Trump’s Next Authoritarian Target: The Federal Reserve

After the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, met with Donald Trump at the White House Thursday, the bank took the unprecedented step of releasing a statement asserting its independence.

The statement said that the Fed has an independent, nonpartisan role using economic data to set monetary policy.

“Chair Powell did not discuss his expectations for monetary policy, except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook,” the statement said regarding Powell’s meeting with Trump.

The Fed added that Powell told Trump that he and other officials “will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis.”

Such a statement is rare from the Fed, which normally remains tight-lipped. Trump has made no secret of his displeasure with Powell for not cutting interest rates at the president’s request, and at one point Trump threatened to fire Powell to get his way. Trump later tempered his threat, but not without spooking international markets and worrying investors.

Powell also has been honest about the negative economic effects on Trump’s tariffs, prompting the president to level insults at Powell from his Truth Social account. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt didn’t dispute the Fed’s statement Thursday, but noted that Trump “did say that the Fed chair is making a mistake by not lowering rates.”

Powell’s statement suggests that Trump challenged the Fed’s authority during their meeting. Did Trump revive his threat to fire Powell? What will the president do if Powell stands his ground on interest rates? With Trump being dealt two major setbacks over his tariffs in the past 24 hours, he might get impatient and angry.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt just cannot seem to grasp the whole “checks and balances” part of the U.S. Constitution.

During a press briefing Thursday, Leavitt railed against the recent ruling of a little-known federal court that found Donald Trump had exceeded his legal authority by imposing sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, based on vague claims of “national emergencies.” In a separate ruling, another federal judge also found that Trump could not collect tariffs on any of his orders.

“The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process. America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges,” Leavitt said.

But the first decision was made by the U.S. Court of International Trade, which has nationwide jurisdiction over civil cases arising from international trade. The three-judge panel ruled that Trump had wrongly invoked the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, which allows him to respond to national emergencies, to justify sweeping retaliatory tariffs on Canada, China, Mexico, and dozens more countries.

Shortly after the briefing, the Trump administration was granted a temporary stay of the trade court ruling while the government appeals. Leavitt also asked the Supreme Court to step in on behalf of the president. In the meantime, Trump officials have set out to downplay the impact of the rulings, which could potentially upend ongoing negotiations with other countries.

Leavitt has repeatedly claimed that federal judges have no jurisdiction over the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy matters, rendering them powerless to rule against his illegal deportation policies. Earlier this week, Trump asked the Supreme Court to back up the administration’s efforts to remove immigrants to countries where they did not originate, after a federal judge ruled that he couldn’t deport individuals to South Sudan if they weren’t from there. Leavitt has also railed against the judge who paused Trump’s deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

Donald Trump is a big fan of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and turns a blind eye to his administration’s myriad human rights violations and increasing authoritarianism, in exchange for El Salvador’s accepting deportees of any nationality.

But why does Bukele also have a fan in Democratic Representative Vicente Gonzalez?

The Texas moderate is the lone House Democrat to have met with Bukele while visiting El Salvador, and toured the country’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, where immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia was once held and where Venezuelan immigrants removed from the United States are currently detained. Other Democrats, including Senator Chris Van Hollen, were unable to visit the prison or meet with Bukele on their visits to the country.

“El Salvador is crucial in helping the United States curb the flow of irregular migration and is an important ally in the western hemisphere,” Gonzalez said in a press release after his visit.

Gonzalez’s district voted for Trump in 2024 and is 90 percent Hispanic, and also happens to be on America’s southern border. Gonzales has praised Bukele, claiming that the Salvadoran leader has created a model for Latin America with his crackdown on gangs in the country.

“I think it’s undeniable what he’s done has been spectacular, in terms of bringing security to over 98 percent of the population that lived in turmoil for over a generation,” Gonzalez told Politico Magazine. “He clean[ed] up the most dangerous country in the world and turn[ed] it into the safest in the hemisphere.”

Along with former Representative Matt Gaetz, Gonzalez is a founding member of the El Salvador Caucus in Congress, and now is only one of two Democrats in the pro-Bukele organization, along with Representative Lou Correa. That may be due to the fact that Bukele has trolled and mocked other Democrats on social media, who have criticized the Trump administration’s deal with El Salvador.

That doesn’t seem to matter to Gonzalez, who thinks “Democrats … shouldn’t shy from building a diplomatic relationship with the country of El Salvador,” despite the fact that human rights activists in the country have been arrested and journalists have been forced to flee. Perhaps Gonzalez should ask himself how he’d feel if Trump acted like the Salvadoran autocrat.

President Trump’s 250-year anniversary of America military parade (which, by complete coincidence, falls on his birthday) will most likely cost more than the exorbitant $45 million it’s already budgeted for.

The June 14 parade will feature 6,700 soldiers, 50 in-air helicopters, 34 horses, and 28 massive 70-ton M1 Abrams battle tanks, the latter of which may very well cause serious damage to D.C. city streets, resulting in the parade cost easily eclipsing $45 million.

“If military tanks were used, they should be accompanied with many millions of dollars to repair the roads,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said back in April.

The Trump administration has stated that the federal government will add protections to the roads and pay for damages, adding yet another taxpayer expense to this lavish day.

“As a prevention measure to ensure there are no damages to the roads, one-inch-thick steel plates, varying in size from 4 feet by 8 feet and 8 feet by 20 feet will be placed on the roads at any pivot point and all new rubber tracks will be placed on vehicles,” Army spokesperson Heather J. Hagan told The Intercept. Cleanup and higher police presence costs have also yet to be calculated.

This is a $45 million display of narcissism and militarism from President Trump, and you’re paying for it.

“This administration does not have a credible history of telling the truth about anything. And so, when they estimate $45 million, you know that’s a low-ball figure,” Representative Steve Cohen told The Intercept. “The egotist-in-chief wants taxpayers to foot the bill for a military parade on his birthday. This would be an unprecedented waste of money to please this self-absorbed con man.”

The White House can’t explain why its “Make America Healthy Again” commission report cited studies that don’t exist.

The report, released last week by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services, projected a new vision for America’s health policy that would take aim at childhood vaccines, ultra-processed foods, and pesticides. But during a White House press briefing Thursday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt skirted around answering questions regarding seven citations for studies that researchers say were either wildly misinterpreted or had never occurred at all.

Instead, Leavitt blamed the report’s errors on “formatting issues,” but couldn’t confidently deny whether or not HHS had used artificial intelligence to draft the 68-page report.

“Does the White House have confidence that the info coming from HHS can be trusted?” asked NOTUS’s Jasmine Wright. A NOTUS investigation published earlier Thursday first reported the inconsistencies.

“I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed and it will be updated, but it does not negate the substance of the report,” Leavitt said, lauding the Kennedy report as one of the most “transformative reports ever released by the federal government” and adding that it was backed by “good science” that had “never been recognized” at the national level.

“Quick follow-up, can you talk about what tools or research goes into the production of these kinds of reports? For instance, is it AI that’s used to put together these reports now?” Wright pressed.

“I can’t speak to that, I’d defer you to the Department of Health and Human Services. What I know is what I told you,” Leavitt responded.

NOTUS found that the MAHA report was riddled with errors, including links that don’t work, incorrectly drawn conclusions, and even studies that appear to have been invented out of thin air.