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good morning. Welcome to White House Watch. In today’s newsletter:
A new era begins at the Federal Reserve
How King Charles gently accepted Trump
political violence in america
Jay Powell will replace Kevin Warsh at the helm of the Federal Reserve next month. But Powell made clear Wednesday how concerned he is about the central bank’s future after chairing the last high-level meeting for the U.S. central bank.
Typically, Fed chairmen retire from the central bank completely at the end of their terms, but Mr. Powell will remain in charge until 2028. That means he will remain on the board and continue voting on monetary policy.
Powell told reporters he would “keep a low profile as governor” and vowed to show Warsh a certain amount of respect.
“There has only ever been one chairman of the Federal Reserve,” he said. “Once Kevin Warsh is confirmed and sworn in, he will become the chairman once sworn in.”
Mr. Powell feels the need to stay on as a sort of internal watchdog. After enduring years of verbal attacks from Donald Trump. Mr. Powell has been embroiled in a Justice Department investigation into alleged cost overruns on the Fed’s renovation project.
The Justice Department recently froze the investigation to clear the way for Warsh’s Senate confirmation, but has not ruled out reopening it.
“I think the central bank’s independence is at risk,” Powell said. “These legal attacks…I think the facilities are getting hammered with these things.”
He added that the Fed has been “successful thus far” in its efforts to “conduct monetary policy without political consideration.” “I am confident that the Fed will continue to make decisions based on analysis, rigorous analysis, not political considerations.”
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was clearly not happy with Powell’s position. “This violates every standard of the Federal Reserve Board,” he told FOX Business on Wednesday.
In the meantime, Warsh will have his work cut out for him. President Trump will push for an immediate rate cut, but there is little indication that other members of the Fed will agree. Stephen Milan, who was appointed by President Trump to lead the Federal Reserve, voted against holding interest rates on Wednesday, saying they should have cut them by a notch. However, three Fed officials opposed the statement, calling for language pointing to “accommodative bias” to be removed from the policy guidance.
Oil prices have soared further in recent days due to concerns about a protracted conflict with Iran, and it may be some time before the Fed reaches a consensus on lowering interest rates.
latest headlines
The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 2% in the first quarter, falling short of Wall Street expectations despite recovering from a period of stagnation through 2025.
Here’s how King Charles subtly attacked Trump in his speech to a joint session of Parliament, the first by a member of the British royal family in more than 30 years.
President Trump said the United States would consider whether to reduce its military presence in Germany. The review comes days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran was ill-prepared and a humiliation for Washington.
According to the Pentagon, the United States has spent $25 billion so far in the Iran war, mostly on munitions.
President Trump and the PGA are scheduled to reunite at the Doral resort near Miami, where a new large gold statue of the U.S. president will be erected.
KPMG has shut down its government auditing business after canceling a $60 million annual contract with the Department of Defense.
data points
In its Thursday newsletter, Ian Hodgson’s Datapoint gives readers a visual representation of the issues driving US politics, from trade to the economy to political donations and more.
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The suspect in last week’s attack on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was barely in handcuffs until online Maga influencers started ranting, the FT’s Guy Chazan reports.
Conservative commentator Matt Walsh called the Democratic Party the “party of terrorism” in a post on the X show. “Every month, Democrats try to kill Trump. Then Liberals celebrate and try again,” right-wing commentator Benny Johnson wrote.
William Braniff, director of American University’s Institute for Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation, told the FT that he sees “clear trends” in the United States as hate crimes, assassination attempts, acts of terrorism and other forms of premeditated violence increase.
Political violence in the United States is not only increasing, it is widening its scope. Historically, the right has been more supportive of and responsible for political violence, but recent data shows that it is the left that is currently seeing the sharpest increase.
More than a quarter of Republicans agree that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save their country” during President Joe Biden’s term, according to a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a nonpartisan religious and political research organization.
And while Republicans are still more likely than Democrats to condone political violence, the left is catching up. Nearly 20% of respondents in PRRI’s latest poll say violence may be necessary to save the country, more than double the average of those who agreed with this statement before Trump’s reelection.
This change is reflected online. The number of threats against the Republican Party on platforms like BlueSky, YouTube, and X increased fivefold between 2022 and 2025, according to a study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
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According to the group’s research, Republicans received about twice as many online threats as Democrats last year. The report notes that “a disproportionately high threat targeting President Trump” is largely responsible for this disparity.
And it’s not just the increasingly violent online rhetoric. Domestic attacks and conspiracies against the U.S. government have reached their highest level since 1994, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies first reported in the Wall Street Journal.
According to another CSIS report, from 1994 to 2024, attacks from the right outnumbered attacks from the left by approximately 8 to 1.
But last year’s spike was driven by a sharp rise in the number of threats and acts of violence from the left, which outnumbered those on the right for the first time in 20 years. (The newspaper notes that about half of the attacks attributed to leftists were not targeted at individual members of Congress, but at immigration detention facilities in response to the Trump administration’s crackdown.)
Braniff blamed this increase on a “toxic information environment” filled with “conflict entrepreneurs who make money by making us angry with each other.” It seems that its rapid growth is no longer limited to one area.
— Ian Hodgson, FT Data Writer
Who is afraid of personal credit? In the latest episode of Ask an Expert, John Foley and Sujeet Indap answered readers’ questions about the cost of lending and why Wall Street executives are becoming more cautious. Watch the conversation here.
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