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.

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.”