Trump: Fannie, Freddie buy mortgage debt

U.S. President Donald Trump is directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 billion in mortgage bonds, a move he cast as his latest effort to bring down housing costs ahead of the November midterm election.

Trump announced the move on Thursday in a social media post, saying “This will drive Mortgage Rates DOWN, monthly payments DOWN, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable.”

“It is one of my many steps in restoring Affordability, something that the Biden Administration absolutely destroyed,” the president said.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises that the U.S. bailed out during the 2008 financial crisis, have already been increasing their holdings of mortgage bonds. The housing-finance giants grew their retained portfolios by more than 25% in the five months through October, according to recent figures.

There are roughly $9 trillion worth of agency mortgage bonds outstanding, so if Fannie and Freddie carry out all the purchases, it would amount to just over 2% of the market. Still, additional demand on the scale that the president laid out would likely push down spreads, translating into lower rates on the mortgages that U.S. households buy.

XAI limits Grok images over sex content

Elon Musk’s XAI restricted Grok’s image-generation feature for most users on the X social media platform after the artificial intelligence tool drew widespread condemnation for generating undressed images of women and children.

As of Friday, Grok replied to users on X that they’d need a paid subscription to generate and edit images. Those features were initially introduced on X for free with daily limits. The standalone Grok app, which operates separately from the social network, still allows users to generate pictures without subscribing.

Grok’s image-generation capabilities have gained notoriety over the past few weeks after users began asking it to edit photos of people — mostly women — to show them in bikinis. More users capitalized on the feature to create sexualized images of women and children on X. The tool was used to generate thousands of undressed images of people per hour, many without the subject’s consent.

A spokeswoman for xAI didn’t have an immediate comment. Musk said in a post on X last week that “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

Supreme Court looks to tariffs ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court said Wednesday will be its next opinion day after leaving the market in suspense Friday on the fate of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his signature economic policy.

The court never says in advance which decisions are ready for release, only that rulings in argued cases are possible when the justices take the bench at 10 a.m. Washington time. Tariff-exposed stocks quickly fell in the absence of a ruling on tariffs Friday, when the court issued just a single ruling in a criminal case.

Arguments on Nov. 5 suggested the court was skeptical that Trump had authority to impose the tariffs under a 1977 law that gives the president special powers during emergency situations. A ruling against Trump on tariffs would undercut his signature economy policy.

Compiled from Associated Press and Bloomberg reports.