Ruler of the Fed? Cabinet Meets for More than Three Hours. Poor Crime Victims Now Feel Somebody in the White House Is Listening. Sex Ed! And More
Am I wrong in suggesting that everybody is hitting the history books to find out what happened when Andrew Jackson attacked “The Monster,” as populists dubbed the stately Second Bank of the United States? Parallels abound, as we noted yesterday.
“What If Trump Runs the Federal Reserve?” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial this morning. The editors assert that President Trump’s firing of Fed Board member Lisa Cook (which he either can or can’t do ) is part of a move to control monetary policy:
President Trump has long wanted to control the Federal Reserve, and on Monday night he made his power play by firing Fed Governor Lisa Cook. A central bank with even a semblance of independence may be the casualty. …
A majority of the Supreme Court this spring let the President remove National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board members (Trump v. Wilcox). But its unsigned opinion said its decision didn’t necessarily implicate removal protections for Fed Governors and other members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)….
But if he wants to change the Fed, Mr. Trump has ample opportunity through appointments to the board, including a successor for Mr. Powell as chair next year. That doesn’t seem to be enough for Mr. Trump, who in his afflatus thinks he can run monetary policy. Has he considered what a politically malleable Fed might do when the progressive left takes charge under another President?
This battle will test the limits of presidential power. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy covers the legal aspects. What will the market say? The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip suggests that we have yet to grapple with this:
The market response to President Trump’s Monday attempt to fire a Federal Reserve governor was relatively subdued.
Don’t let that fool you. If Trump’s effort to remove Lisa Cook for cause succeeds, and perhaps even if it doesn’t, this week will go down as one of the most consequential for financial markets in decades.
It could mark the end of the Federal Reserve’s independence from White House control, which it effectively obtained in 1951. As a result, inflation is likely to be higher and more volatile than in the decades before 2020.
Caveat: Nobody but nobody can predict what Mr. Market will do.
President Trump conducted a three-hour-plus Cabinet meeting yesterday. At this risk of being what my mother used to call risqué, I can’t resist quoting (from memory—no link) my favorite text to Prime Time’s Jesse Watters last night: “If your Cabinet meeting lasts for more than four hours, call your doctor.”
President Trump said during the meeting that he plans to institute the death penalty for murders committed in the District of Columbia, advised Cracker Barrel’s beleaguered management to go back to their old logo (which they will do), and the Man with Four Jobs cracked a joke about how Labor Day will be especially meaningful this year. Notable innovation: Everybody around the Cabinet table had a pulse.
The Wall Street Journal’s Upward Mobility columnist Jason Riley has another winner this morning. Riley’s opus is headlined “Trump’s Crackdown on Crime Is a Political Winner.” Focusing on crime in Chicago, Riley writes:
It isn’t uncommon for children to be gunned down in the nation’s third-largest city, where in some neighborhoods you’re not even safe hanging out with friends inside your home. A year after Hadiya was killed, 11-year-old Shamiya Adams was fatally shot in the head while attending a sleepover. The Chicago Tribune reported that the “bullet had entered an open window, penetrated a bedroom closet and went through a wall before striking Shamiya.” During a single summer weekend in 2018, 12 people in Chicago were killed and more than 70 were shot, including an 11-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl. The emergency room of a local hospital turned away ambulances for several hours because it didn’t have room for additional patients. …
The liberal response to crime has been to pamper lawbreakers and crack down on law enforcement, even while residents of dangerous low-income neighborhoods have consistently demanded more and better policing. They finally have someone in the White House who’s listening.
Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York has a nice piece on the Democrats’ annual summer meeting in Minneapolis. Byron notes challenges facing the Dems:
Democrats have also shown a knack for getting on the unpopular side of a number of issues, like the border and crime. They’re also deeply divided on Israel and Gaza. And they’re in a terrible money crunch; at the end of June, the Democratic National Committee reported about $15 million cash-on-hand, compared to $80 million reported by the Republican National Committee.
But even with all that, many Democrats believe the single greatest problem facing the party is that they are being too nice to President Donald Trump.
Even so, the Dems could change the balance of power in their favor by a strong midterm showing. But maybe it’s time to retire the myth that, when Repubs go low, Dems go high. Bah humbug. National Review is hot this morning. “Scenes from the Existential War for Humanity Outside Union Station” is highly recommended.
Maryland’s model dad and husband (what are a few friendly whacks?) Kilmar Abrego Garcia inadvertently let slip what he really believes about the United States.
Footage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia being arrested by ICE has gone viral after the alleged MS-13 gangbanger slammed the “corrupt government” as he was being hauled away in cuffs. …
“Kilmar is nothing but a petulant child,” one person reacted on X.
Wait until he gets to Uganda. In “So Long Kilmar Abrego,” Guy Benson details the twists and turns in Abrego Garcia’s long story. Meanwhile, the Bulwark’s Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift tie together Abrego Garcia, Lisa Cook, and John Bolton (not literally!) to show that President Trump “operates outside the law.”
Do you think I am such a curmudgeon that I am not going to mention young folks in love? “Can Taylor Swift Make Marriage Great Again?” is a headline at the London Spectator. I think author Lois McLatchi Miller is leaning towards yes:
Swift is not just the world’s biggest pop star; she is the diarist of millennial womanhood. Her lyrics have chronicled the teenage daydreams, the disillusioned twenties, the bitterness of wasted years, and now, at last, the rediscovery of commitment. When she said ‘yes’, millions of women projected onto her their own longing for permanence – and their own disillusionment with the cultural script they were handed.
You know what really prepares young people for disillusionment? Sex ed classes that harp on gender ideology. But HHS is addressing this issue. Axios reports:
The Trump administration on Tuesday said it would pull more than $81 million in funding for 46 state and territorial programs aimed at preventing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections unless they remove mentions of what officials called “gender ideology.”
Why it matters: It’s a further escalation of the administration’s crackdown on gender-affirming care that’s included investigations of hospitals and new fights with blue states.
Or you could regard the crackdown as a wholesome crackdown on an ideology that promotes the mutilation of minors.
Quote of the Day: New Republic Editor Michael Tomasky on crime in Chicago, as quoted in the WSJ’s Notable and Quotable:
There were 289 murders in the first half of 2024, and 192 in the first half of this year. Yes, 192 is still 192 dead people. No one celebrates that. But a 33 percent decrease? That is real, too—and really good. Overall crime complaints are down 14 percent as well. Certain categories of theft are up since the pandemic, but overall, Chicago is hardly out of control.
Gianno Caldwell, whose brother was the innocent victim of a random murder in Chicago, has a very different view.
