Thank the Supreme Court for Trump’s Latest Attack on the Federal Reserve |
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In their swift march toward installing a kind of Oval Office monarchy over the past year, the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority has signaled that it would give the president unfettered power over federal agencies, even ones Congress tried to carve out as independent from partisan politics. But last spring, the GOP wing attempted to insulate the Federal Reserve, whose independence is a cornerstone of retirement accounts and the global economy, from presidential manipulation. In a mere sentence in a shadow docket order, they assured investors that the Fed was simply different from all other agencies, and so President Donald Trump could not fire its leaders at will.
The GOP-appointed justices foolishly thought they could secure the Fed’s independence.
The idea that the justices could empower Trump but also contain that power is a folly we see repeated throughout history. It is the hubris of a group of people who think they can control a would-be authoritarian; that he will be useful to their purposes without ever turning on them. If you give someone like Trump every power but one, he will find a way to take the last one too.
And so late Sunday, news broke that the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, over testimony he gave to Congress about the renovation of the Fed’s Washington headquarters. On Sunday night, Powell, who has tried to avoid a confrontation with Trump for months, released a defiant video accusing the administration of using the Justice Department investigation as a back-door means to control interest rates. “This unprecedented action should be seen in the broader........