DOJ vs Powell is abandoned

 

For now, anyway.  Until they get Warsh confirmed.

Courts resisting fascism

 

Trump's pick for the Fed

 

Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve

 They're not all that smart if they couldn't see this coming.

The end of Federal Reserve independence would reset the global financial order, tank retirement accounts, and give the White House vast new powers. After a two-hour hearing, the answer seems to be that the court will craft some carveout to protect Fed independence, but how robust and meaningful it will be remains to be seen.

  Mther Jones

Continue reading

Uh-oh

 

If you don't bend the knee

Trump’s Justice Department targeted Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell with a criminal investigation.

Trump crony and Fox cable pundit turned U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, whose record in that office includes a humiliating number of grand juries rejecting indictments, purports to be looking into whether Powell misled Congress about the scope of the Federal Reserve’s renovation of its D.C. headquarters.

  All Rise News

A bullshit claim which has already been answered by Powell.

“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” Powell said. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether instead, monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.”

[...]

Trump attempted a similar maneuver targeting Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, unsuccessfully trying to oust her from her role. The Roberts Court will consider whether to uphold a ruling blocking Cook’s termination on Jan. 21.

They seem to be disinclined to let Trump take over and fuck up the Federal Reserve - after all, that's their riches he'd be messing with - but we shall see.

The pretext is this stupid attempt to intimidate and rid Trump of Powell.  Every building has cost overruns, many of them dramatic.  Case in point:

This reopening of the bullshit claims are unlikely to go anywhere and seem to be aimed at making Powell's life miserable.  Trump's attempt to punish someone who doesn't bend the knee.  Typical tyrant behavior.

Also, re Hassett:

UPDATE 08:48 am:

So brave.

UPDATE 09:38 am:

Other than destroying the country and possibly blowing up the world, no one knows what he's doing, least of all himself.

Thom Tillis is a Republican.  Of course, he's already announced his retirement from Congress.

When you're a member of the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party, how do you think the leopards won't eat YOUR face?

UPDATE 05:43 pm:

Supreme Court issues a positive ruling for a change

Oral arguments are scheduled for January.

Not if it has something to do with messing with the Fed.  They don't want their money rattled.

Fed cuts interest rates

 

Cue Trump crowing about making Powell bow down.

Trump wants a toady at the Fed

The Justice Department has begun examining mortgage fraud allegations against Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor who is challenging a Trump administration effort to remove her from her job in a move she says is designed to erode the central bank’s independence.

Investigators have issued subpoenas as part of an inquiry into Cook that was spawned by a criminal referral from the country’s top housing regulator.

[...]

“Predictably and recognizing the flaws in challenging their illegal firing of Governor Cook, the administration is scrambling to invent new justifications for its overreach. This Justice Department — perhaps the most politicized in American history — will do whatever President Trump demands,” Cook’s lawyer, Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement.

[...]

Trump moved to fire Cook on Aug. 25 after one of his appointees alleged that she committed mortgage fraud related to two properties she purchased in 2021, before she joined the Fed.

Bill Pulte, who made the criminal referral in his capacity as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has asserted that Cook had claimed two primary residences, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Atlanta, in 2021 to get better mortgage terms. Mortgage rates are often higher on second homes or those purchased to rent.

  AP News

The Trump administration has vowed to go after anyone who got lower mortgage rates by claiming more than one primary residence on their loan papers.

[...]

In a flurry of interviews and rapid-fire posts on X, Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, has led the charge in accusing Trump opponents of mortgage fraud. “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation,” Pulte said last month.

[...]

A political donor to the president and heir to a housing company fortune, Pulte’s posts online tease big developments and criminal referrals, drawing reposts from Trump himself and promises of swift consequences.

[...]

Trump has used it as a justification to target political foes, including a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, a Democratic U.S. senator and a state attorney general.

Real estate experts say claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time is often legal and rarely prosecuted.

But if administration officials continue the campaign, mortgage records show there’s another place they could look: Trump’s own Cabinet.

[...]

ProPublica found that at least three of Trump’s Cabinet members call multiple homes their primary residences on mortgages.

[...]

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer entered into two primary-residence mortgages in quick succession, including for a second home near a country club in Arizona, where she’s known to vacation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary-residence mortgages in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has one primary-residence mortgage in Long Island and another in Washington, D.C.

[...]

[A] White House spokesperson said: “This is just another hit piece from a left-wing dark money group that constantly attempts to smear President Trump’s incredible Cabinet members. Unlike [Fed Gov.] Lisa ‘Corrupt’ Cook who blatantly and intentionally committed mortgage fraud, Secretary DeRemer, Secretary Duffy, and Administrator Zeldin own multiple residences, and they have followed the law and they are fully compliant with all ethical obligations.”

  ProPublica

Funny how that works.

Cook filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s firing of her, claiming the president violated her due process rights under the Constitution and federal law. The federal government said the firing was justified because the president determined there was sufficient cause, citing unproven allegations of mortgage fraud.

[...]

Cook requested that the court allow her to remain in her job while the litigation moves forward, but in an emergency hearing on August 29, US District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, asked for more written arguments to be submitted to her this week.

The court’s ruling on whether Cook will keep her job while the high-stakes case plays out is crucial, with a Fed policy meeting coming up on September 16-17. The Fed is widely expected to lower rates for the first time since December.

[...]

Sen. [Elizabeth] Warren called on her Republican colleagues to speak out about the president’s actions, and praised Sen. Thom Tillis for saying that he would not support any nominee to replace Cook until after the legal question of her firing is settled.

“I appreciate that, and that is a good first start,” she told CNN.

“We need Republicans. We need all the people in the Senate to stand up and say we’re not going to grease the skids for Donald Trump’s takeover of the Fed,” Warren said in the hearing.

  CNN

And who's this toady Trump wants to replace Cook?

Stephen Miran, President Trump’s pick for an open spot at the Federal Reserve, faced backlash on Thursday after revealing that he would only temporarily leave his position as a top economic adviser to Mr. Trump if confirmed as a Fed governor.

Mr. Miran’s comments, made during his confirmation hearing, amplified concerns about his willingness to uphold the longstanding independence of the central bank from political meddling.

[...]

Rather than resign from his position as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Mr. Miran told lawmakers on the powerful Senate Banking Committee that he would take an unpaid leave of absence to fill a term on the Fed’s Board of Governors that is set to expire at the end of January.

  NYT

Stephen Miran, the White House economist President Donald Trump nominated to the Federal Reserve’s top ranks, just got an earful about the importance of the central bank’s independence — just as the Trump administration actively defends removing Fed Governor Lisa Cook from her post.

[...]

Republican and Democratic senators were unequivocal that the Fed’s decisions on interest rates should remain free of political considerations.

[...]

Democrats questioned Miran’s ability to distance himself from Trump, should he be confirmed to become a Fed governor. Miran said Thursday he plans to technically remain an employee of the White House if he becomes Fed governor on a temporary basis.

  CNN

Republicans are willing to let Trump do anything he wants, except control the Fed. Their money is more important than pleasing the Orange God King.

Since the beginning of the year, the Fed has been subject to unprecedented attacks by the Trump administration because central bankers haven’t heeded the president’s demands to lower interest rates.

[...]

“You are going to be technically an employee of the President of United States, but an independent member of the board of the Federal Reserve. That’s ridiculous,” Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island said.

[...]

Before doing a complete 180 on his views about Fed independence, Miran, a Harvard-trained PhD economist, had challenged it in the recent past.

Last year, Miran co-authored a Manhattan Institute report that called the Fed’s independence an outdated “shibboleth,” and he called for shorter terms for Fed governors to give the president more power to hold sway over the agency.

[...]

Miran said his paper simply laid out proposals to reform the Fed and that “it’s important that we have democratic oversight.”

“I’m very independently minded, as shown by my willingness to stray from consensus and have out-of-consensus views, and I believe that I will continue to be as independent in my thinking process, if confirmed,” Miran said.

And everybody had a good laugh.

In response to a question posed by Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey, Miran said he hasn’t been asked by Trump or anyone in the administration to vote for lower interest rates if he’s confirmed.

Why would he have to be asked? Trump has made it clear that's what he wants.

For months, Trump has complained that the Fed not lowering interest rates is forcing the federal government to make massive interest payments on its debt and that it is hurting housing affordability for Americans.

[...]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the committee’s Democratic ranking member, also criticized Miran for coming “from a highly political role to a non-political role.” At one point, she pressed him to state that Trump lost the 2020 election, which he refused to state outright.

[...]

When Miran’s nomination was announced, Trump said the appointment would last through January, aimed at filling the remainder of former Fed Governor Adriana Kugler’s term, who resigned in early August without citing a reason for her departure. Last week, Trump said he is considering a longer term for Miran.

“We might switch him to the other, it’s a longer term, and pick somebody else,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on August 26, referring to Cook’s term, which is slated to last through 2038 and is currently in litigation. “We’ll have a majority very shortly. So that’ll be great. Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing, and it’s going to be great.”

[...]

According to Fed rules, the chair can be chosen only among current Fed governors; and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump has attacked for months, has not revealed whether he plans to stay on the Board after his term as chair ends in May 2026. Powell’s term on the Board runs through 2028, so he could theoretically choose to stay as a Fed governor.

[...]

If confirmed, Miran would be in a position to be elevated as Fed chair.

UPDATE 09/06/2025:

UPDATE 09/12/2025:  Small detail...

UPDATE 09/17/2025:

And kudos to Lisa Cook for not bending the knee and stepping down.

Even SCOTUS didn't want this

 

I'm waiting for the announcement that he fired Powell, and the immediate response of a lawsuit.

Threatening Jerome Powell

 

He's going today.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall.

UPDATE 10:16 am:

Yes.  Turner isn't the first to lay the blame on Biden for something in Trump's term.

UPDATE 04:51 pm:

They taped it.  Apparently, PBS still has enough reserves to publish it.

On Thursday, reporters wound through cement mixers, front loaders, and plastic pipes as they got a close-up view of the active construction site that encompasses the Fed’s historic headquarters, known as the Marriner S. Eccles building, and a second building across 20th Street in Washington.

Fed staff, who declined to be identified, said that greater security requirements, rising materials costs and tariffs, and the need to comply with historic preservation measures drove up the cost of the project, which was budgeted in 2022 at $1.9 billion.

The staff pointed out new blast-resistant windows and seismic walls that were needed to comply with modern building codes and security standards set out by the Department of Homeland Security. The Fed has to build with the highest level of security in mind, Fed staff said, including something called “progressive collapse,” in which only parts of the building would fall if hit with explosives.

  PBS

Jeez, are they that concerned about what Trump might do to them?

Plans for the renovation were first approved by the Fed’s governing board in 2017. The project then wended its way through several local commissions for approval, at least one of which, the Commission for Fine Arts, included several Trump appointees. The commission pushed for more marble in the second of the two buildings the Fed is renovating.

[...]

Fed staff also said tariffs and inflationary increases in building material prices drove up costs. Trump in 2018 imposed a 25% duty on steel and 10% on aluminum. He increased them this year to 50%. Steel prices are up about 60% since the plans were approved, while construction materials costs overall are up about 50%, according to government data.

And now Trump is bitching about it and trying to use the cost as a bludgeon against Powell, who really has nothing to do with the building. Also, Powell's term ends in May 2026. (Powell and Stephen Colbert.)

Trump wants Powell to dramatically slash the Fed’s benchmark interest rate under the belief that inflation is not a problem, but Powell wants to see how Trump’s tariffs impact the economy before making any rate cuts that could potentially cause inflation to accelerate.

The renovation project has emerged as a possible justification by Trump to take the extraordinary step of firing Powell for cause.

[...]

The Supreme Court found that Trump had the power to remove board members of other independent agencies, but indicated that a Fed chair could only be removed for cause.

[...]

White House budget director Russell Vought suggested in a July 10 letter to Powell that changes to the renovations in order to save money might have violated the National Capital Planning Act.

What?

“There’s nothing that tells me that he should step down right now,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whom Trump has floated as a potential replacement for Powell, in a recent interview with Fox Business. “He’s been a good public servant.”

You know Trump heard that, right?

When asked last week if the costly rebuilding could be grounds to fire Powell, Trump said, “I think it sort of is.”

“When you spend $2.5 billion on, really, a renovation,” Trump said, “I think it’s really disgraceful.”

No comment.

Trump said the project cost $3.1 billion, much higher than the Fed’s $2.5 billion figure, while Powell, standing next to him, silently shook his head.

“This came from us?” Powell said, then figuring out that Trump was including the renovation of the Martin Building that was finished five years ago.

“Do you expect any more additional cost overruns?” Trump asked.

“Don’t expect them,” Powell said.

Trump said in his career as a real estate developer he would fire someone for cost overruns. The president joked that he would back off Powell if he lowered interest rates.

  PBS

And...why doesn't the black guy (Tim Scott) get a helmet?

Is it because he stupidly says he wants to come there to see why there are overruns on the cost?  Ask anybody who has done any renovating or building if there were overruns on the estimated cost?  And that's without Trump putting tariffs on building materials.

King of all he surveys

 

The answer is "no" of course, but don't expect him not to try.

Massive new flag poles are being installed on the White House grounds today, after President Donald Trump said they were desperately needed and he would pay for them himself.

  

Sure.

The placement of the two nearly 100-foot-tall flagpoles — one on the north lawn and one on the south lawn — began early this morning. The flags will be raised around 11 a.m., the president said.

Jesus.

SCOTUS leaves Trump more power

Humphrey's Executor is on the chopping block.

The Supreme Court majority all but declared Thursday that it is ready to overturn a nearly century-old precedent meant to protect independent agencies from at-will firing by the President.

It’s the last brick to fall in the division between the President and the parts of the executive branch Congress created to be beyond his reach, turning the second branch of government into an all-powerful tool to be wielded by one man.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the three dissenting liberals, dispensed with the usual niceties to upbraid her conservative colleagues for bending to President Trump’s whims, and doing so in a two-page ruling on the emergency docket.

[...]

In another sign of where the majority is leaning, it mentioned, out of the blue, that the Federal Reserve, for some reason, is uniquely protected from the President’s whims due to its “unique structure” and “distinct historical tradition.”

  TPM

They might want a king, but they don't want the king to destroy global stability and the judges' own wealth with some idiotic policy like across-the-board tariffs.

“But then, today’s order poses a puzzle. For the Federal Reserve’s independence rests on the same constitutional and analytic foundations as that of the NLRB, MSPB, FTC, FCC, and so on — which is to say it rests largely on Humphrey’s,” Kagan wrote, citing the Court’s precedent protecting these members from at-will removal. “So the majority has to offer a different story…”

“One way of making new law on the emergency docket (the deprecation of Humphrey’s) turns out to require yet another (the creation of a bespoke Federal Reserve exception),” she added. “If the idea is to reassure the markets, a simpler — and more judicial — approach would have been to deny the President’s application for a stay on the continued authority of Humphrey’s.”

The Supreme Court vacated an appeals court’s order requiring President Donald Trump to reinstate two members of independent federal boards he fired without cause earlier this year.

  Democracy Docket

Not so independent, then.

The court’s 6-3 order, issued along ideological lines, upholds Trump’s dismissal of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Gwynne Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) member Cathy Harris as lawsuits challenging their dismissals continue.

While they can proceed, the court’s order is a significant blow to the viability of their lawsuits. It also indicates that the court’s Republican-appointed majority may be leaning toward expanding Trump’s powers by overturning a 90-year-old ruling that protects independent agencies from undue presidential influence.

[...]

“The Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty,” the majority stated.

If there was no cause for the firing, where is the harm in leaving them in position?

Their dismissals are part of the Trump administration’s broad challenge to Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., which has for decades allowed independent agencies to operate without direct control from the White House.

The Department of Justice has told the Supreme Court it intends to ask justices to overturn Humphrey’s Executor, arguing that laws limiting a president’s power to remove certain officials are unconstitutional.

Is it unconstitutional, or does it just butt against SCOTUS' ruling allowing Trump to do whatever the hell he wants while he's president?

If the court ultimately overturns Humphrey’s Executor, Trump would gain extraordinary powers to investigate and penalize private businesses and individuals, tilt elections and, potentially, use monetary policy for political purposes.

He already does that, without having the official power.

Before the Supreme Court’s order Wilcox and Harris had been dismissed and reinstated five times.

America running smoothly.

“One way of making new law on the emergency docket (the deprecation of Humphrey’s) turns out to require yet another (the creation of a bespoke Federal Reserve exception),” [Justice Kagan said]. “If the idea is to reassure the markets, a simpler — and more judicial — approach would have been to deny the President’s application for a stay on the continued authority of Humphrey’s.”

The majority further tipped its hand, she pointed out, by rationalizing granting Trump’s stay request by saying that it would stop the members of the two embattled agencies from being fired and rehired as the litigation proceeds. But Kagan notes that the two lower courts, as they must while Humphrey’s Executor still stands, reinstated the fired members. To allow the firings to stand, she wrote, is allowing the “President to overrule Humphrey’s by fiat.”

[...]

She also thwacked her colleagues for their explanation of the balance of injuries, noting that the side of the agencies does not boil down to the fired members’ interest in keeping their “nifty jobs” but the interest of Congress to create agencies that the President cannot destroy.

[...]

“I would deny the President’s application,” she added. “I would do so based on the will of Congress, this Court’s seminal decision approving independent agencies’ for-cause protections, and the ensuing 90 years of this Nation’s history.”

[...]

Coupled with the Trump administration’s annihilation of the civil service, the executive branch will [with the eventual overturning of Humphrey's] become something much closer to a fiefdom, an extension of presidential power with few institutional guardrails. This was a guiding light of Project 2025, a plan realized in the aftermath of the first administration, when civil servants and non-toadies in the executive branch proved frustrating obstacles to Trump’s vision.

  TPM

UPDATE 05/26/2025:

UPDATE 05/28/2025:

No modern president has ever come close to the large-scale personnel purges that we have seen under Mr. Trump, and for good reason: Many of the officials in question are protected by law from being fired at will by the president. Mr. Trump maintains that laws limiting the president’s ability to fire high-level officials are unconstitutional. In making that argument, he is drawing on a series of recent Supreme Court opinions emphasizing the importance of presidential control over subordinate officials and invalidating removal limitations at agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

[...]

[I]n a case involving members of the National Labor Relations and Merit Systems Protection Boards, the Supreme Court quietly blessed, in an unsigned order, some or all of these firings. In doing so, the court effectively allowed the president to neutralize some of the last remaining sites of independent expertise and authority in the executive branch.

The court sought to cast its intervention as temporary, procedural and grounded in considerations of stability, with the order noting concerns about the “disruptive effect of the repeated removal and reinstatement of officers during the pendency of this litigation.”

In truth, the decision was radical. Whatever one thinks about the underlying question of presidential authority, the court should not have disposed of the case this way. It effectively overruled an important and nearly century-old precedent central to the structure of the federal government without full briefing or argument. And it did so in a thinly reasoned, unsigned, two-page order handing the president underspecified but considerable new authority.

  NYT

Trump 2.0 - Flooding the zone

 We simply don't need more big stories right now.