siddiqui (6:42)

News Corp. Owner of the journal, also operates realtor.com under license from Narrative. Walmart led US stocks lower today as concerns about the giant retailer's costs overshadowed a strong sales performance. Walmart's quarterly profit missed expectations and the company's CEO warned tariffs will hit second half results ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's highly anticipated Jackson Hole speech tomorrow. The Dow and Nasdaq closed down about 0.3%, while the S&P 500 ended lower for a fifth consecutive day, down 0.4%. US manufacturing is rebounding, but so are price pressures. A flash purchasing managers index from SP Global, spanning both manufacturing and services, rose to 55.4. The reading suggests overall activity continued to expand and at a quicker clip. Manufacturing activity hit the highest in more than three years, nearing the threshold that divides contraction from expansion. The pace of expansion in services slowed slightly. Still, average selling prices rose at their fastest in three years, with tariffs cited as the principal cause coming up, twice as many employers as last year say they plan to pull back on filling jobs. What's behind the slowdown? That's after the break.

State Farm Advertiser (8:15)

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Sabrina Siddiqui (8:45)

The number of Americans who newly filed for unemployment benefits rose last week, according to the Labor Department, which also said the size of the unemployed population hit a new recent high earlier this month. In the week through August 16, new jobless claims filings rose to 235,000, up from 224,000 a week earlier. Continuing claims, an indicator of the size of the total unemployed population, came in at 1.97 million in the week through August 9, compared with 1.94 million the previous week. Meanwhile, one in five US employers plan to slow hiring in the second half of 2025, nearly double the rate of companies that anticipated bringing on fewer people at this time last year. That's according to a survey by the Conference Board, which reflects yet another sign of a weakening U.S. labor market. The report marks the second year in a row that many chief human resource officers polled were planning on fewer new hires. The last time executives were broadly optimistic about hiring was the second quarter of 2023. What's behind the steady decline? Ray Smith, the Wall Street Journal's reporter covering career and workplace issues, joins me now to discuss. Ray, we've talked about how US Jobless claims rose last week. What are businesses saying about the market?

Ray Smith (10:03)

Companies are being more cautious. They're saying there's a lot of economic uncertainty out there, such as stop and start tariffs, so they're really taking a pause and wondering how to move forward and not taking any big swings in terms of hiring. You've got this perfect storm of changes this year that has just made them a lot more cautious.

Sabrina Siddiqui (10:22)

And how are they adjusting their behavior?

Ray Smith (10:24)

They've been bragging to investors about shrinking their workforces and they're framing it as this is a way they can be more productive with fewer employees. That really signals to investors that this company is being smart and strategic rather than it looking like they're being cautious and scared. Novo Nordisk, for example, the company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, recently said they'd pause hiring in non critical areas. Meta, which has been on the hiring blitz for AI workers, is pausing that effort now. So it's big companies as well as smaller companies who are all saying they're.

Sabrina Siddiqui (10:57)

Slowing hiring and what do we expect from here?

Ray Smith (11:00)

It's sort of a wait and see approach from here, to be honest. There's still a lot of economic uncertainty with the stop and start tariffs and so companies are really waiting for things to settle down before making their next sort of job hiring moves or their next expansion moves. Right now we're still in sort of this wait and see environment.

Sabrina Siddiqui (11:20)

That was Wall Street Journal reporter Ray Smith. Thank you, Ray.

Ray Smith (11:23)

Thank you.

Sabrina Siddiqui (11:27)

And finally, in other news, President Trump said today that Ukraine would have to continue attacks on Russia to have any hope of winning the war. The comments on his social media platform, Truth Social, came days after the president hosted two summits designed to end the conflict. While it wasn't immediately clear what Trump meant by his comments, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said he was simply making an observation. And a former Ukrainian military officer suspected of leading a team that sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022 was detained in Italy yesterday under an international arrest warrant, according to investigators and people familiar with the case. The warrant was issued by German prosecutors. The development marks a breakthrough in the international manhunt for the alleged culprits of the attack, which is thought to be among the largest acts of modern day wartime sabotage. And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienime with supervising producer Michael Kosmides. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning.

Podcast Host/Producer (12:31)

Thanks for listening.