May 15th has long been a red-letter day in the teeming imagination of Donald Trump. Almost as soon as his inauguration was over and done with, he began repeating the date as a totem which would free him from Jerome “Jay” Powell.
The intransigent and unflappable chairman of the Federal Reserve – the United States’ central bank – has remained impervious to all of the president’s ploys – the early cajoling, the insistence, the taunts and nicknames and, finally, the legal threats, as Trump became increasingly obsessed with Powell’s refusal to lower interest rates to suit his administration’s economic agenda. The relationship remains icy even as Powell, a Washingtonian blue blood, prepares to take leave of his office.
January of this year was arguably the most antic month of activity in an administration which has operated on a hyperactive level. It was easily overlooked, but in those frozen weeks dominated by the street-shootings by Ice officers in Minneapolis, the raid on Venezuela and threats of taking Greenland by force which so appalled European allies, the US department of justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas.
The threatened criminal indictments revolved around Powell’s testimony to the Senate’s banking committee in June 2025, when he was grilled about the massive overhaul of the Federal Reserve building on Constitution Avenue, the costs of which are running to $2.5 billion.
