• Trump said he's considering taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public.
• The move would privatize the mortgage giants, which have been under government control since 2008.
• Critics have said privatizing the companies could increase mortgage rates.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was "giving very serious consideration" to taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public and would make a decision soon.

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are doing very well, throwing off a lot of CASH, and the time would seem to be right," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

The president said he would speak to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, William Pulte, as well as others, regarding the decision.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public would mean removing the mortgage giants from the government conservatorship they have been under since 2008 and privatizing them.

Previous attempts, including under Trump's first term, have been made to remove the companies from the government's control. Critics say the move could lead to higher mortgage rates.

During his confirmation hearing in January, Bessent said that "no conservatorship should be indefinite. However, any actions pursued should be carefully designed and executed." He also told Bloomberg in February that the decision to release the firms would depend on the impact it would have on mortgage rates.

Pulte, who heads the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, told CNN in March that privatizing the companies was not a top priority.

"Fannie and Freddie shouldn't be in conservatorship forever," Pulte said. "But it's critical to ensure any discussion about exiting conservatorship needs not only to ensure safety and soundness but how it would affect mortgage rates."

BI previously reported that shares in the firms have increased dramatically this year and could soar even further if the conservatorship ends. Analysts at Pimco said re-privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be good for shareholders but could lead to increased costs for borrowers.

Trump's comments on taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public come as fears over the federal deficit continue to grow. The president is pushing major legislation through Congress that would add trillions to the deficit.

Bankers have estimated that the government could make hundreds of billions by selling its shares in the companies, The Wall Street Journal reported.

House Republicans made a last-minute change to the $1,000-per-baby MAGA Accounts in their sweeping tax bill: Calling them "Trump Accounts" instead.

Why it matters: It's the latest in a series of attempts by congressional Republicans to display their loyalty to the president through legislation — and the one that is most likely to be signed into law.

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• House Republicans have introduced bills to put Trump on the $100 bill, rename Dulles International Airport after him and allow him to run for a third term.
• Republicans have also pushed to codify his proposed land-grabs with bills allowing him to negotiate the purchases of Greenland and the Panama Canal. One proposed renaming Greenland to "Red, White and Blueland."

Driving the news: House Republicans tucked the renaming into an 11th-hour amendment to their "One, Big Beautiful Bill" — a hulking fiscal package to extend the Trump tax cuts and cut $1.5 trillion in spending.

• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is moving to hold a vote on the package as early as early Thursday morning after GOP hardliners softened their opposition on Wednesday.
• The Trump Accounts would seed $1,000 for every American baby born starting in 2026. The original name — MAGA — stood for "money account for growth and advancement."

The other side: Democrats railed against the late-stage change at a Rules Committee hearing on the amendment.

• "You all would be screaming bloody murder if we named savings accounts after Barack Obama," said Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.).
• Said Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.): "Why don't we call it the Trump Diaper Savings? It could be TDS, because I think the only way you end up with a stupid name like this is if you have TDS."

Tune into Axios' event looking at the evolving trade landscape's ripple effect on the global economy, the optimism of business investors, and AI's increasing role in building supply chain resilience.

Featured speakers include Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, 26th Sec. of the Army Dan Driscoll, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), deputy dir. of the CIA Michael Ellis & Bayer CEO Bill Anderson.

A WWE Superstar who has been surprisingly absent from Monday Night Raw has now given an update regarding their injury status.

After creating one of the most memorable moments during WrestleMania weekend, WWE Superstar Karrion Kross has addressed his criticism of Logan Paul and WWE.

Long-time Colts owner Jim Irsay passed away on Wednesday.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are dead last in the National League Central, but is not moving on so fast from their superstar ace Paul Skenes.

Los Angeles Lakers rookie Bronny James is among the NBA's best in one specific area.

Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Minnesota Timberwolves reached a new low in viewership in over ten years.

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The Eastern Conference Finals are underway, with Tyrese Haliburton and the Indiana Pacers facing Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks.

Trump revealed the card to reporters aboard Air Force One last month, with his face emblazoned on it, calling it the "Trump Card."

Trump's approval rating with men has jumped five percent in a month but is still not at its highest during his second term.

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Officials announced an arrest in the decades-old murder of a father of three whose dismembered body was found in a ravine.

The Edmonton Oilers and Dallas Stars are set to drop the puck in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals on Wednesday night in Dallas.

President Trump on Wednesday repeated false crime numbers, shared misleading images and doubled down on a debunked "white genocide" conspiracy theory in South Africa during his tense Oval Office meeting with that nation's president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

Driving the news: Trump used a video made by political activists who oppose Ramaphosa to emphasize his claims about white Afrikaners facing racial violence by the majority Black population — claims that are widely disputed and rooted in white nationalist conspiracy theories.

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Catch up quick: Trump ambushed Ramaphosa during a tense meeting in which Trump vowed to help white South African farmers get asylum in the United States.

• Ramaphosa kept his cool as Trump showed him a video that included images of white crosses along a South African road. Trump said they represented "over 1,000" white farmers killed.
• The video also showed Black South African activists purportedly calling for violence against white farmers.
• "We have dead white people, dead white farmers, mostly," Trump said, repeating unproven claims that white people in South Africa are disproportionately affected by the nation's high crime rates.

The latest: One image that Trump shared that he claimed showed genocide against white people in South Africa was actually a screenshot of a February YouTube video from the Democratic Republic of Congo that included a caption on the incident, per AFP.

• It features "Red Cross workers responding after women were raped and burned alive during a mass jailbreak in the Congolese city of Goma," AFP notes.
• The video of what Trump said was a "burial site" of "over a thousand" white farmers was taken from a 2020 tribute to Glen and Vida Rafferty, a white farming couple who were murdered, and a display of "support in the fight against farm murders," per The Bulletin's caption of the incident.

South Africa-based CNN correspondent Larry Madowo said almost everything Trump said was "inaccurate or immediately debunked."

• He said he'd looked into the data and found no evidence of a white genocide in South Africa. "I don't think it's possible that 1,000 farmers could've been killed and buried along the roadside and there's thousands of cars paying respects without anybody noticing it," Madowo said.

Reality check: South African officials, scholars, journalists and others say there's no evidence of "thousands" of white farmers being killed in that nation, or targeted in the way Trump claimed.

• They say farmers of all races have been victims of violent home invasions in South Africa, which has a murder rate of 45 victims per 100,000 residents, the second-highest among countries that publish crime data, according to the UN Office for Drugs and Crime.
• 225 people were killed on South African farms during the four years ending in 2024, per the New York Times. Those victims included 101 Black current or former workers living on farms and 53 farmers, who are usually white, the Times reported.
• Most of the nation's violent crime occurs in cities where Black residents make up the majority, officials report.

State of play: The Trump administration welcomed a small number of white South African refugees into the U.S. this month. It also announced it was ending deportation protections for refugees from Afghanistan.

• The admission of Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that dominated South African politics during apartheid, is in response to Trump's call to "prioritize U.S. refugee resettlement of this vulnerable group facing unjust racial discrimination in South Africa," the State Department said.
• The Trump administration said white South Africans are victims of a controversial new law aimed at countering the lingering impact of apartheid.

The backstory: Some of the tension surrounding South Africa's farms stems from its new Expropriation Act, which allows the government to take some land and redistribute it as part of a long-running effort to lessen the economic disparities created by apartheid.

• Under apartheid, which ended in 1994, South Africa's white minority government prevented Black people from owning land or enjoying basic rights for nearly a half-century.
• Three decades later, South Africa's president and many other leaders are Black. White people make up 7.3% of South Africa's population while owning 72% of the farmland, a disparity that continues to ripple through the economy.

Yes, but: South Africa's new law is designed to work something like eminent domain in the U.S. It allows the government to take land from private parties if it's in the "public interest," and allows that to be done without compensation — but only if negotiations for a reasonable settlement fail.

• The nation's leading farmers' union says there've been no land confiscations since the expropriation law was passed last year.

More from Axios:

• How false "white genocide" claims became central to Trump's view of South Africa
• Trump's open door to white South Africans buys into conspiracy theory

Editor's note: This article has been updated with details of findings debunking President Trump's genocide claims.

• Google announced over two dozen new AI updates at its I/O developer conference.
• It's impressive, though some of the new products seem to overlap significantly.
• Google's approach could lose to more focused rivals as tech races to build an "everything app."

Attending Google's I/O developer conference is like being doused with a firehose of new AI announcements.

At I/O's keynote event on Tuesday, Business Insider counted at least two dozen new models, features, and updates.

"We are shipping faster than ever," Google CEO Sundar Pichai boasted onstage.

Indeed. But it's starting to get a little confusing. For one, some of the launches seem to overlap with each other. Launching so many AI products in such a short timeframe is impressive, and it can also feel scatterbrained.

AI Mode allows you to chat with Google as you browse the web, creating a more conversational search experience. Don't confuse it with Gemini in Chrome, which allows you to ask Gemini questions while you browse.

With Gemini Live, you can point your phone at whatever you want and talk to the AI assistant about it. Don't mistake it for Search Live, which allows you to chat with Search about whatever your phone sees.

Project Mariner is an experimental AI agent that can take actions like booking tickets. Gemini's upcoming Agent Mode also has agentic capabilities, like helping users find just the right Zillow listing.

Not all the new tools seemed that similar. Google launched an impressive new AI filmmaking tool called Flow, powered by its new model Veo 3.

Google also touted updates to an entirely separate AI model family from Gemini called Gemma which, incidentally, can help decipher how dolphins talk to each other — that's DolphinGemma.

Multiple Googlers that Business Insider spoke with at I/O used a single word to describe Google's current rate of shipping: "intense."

Google's approach complicates its own vision of building a single, universal AI assistant. (That mission has its own name, too: Project Astra.)

OpenAI is also moving fast towards this goal and appears intent on launching a dedicated device to run it, given its recent purchase of Apple designer Jony Ive's hardware startup.

Google risks building so many overlapping AI products that it will be tough to compete with a single, more stand-alone solution, such as an AI-native phone.

No one's counting Google out, though. The tech giant has become an undeniable AI leader, inventing much of the core research behind the current boom and successfully launching transformational technology like Waymo. Time will tell whether Google's more sprawling approach wins out.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

The 12-year veteran has retired after an impressive MLB career.

Bo Bichette is expected to become a free agent at the end of the season, and a former general manager expects the Dodgers and Yankees to be the favorites.