In the aftermath of right-wing youth activist Charlie Kirk's assassination at Utah Valley University in Orem, the cryptocurrency world leapt into action by scrambling to profit from it.

According to Bloomberg News, "Minutes after Kirk was shot, tokens associated with him started to appear: 'Pray For Kirk Coin,' 'DEAD KIRK' and 'Charlie Kirk’s dog,' among dozens of others. While many of the coins’ creators pitched the tokens as memorials to Kirk or sources of charity for his family, each was fundamentally an attempt to turn Kirk’s death into profit."

Since the shooting, more than 10,000 new crypto tokens have been launched that include the names "Charlie" and/or "Kirk," according to a review of data.

"Within an hour of the shooting, one Kirk token reached a market capitalization of $16 million," noted the report. "By that evening, creators of Kirk coins had already collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in transaction fees on the Solana blockchain. On X, many crypto traders and influencers chided their fellow 'degens' — a half-pejorative, half-affectionate term short for 'degenerate gambler' — for making money from Kirk’s death."

One crypto trader in Florida, Evan Rademaker, told Bloomberg he bought $30,000 worth of "RIP Charlie Kirk" coin, sold it at a $17,000 loss after it plummeted, then bought more after another surge, only to lose money a second time.

Many critics argue that such "memecoins," as they are called, are used as little more than old-school pump-and-dump fraud schemes. The Trump family has recently come under fire for their own forays into issuing crypto tokens, from a Trump memecoin used to give away access to a dinner with the president, to a venture called World Liberty Financial, co-founded by Trump's children that has reportedly netted the family billions of dollars, much of it from foreign entities.

After the Federal Reserve announced a slight reduction in the interest rate, several prominent economists observed that the nation's central bank was making noticeable moves in direct response to President Donald Trump's management of the economy.

Navy Federal chief economist Heather Long noted on Wednesday that the only dissenter against an interest rate cut was Stephen Miran, the Trump appointee who was confirmed by the Senate on a party-line vote just earlier this week. Miran's dissent was due to his wanting a rate cut of at least 50 basis points. Long analyzed each board member's vote and called it "wild" that Trump's newest appointee wanted the equivalent of "5 rate cuts by year-end."

"You can see the tension at the Fed in just 1 chart," Long tweeted. "It's likely we'll get 2 more cuts. One in October and one in December. But you can see the battles ahead."

The Fed typically cuts interest rates during an economic downturn in order to stimulate economic growth, and likewise keeps interest rates steady when the economy is more stable to prevent inflation from spiraling out of control. According to Long, the Fed's economic projection as Trump approaches the one-year mark of his second term next January is particularly dark: The Fed's board predicted that the unemployment rate would rise to roughly 4.5 percent, while inflation was projected to hit 3 percent. GDP growth was also expected to falter, cracking just 1.6 percent over the next quarter. Long referred to those projections as "stagflation-lite," which is a term economists use to describe an economy experiencing both a higher jobless rate and a higher inflation rate.

University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers also highlighted the Fed's gloomy economic outlook, characterizing it as the board saying: "Stagflation is in the room."

"Fed statement tracker tells you what they're trying to say," Wolfers wrote in a subsequent post to his X account, quoting the Fed's assessment of higher unemployment and rising inflation. "That first paragraph represents a sharp downgrade in the Fed's confidence about our economic conditions."

Economics reporter and author Matthew C. Klein found Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's summary of the rate cut as a "risk-management cut" illuminating, and posited that Trump's economy — so far defined by tariffs and mass deportations — may be the "risk" Powell was trying to manage. Political commentator Brian Allen had a similar interpretation of Powell's statement, opining that it seemed the Fed chair was warning that "the economy's breaking at both ends."

"That’s not just a recession. That’s stagflation. And it’s wearing a MAGA hat," Allen wrote. "This is the Trump economy."

FBI Director Kash Patel answered questions on Wednesday from the House Judiciary Committee, and MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace responded to the testimony by quoting one of his own comments back.

Democrats probed Patel about his ability to release the investigation files about accused child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

After watching the hearing, Wallace recalled Patel's comments from December 2023 while he was interviewing with Benny Johnson.

"House Republicans, put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are," Patel ranted at the time.

Before the House on Wednesday, however, Patel said that three federal courts said that he couldn't release the files. It was a claim fact-checked by the lawyers on the committee, saying that there is no law preventing him from releasing the files.

Legal analyst Kristy Greenberg, who is a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, told Wallace that the protective order in place from the grand juries would never prevent the FBI from being able to release the Epstein files. In fact, two judges wrote in their respective rulings that the FBI and Justice Department could release all of the information they have without approval from the judges.

Still, Patel tried to claim the courts hamstrung him.

"I mean, Judge Berman issued a court order where he said, I'm not producing the grand jury materials, and part of the reason why is because you can produce the Epstein files, including those interview reports," recalled Greenberg.

"Ultimately, what it comes down to is they don't have a leg to stand on with respect to keeping some of this material secret. And the more that they blame the judges and try to blame Democrats and blame everybody else and say that the law is preventing them from doing — it, it's just not true," Greenberg continued.

She went so far as to suggest a follow-up to clarify the position with the judge, allowing them to instruct the FBI and DOJ to turn over the files directly.

Wallace quoted Patel's words back again, "House Republicans, put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are."

She said that House Republicans in 2023 had the power to find out "who the pedophiles are."

"Kash Patel is now in charge of that department," Wallace said. "And his answers are not only illogical legally, they're totally unrelated to everything he ever said he believed House Republicans could do in the past."