Send It In, Jerome!

The Fed chair finally learns that the only way to deal with Trump is to push back.

The federal government might have blocked attempts by local law enforcement to investigate the ICE killing of Renee Good last week, but don’t worry: The feds are on the case, and we’re sure they’re doing a swell job. They’re certainly being thorough: The New York Times reports that the FBI investigation of the matter is looking not only into shooter Jonathan Ross’s actions, but also into Good’s “possible connections to activist groups.” They wouldn’t want to miss any further opportunities to smear her name. Happy Tuesday.

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a press conference on December 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images.)

The Only Language They Understand

by Andrew Egger

Jerome Powell had been taking it like a champ. For nearly a year, the chair of the Federal Reserve had been chewing his tongue and going about his business while Donald Trump sent a barrage of lies, insults, and threats his way. Trump, who had reaped great political benefits from the ZIRP economy of his first term, has blamed Powell for the generally bad economic vibes this time around. He habitually derided Powell’s intelligence, mused aloud that he could and might fire him, and speculated that cost overruns at the mid-rennovation Fed building in D.C. might have constituted criminal negligence on his part. All the while, he was making Powell’s actual day job immeasurably harder by squashing the economy with constantly fluctuating tariffs and trying to monkey with economic data at the Bureau for Labor Statistics.

Powell had tried the conciliatory approach, hosting Trump for a walkthrough of the Fed renovation last July. But this mostly just gave Trump the opportunity to do his standard anti-Powell shtick for the cameras while standing right next to the guy and wearing a hard hat. So, for the most part, Powell has adopted the grizzly-survival approach: Lie down, ignore it, and hope it goes away. Until this past weekend, that is, when Powell appeared at last to discover a core truth about this White House: The only thing that ever works is punching back.

Powell’s Sunday night video statement, in which he openly accused the Justice Department of opening a pretextual criminal investigation into him to pressure him to do the president’s bidding on interest rates, sent shockwaves through Washington. Yesterday, a remarkable coalition including every living former Fed chair and a bipartisan group of former Treasury secretaries and chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers released a statement condemning the White House’s mafioso tactics in the strongest possible terms:

The Federal Reserve’s independence and the public’s perception of that independence are critical for economic performance . . . The reported criminal inquiry into Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell is an unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks to undermine that independence. This is how monetary policy is made in emerging markets with weak institutions, with highly negative consequences for inflation and the functioning of their economies more broadly. It has no place in the United States whose greatest strength is the rule of law, which is at the foundation of our economic success.

And it wasn’t just statements. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who serves on the Senate Banking Committee, issued the sort of ultimatum to the White House that has been nearly unheard of in this era of permanent Republican quiescence, pledging to oppose the confirmation of any nominee to the Fed board “until this legal matter is fully resolved.”¹ While a plethora of other lawmakers made statements sticking up for Powell, it’s Tillis’s stance that will cause the White House real headaches—his opposition alone is enough to gum up any party-line nomination to the Fed board in the 13–11 GOP-led Banking Committee.

To say all this caught the White House flat-footed would be an understatement. They had seemingly gotten used to Powell’s ragdoll routine, and were unprepared not only for Powell to suddenly zag on them but for the deluge of support he would immediately receive when he did. Trump, who never misses an opportunity to deride Powell, suddenly clammed up. He hasn’t mentioned the fed chair on Truth Social since his statement; asked about Powell’s allegations in an interview, he dodged the question, saying he knew nothing about any investigation.²

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, while again deriding Powell as “bad at his job,” acknowledged to a reporter yesterday that Trump “has said” the Fed should be independent: “He’s said that many times.” And U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, whose office has spearheaded the inquiry into Powell, issued a remarkably defensive statement: We “contacted the Federal Reserve on multiple occasions to discuss cost overruns and the chairman’s congressional testimony, but were ignored, necessitating the use of legal process—which is not a threat,” Pirro said. “The word ‘indictment’ has come out of Mr. Powell’s mouth, no one else’s. None of this would have happened if they had just responded to our outreach.”

All this is coming at a pivotal moment, when some congressional Republicans—one year into Trump 2.0—are starting to reconsider the question of whether their bodies contain spines. Five Senate Republicans voted last week to advance a joint resolution to limit Trump’s ability to conduct further military actions within Venezuela. A similar vote is likely to take place soon regarding Greenland, which Trump has continued to threaten—or, as Pirro might put it, suggest ‘military process’ against. Pockets of GOP resistance have cropped up outside D.C., too, as when Indiana Republicans spurned Trump’s attempts to pressure them into a mid-cycle gerrymander.

All this is to the good. But blunting Trump’s momentum will require more than just resistance from the political class. He and his political operation style themselves an unstoppable juggernaut, but in reality they’re frequently seeking the path of least resistance, looking for strategies that titillate their base’s power fantasies without eliciting too much pushback from the public at large.

And there are growing signs the public at large is getting pretty sick of a lot of it. Trump’s approval rating is in the basement, Republicans are losing off-cycle elections one after another, and protests against the administration’s lawlessness have smashed all records for size and scope. Efforts to focus that opposition more effectively are underway as well. To take just one small private-sector example: Senior executives at major tech companies including Meta, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, TikTok, Spotify, and Salesforce have been circulating a letter this week calling on their companies to break ties with the White House’s immigration enforcement. The Bulwark has learned that the letter has garnered more than 150 signatures in the days after Renee Good’s shooting.

The midterms are ten months away. For now, speaking out and pushing back is all any of us can do. But as Jerome Powell discovered this week, it works more often than you might think.

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Left-Wing Baggage in New York

By Cathy Young

Zohran Mamdani’s tenure as mayor of New York, which began on New Year’s Day, has drawn a lot of attention partly because he is the Democratic party’s great left hope—a socialist who won by tempering his radical rhetoric and offering progressivism with a young, inspiring, pragmatic face.

Yet the beginnings of the Mamdani administration illustrate the pitfalls of going left (even aside from the resurgence of noxious, if vague lefty clichés like “the warmth of collectivism” in his inaugural speech). Take the controversy over housing activist Cea Weaver, appointed to run the new Office to Protect Tenants.

Right-wingers sling the word “communist” at anyone who supports even a modest safety net for the poor. But in Weaver’s case, the label . . . kinda fits? Back in 2017 and 2018, she posted things like “elect more communists” and “seize private property” on social media. Another gem, from 2019: “Private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.” (These aren’t just the immature rants of a young activist; Weaver, now age 37, was an adult when she made these posts.)

A more detailed look at her views can be found in an interview she gave to Reason in 2021: She wants a world in which all housing is owned by “a collective” and everyone pays 30 percent of their income in rent—zero for those with no income. Asked about funding, a smiling Weaver confidently replied, “The federal government prints money. The federal government can provide money for this.” She won’t be setting economic policy for Mamdani, but it would be nice if even tenant advocates in government posts had some clue about economics.

Add to this a history of comments channeling the cringeworthy racial identity politics that became popular on the left circa 2014: calls for “no more white men in office”; swipes at “white women [with] tote bags that say ‘make America rational again’”; a snarky post about “white boy children rapping Eminem” with the aside, “i dunno why we keep procreating.” Despite what Weaver’s detractors on the right have suggested, these posts are more easily understood as (thankfully no longer trendy) performative white-bashing by a white woman from a privileged background, rather than as genuine racial animus. But even so, Weaver’s past rhetoric raises uncomfortable questions about possible favoritism toward minorities in Weaver’s city post. And it’s undeniable that such rhetoric is noxious and deeply off-putting to most “normies”—of any race or ethnicity.

Mamdani stands by Weaver, and she has offered a mild non-apology about “regretful tweets,” which she says she would not have made today.

Right now, the survival of the American republic appears to depend on Democrats’ ability to appeal to voters beyond their base, including non-urban non-college-educated non-Democratic-primary-voting white people. Will elevating Mamdani help with that task? That depends on his policies. To the extent that he brings people like Weaver along with him, it seems doubtful.

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AROUND THE BULWARK

• Young Americans Are Turning Antisemitic... A recent survey shows a clear shift toward anti-Jewish sentiment—and it’s worst on the far right, observes CATHY YOUNG.

• Emulating the Enemy... In Venezuela and Greenland, Trump’s strategy is to beat the bad guys by becoming the bad guys, writes WILL SALETAN.

• Venezuela Was Not Liberated... On The Mona Charen Show, QUICO TORO joins MONA CHAREN to offer an insider’s perspective on his lost homeland and the American raid.

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Quick Hits

CLOWNS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Donald Trump’s attempts to keep his most reliable lapdogs in power at key U.S. attorney’s offices has been throwing those offices into chaos for months. And things are only getting crazier in the Eastern District of Virginia, where the Justice Department is fighting to restart its prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey.

The case against Comey was already dismissed once, as you probably recall, when a judge ruled that Trump’s former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, whom he had installed as acting U.S. attorney to bring the case, had been invalidly appointed. More recently, the Justice Department had been trying to get Halligan’s former deputy, Robert McBride, to restart the prosecution—but now, the New York Times reports, they’ve abruptly moved to fire McBride instead:

The administration has tried to restart the Comey prosecution and wanted Mr. McBride to lead that effort, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. Mr. McBride said he could not do that while also running the prosecutor’s office as the first assistant U.S. attorney—he could do one or the other, these people said.

One person familiar with the events disputed that explanation, stating that Mr. McBride had been dismissed because he had secretly met with judges in the district to try to persuade them to appoint him as U.S. attorney. Mr. McBride, that person added, had resisted pursuing immigration-related investigations related to local jurisdictions’ sanctuary policies and drug enforcement. The person also said Justice Department leaders supported the decision to fire Mr. McBride.

The Times article seems to suggest that the DoJ fired McBride because he was tacitly endorsing the ruling that Halligan was invalidly appointed by courting the judges who by law are tasked with picking the interim U.S. attorney until the Senate confirms a full-time official. Meanwhile, as the Trump administration appeals that ruling, Halligan has seemingly gone about her business in defiance of it, continuing to sign court documents above the title of which she was recently stripped. “A federal judge in Richmond, Va., has given Ms. Halligan until Tuesday to explain in writing why doing so is not a ‘false or misleading statement,’” the Times reports. “Continuing to do so, the judge suggested, could lead to disciplinary measures.”

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ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION AGENCY: The basic formula that has long driven environmental regulation in the United States balances the economic costs of new regulations against the potential health benefits of restricting pollutants. But that’s changing, the New York Times reports, due to a remarkable new Environmental Protection Agency policy:

Under President Trump, the E.P.A. plans to stop tallying gains from the health benefits caused by curbing two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone, when regulating industry, according to internal agency emails and documents reviewed by The New York Times. . . .

The change could make it easier to repeal limits on these pollutants from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities across the country, the emails and documents show. That would most likely lower costs for companies while resulting in dirtier air.

Read the whole thing.

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LABOR (SECRETARY) OF LOVE: Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer hasn’t been a spotlight-hogging member of the president’s cabinet. But new reports from the New York Post and Bloomberg Law suggest she may soon be making a few more headlines. Here’s Bloomberg:

Two senior aides to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer are on administrative leave after the Labor Department inspector general launched an investigation into claims that Chavez-DeRemer engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a staffer and committed travel fraud, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.

Chief of staff Jihun Han and deputy chief of staff Rebecca Wright were both put on leave Monday amid the investigation into DeRemer’s conduct, according to the person with knowledge, who also confirmed the existence of the probe.

The IG complaint, first reported by the New York Post, accuses Han and Wright of fabricating work trips for DeRemer so she could spend time with family and friends. She allegedly invited a staffer to her hotel room at least twice, in addition to at least three other encounters at her Washington, D.C. apartment, the NY Post reported.

Oh, so spending quality time with family, friends, and subordinates is a crime now? Read the whole thing.

1. Tillis’s full statement: “If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none. It is now the independence and credibility of the Justice Department that are in question. I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed—including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy—until this legal matter is fully resolved.”

2. It’s possible, of course, that Trump really didn’t know about Pirro’s threats of criminal prosecution before they happened—a sort of “Who will rid me of this meddlesome central banker” phenomenon.