Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell talks to President Donald Trump as they tour the Federal Reserve’s renovation project on July 24, 2025. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Late Sunday evening, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell rang the alarm for the men who run America’s largest corporations, banks and consultancies and are convinced that Donald Trump’s authoritarianism is just another variable to be modeled, hedged or arbitraged. In a video statement, the Republican Powell hit back against the Justice Department’s political weaponization against the Federal Reserve’s independence.
On Friday evening, the Justice Department served the Fed with grand jury subpoenas, threatening criminal indictment against Powell for his June testimony before the Senate Banking Committee about the bank’s building renovation project. The official pretext for the subpoenas is whether Powell accurately characterized details about a $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s Washington headquarters. The real reason, which the chair stated plainly in his extraordinary message, is that he refused to lower interest rates as quickly as Trump demanded.
Powell is being punished for refusing to bend monetary policy to the whims of an authoritarian president who believes the entire machinery of government exists to serve his personal interests and ambitions.
Let’s be absolutely clear about what’s happening here. Powell is being punished for refusing to bend monetary policy to the whims of an authoritarian...
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