If you’re in the Washington, D.C. area at the end of this month, I want to invite you to join us for our first-ever TPM Morning Memo event. As you know, Morning Memo, from TPM’s David Kurtz, is now our anchor daily summary and analysis of the inner workings of Donald Trump’s assault on the American republic. That centrality will only grow over the course of the the coming year. The Justice Department, as we’ve seen again just in the last 24 hours with the sham investigation into Jerome Powell, is at the center of the corruption. So on Jan. 29 we’ve hosting a Morning Memo discussion about the corruption and politicization of the Department of Justice under the second Trump administration. The panelists include:
Stacey Young, a former 18-year DOJ veteran who is the founder and executive director of Justice Connection, a network of DOJ alumni providing support to current and recent DOJ employees;
Aaron Zelinsky, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland who served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, where he prosecuted Roger Stone, and who is now a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder in Baltimore; and
Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare who covers rule of law issues and fields wacky Signal messages from Lindsey Halligan.
Attendees are encouraged to ask their own questions, and to join the panelists for a reception after. Tickets are free for TPM Inside members, who received a special discount code via email. If you’d like to purchase tickets, you can purchase them here. I’d love to see you there as we dig into this critical part of our present crisis.
On Sunday evening, the New York Times reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had launched a federal criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in a dramatic escalation of President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against the Fed.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia’s probe focuses on the cost and scope of ongoing renovations to the Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C., which has been underway since Trump’s first term, unnamed officials told the Times. The probe began in November and was approved by Jeanine Pirro, former reality TV judge and MAGA conspiracy theorist turned U.S. Attorney for D.C.
Powell is the second Fed member to fall victim to a bogus legal attack from the administration. As Trump has made clear, he wants the Fed to cut interest rates more aggressively than economists at the central bank find prudent to uphold its dual mandate for maximum employment and controlled price inflation.
The unprecedented moves from the White House and Trump’s allies have yielded strong responses from Powell, key Republican senators, and a distinguished group of top U.S. economists.
Here are five points on how we got here and what Trump’s relentless attack on Fed independence could mean for the U.S.
Trump’s Pressure Campaign Against the Fed Has Been Mounting for Years
Trump nominated Powell to head the central bank in 2017 during his first administration. That didn’t stop the president from reportedly trying to oust Powell in 2018 for raising interest rates.
During this presidency, Trump has publicly pressured Powell to slash rates by 1%, and openly debated with the Fed Chair about the cost of renovations during a rare presidential visit to the Federal Reserve building. The president threatened to fire Powell last June over the Federal Reserve Board’s rate decisions.
Powell isn’t the only Fed member who has come under the microscope of Trump’s DOJ; Fed Governor Lisa Cook is under investigation for alleged mortgage fraud. In September, an appeals court ruled that Cook could not be fired while the case remains ongoing. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case next week.
Mortgage Fraud Scheme Orchestrator Bill Pulte Behind Powell Subpoena
The alleged orchestrator of the Powell investigation is a familiar name. Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is largely responsible for the administration’s subpoena of the Federal Reserve, according to a report from Bloomberg. Pulte claimed not to know anything about the Fed investigation in an interview with Bloomberg.
The Pulte Homes heir has turned the staid federal housing agency into a tool for presidential retribution. Pulte is behind the mortgage fraud investigations against both Fed Governor Cook and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a case which has yet to go before a grand jury.
It’s all part of Trump’s retribution machine against political opponents, which has also caught in its cogs former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of whose cases were thrown out by a judge.
Fed Renovation Costs Have Jumped, But With Reason
In 2017, the Fed Board approved a renovation project of two of the Federal Reserve’s historic buildings, according to an explainer put out by the Fed in July. Initially pegged at $1.9 billion, the project, which will upgrade HVAC, electric and plumbing systems in the more than 90-year-old buildings, rose to $2.5 billion. The Fed attributed the cost spike to factors including increased material and labor costs, which spiked in 2021 and 2022 after pandemic-era inflation, and “unforeseen conditions” during construction, like findings of higher levels of asbestos than planned and toxic soil contamination.
During the unusual July visit to the Fed, Trump, wearing a hardhat at the construction site, said the project had ballooned to $3.1 billion, a claim Powell rejected.
Powell Fights Back, Joined by Bipartisan Chorus of Economists and Officials
On Sunday evening, Powell released a video characterizing the investigation as an attack on the independence of the Federal Reserve.
“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” Powell said in the video. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation,” he continued.
Powell was supported by the usual GOP suspects who have been most outspoken against Trump over the last year. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said he would block Trump’s Fed nominees, including the nominee for Fed Chair, while the legal case against Powell is ongoing.
“If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none,” Tillis, who is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said on X.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) called the administration’s investigation into Powell and the Fed “nothing more than an attempt at coercion,” in a post on X, and cosigned Tillis’ vow to block Trump’s Fed nominees.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, said in a statement the committee shouldn’t “move forward with any Trump nominee for the Fed, including Fed Chair,” in light of the investigation, also calling Trump a “wannabe dictator.”
And a bipartisan group of 13 of the nation’s top economists issued a joint statement condemning the administration’s “criminal inquiry” into Powell as “an unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks to undermine” Federal Reserve independence. Economists who signed the statement include: two-term Fed Chair and former President George W. Bush’s economic advisor Ben Bernanke, five-time Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, conservative economist and former Bush advisor Glenn Hubbard, Jared Bernstein, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Joe Biden, and former Treasury Secretary and Fed Chair Janet Yellen.
Politicizing the Fed Could Decimate the U.S. Economy
The economists in their statement emphasized the danger of compromising the Federal Reserve’s 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,” they wrote. “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.”
Trump and his administration officials have openly flouted and expressed their disdain for independence of federal statistical and economic policy agencies. In August, Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics chief for publishing jobs data he didn’t like. Later that month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called the independence of federal statistics “nonsense” during a town hall for Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis employees. And throughout his second term, the Trump administration has so manipulated federal data of all sorts that one expert told TPM in October that anything coming from the federal government should be “treated with a certain amount of skepticism, if not suspicion.”
Countries around the world offer grave warnings about what happens when central banks become nothing more than political tools of the executive branch. In Argentina, politicized monetary policy led to a 4,923% inflation rate in 1989. More recently, Turkey saw inflation peak at 85% in 2022.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) sued Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Monday for directing the U.S. Navy to “reconsider” his rank and pay grade.
Hegseth’s retribution followed Kelly’s participation in a video reminding members of the military that they cannot follow illegal orders. While other lawmakers were also featured, Kelly — with his possible presidential ambitions and military pension — became the administration’s target.
I want to return to a topic I’ve alluded to in several recent posts. The U.S. Constitution, U.S. law and U.S. civic culture all have a deep resistance to the use of the military in civilian spaces, except under the most extreme circumstances. Even then, we rely almost exclusively on what are in effect state and part-time militias, which are incorporated into the federal U.S. military but still distinct from it, at least largely based in the communities in which they are occasionally deployed. This issue came to the fore early in the second Trump administration with federalized National Guard troops deploying in various blue states and even “hostile” red states at least offering to deploy their guards into blue states. But the real game is Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Board Patrol and other, increasingly super-sized federal policing forces within the Department of Homeland Security. And they’re not military.
Over time, I’ve realized I’m being too literal about this. As a legal and constitutional matter, these aren’t military forces. They’re civilian policing agencies. But the aversion to military deployments in civilian areas isn’t simply a matter of technical designations, the formal unfreedoms of military service, the different legal code, the focus on war-fighting. There is a substantive reality of the desire to menace and dominate civilian spaces as though they are enemy territory, conquered rather than governed.
In what looked like a hostage video, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell announced Sunday evening that he is the target of a retaliatory criminal investigation by the Trump administration that resulted in subpoenas Friday to the Federal Reserve itself.
What made Powell’s announcement reminiscent of a hostage video wasn’t the quality of the recording or the failure of Powell to be a stalwart against Trump’s repeated attempts to bring the Fed under his thumb but the fact that Powell was put in the position at all: a central banker facing banana republic tactics and forced to make a direct appeal to the public (read: financial markets).
Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG…www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s…
Powell, originally appointed as Fed chair by Trump, was unabashed in saying that the criminal investigation into his testimony to Congress about renovations to the Feds’ D.C. headquarters is pre-textual, a poorly veiled attempt to muscle the independent Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates in the short term, as Trump wants, and subordinating monetary policy to the political exigencies of the sitting president in the long term.
“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” Powell said.
By going public, Powell put financial markets and central bankers around world on notice about Trump’s most extreme move yet to undermine Fed independence.
The criminal investigation and the subpoenas it yielded were just the latest step in Trump’s year-long effort to bring the Fed to heel. He already attempted to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook on bogus claims of mortgage fraud. That case — which tests whether the Fed will remain truly independent — is pending before the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments next week. More broadly, the Federal Reserve is at risk from Trump’s wide-ranging attack on independent agencies, though the Roberts Court has already indicated that may be a bridge too far even for justices enthusiastic to extend their ahistorical unitary executive theory.
While Powell is the proximate target of this retaliatory criminal investigation, he may not be the ultimate target. Powell’s term as Federal Reserve chairman ends in May, and Trump says he’s already decided on a successor for Powell, though he hasn’t divulged yet whom it will be. As the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip notes, the subpoenas are a message to new incoming chair and the other fed governors (Powell’s term as a governor doesn’t end until 2028) that the president has them on a short leash.
Among the details:
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte was a “driving force” behind the subpoena, Bloomberg reports. For his part, Pulte said, “I don’t know anything about it, and I would defer (sic) you to the DOJ.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Trump told NBC News, using an oft-repeated phrasing that has sometimes proven in the past to be patently false.
D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro “approved” on the investigation in November, the NYT reports, and prosecutors in her office have made “multiple” document requests of Powell’s staff regarding the renovation project.
“I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed—including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy—until this legal matter is fully resolved,” Sen. Thom Tillis said on X.
Headline Whiff of the Day
If your headline on the bogus pre-textual “investigation” of the Federal Reserve is indistinguishable from what you would have used for a good old-fashioned political scandal, then you are 100% doing it wrong:
WSJ: U.S. Prosecutors Are Investigating Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
WaPo: Justice Department opens a criminal investigation of Fed chair
NYT: Federal Prosecutors Open Investigation Into Fed Chair Powell
CNN: Federal prosecutors open criminal investigation into the Fed and Jerome Powell
Chart of the Day
What can history teach us about what happens when a populist strongman with an idiosyncratic taste for low interest rates undermines central bank independence?
“The total capture of the DOJ, seemingly with very little pushback or resistance, is one of the most striking examples of the capitulation of American elites in the face of authoritarianism. It’s been less than a year, and federal prosecutions or investigations are already completely discredited.”–Filipe Campante, professor at Johns Hopkins University
DOJ Watch
Christopher G. Raia, the head of the FBI’s NYC office, is expected to become deputy FBI director, a return to having a career agent in that role following the departure of Dan Bongino.
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith has launched a new law firm with Tim Heaphy, the lead investigator on the House’s select Jan. 6 committee; Thomas Windom, a former member of Smith’s team investigating the Jan. 6 case; and David Harbach, who worked the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
Trump Still Living in the Big Lie
President Trump told the NYT last week that he regretted not having the National Guard seize voting machines in swing states after the 2020 election.
Midterms Rat-fucking Watch
In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge John Chun of Seattle blocked the Trump administration from threatening to withhold federal election funding for states that refuse to alter their voter registration forms or voting systems to comply with a Trump executive order.
The WaPo has a rundown of the many unprecedented ways Trump is trying to manipulate the outcome of the 2026 midterms:
The administration has gutted the role of the nation’s cybersecurity agency in protecting elections; stocked the Justice Department, Homeland Security Department and FBI from top to bottom with officials who have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election; given a White House audience to people who, like the president, promote the lie that he won the 2020 election; sued over state and local election policies that Trump opposes; and called for a new census that excludes noncitizens. The wide-ranging efforts seek to expand on some of the strategies he and his advisers and allies used to try to reverse the 2020 results that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
2026 Ephemera
Former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) will challenge incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), a big candidate recruitment win for Democrats trying to improve their long-shot chances of winning the Senate this year. Peltola lost her 2024 re-election bid to Republican Nick Begich III.
Racism Remains Trump’s Rosetta Stone
In a NYT interview, Trump said the civil rights movement resulted in white people being “very badly treated.”
Sign of the Times
A suspect has been arrested in an arson attack on a Jackson, Mississippi synagogue.
Mass Deportation Watch
After being shut out of the federal investigation, Minnesota has launched its own probe of last week’s fatal ICE shooting.
On Thursday, the day after the Minneapolis shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem reinstated limits preventing lawmakers from making unannounced visits to immigration facilities. On Saturday, officials used the new guidance to block Minnesota Democratic Reps. Angie Craig, Ilhan Omar, and Kelly Morrison from accessing a detention facility in Minneapolis.
Since July, ICE has fired into or at vehicles 13 times leaving at least eight people shot with two confirmed dead, the WSJ reports.
Today in Population Trends
The U.S. population is projected to peak at 364 million people in 2056 and then begin to decline, according to a new Congressional Budget Office estimate that reduces the population peak from prior estimates and speeds up the date when the U.S. population begins to decline.
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published by The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Christian Reconstructionism is a theological and political movement within conservative Protestantism that argues society should be governed by biblical principles, including the application of biblical law to both personal and public life.
It was born from the ideas of theologian R. J. Rushdoony, an influential Armenian-American Calvinist philosopher, theologian and author. In his 1973 book, “The Institutes of Biblical Law,” Rushdoony argued that Old Testament laws should still apply to modern society. He supported the death penalty not only for murder but also for offenses listed in the text such as adultery, blasphemy, homosexuality, witchcraft and idolatry.
The movement helped knit together a network of theologians, activists and political thinkers who shared a belief that Christians are called to “take dominion” over society and exercise authority over civil society, law and culture.
These ideas continue to resonate across many areas of American religious and political life.
Origins of Christian Reconstructionism
Rushdoony’s ideas were born from a radical interpretation of Reformed Christianity — a branch of Protestant Christianity that follows the teachings of John Calvin and other reformers. It emphasizes God’s authority, the Bible as the ultimate guide and salvation through God’s grace rather than human effort.
Rushdoony’s ideas led him to found The Chalcedon Foundation in 1965, a think tank and publishing house promoting Christian Reconstructionism. It served as the movement’s main hub, producing books, position papers, articles and educational materials on applying biblical law to modern society.
It helped train Greg Bahnsen, an Orthodox Presbyterian theologian, and Gary North, a Christian reconstructionist writer and historian, both of whom went on to take key leadership roles in the movement.
At the heart of reconstructionism lies the conviction that politics, economics, education and culture are all arenas where divine authority should reign. Secular democracy, they argued, was inherently unstable, a system built on human opinion rather than divine truth.
These ideas were, and remain, deeply controversial. Many theologians, including conservatives within the Reformed tradition, rejected Rushdoony’s argument that ancient Israel’s civil laws should apply in modern states.
Christian dominionism and different networks
Nonetheless, reconstructionist ideas grew as people who more broadly believed in dominionism began to align with it. Dominionism is a broader ideology advocating Christian influence over culture and politics without requiring literal enforcement of biblical law.
The broad network of those who believe in Christian dominionism includes several approaches: Rushdoony’s reconstructionism, which provides the theological foundation, and charismatic kingdom theology.
Charismatic kingdom theology, which emerged in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, teaches that believers — empowered by the Holy Spirit — should shape politics, culture and society before Christ’s return.
Unlike reconstructionism, it emphasizes prophecy and spiritual authority rather than formal biblical law; it seeks influence over institutions such as government, education and culture.
Taken together, I argue that these strands have reinforced one another, creating a larger movement of thinkers and activists than any single approach could achieve alone.
From reconstructionism to the New Apostolic Reformation
Christian reconstructionist and dominionist ideas gained wider popularity through C. Peter Wagner, a leading charismatic theologian who helped shape the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, by adapting elements of Christian Reconstructionism. NAR is a charismatic movement that builds on dominionist ideas by emphasizing the use of spiritual gifts and apostolic leadership to shape society.
Wagner emphasized spiritual warfare, prophecy and modern apostles taking control of seven key areas — family, church, government, education, media, business and the arts — to reshape society under biblical authority. This is known as the “Seven Mountains Mandate.”
Wagner’s dominion theology, however, adapts Christian Reconstructionism to a charismatic context, transforming the goal of a Christian society into a spiritually driven movement aimed at influencing culture and governments worldwide.
Doug Wilson and homeschooling
Another key bridge between reconstructionism and contemporary dominionist thought is Doug Wilson, a pastor and author in Moscow, Idaho.
Doug Wilson, a pastor and author in Idaho, Moscow. Liesbeth Powers/Moscow-Pullman Daily News, CC BY
He has promoted Christian schools, traditional family roles and living out a “Christian worldview” in everyday life, bringing reconstructionist ideas into new areas of society.
Through his writings, teaching and leadership within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches — the CREC — network, Wilson encourages a vision of society shaped by Christian values, connecting reconstructionist thought to contemporary cultural engagement.
Wilson’s publishing house, Canon Press, and his classical school movement have brought these ideas into thousands of Christian homes and classrooms across the U.S. His local congregation — the Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho — numbers around 1,300.
The Christian homeschooling movement offers parents a curriculum steeped in reformed theology and resistance to secular education.
Enduring influence
Some critics warn that the fusion of dominionist and reconstructionist theology with political action can weaken pluralism and democratic norms by pressuring laws and policies to reflect a single religious worldview. They argue that even moderated forms of these visions challenge the separation of church and state. They risk undermining the rights of religious minorities, nonreligious citizens and others who do not share the movement’s beliefs.
Supporters frame their mission as the renewal of a moral society, one in which divine authority provides the foundation for human flourishing.
Even among those unfamiliar with Rushdoony, the political and theological patterns he helped shape remain visible in modern evangelical activism and the ongoing debates over religion’s place in American public life.
In the 48 hours since ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, the Trump administration has concocted a few justifications: she was trying to run the agents over, she’s a “domestic terrorist,” part of a “lunatic fringe,” that the poor, innocent agents were simply trying to free their car from the snow.
I’ve seen some comments that whatever the hideousness of it, President Trump’s and the GOP’s insistent defense of Minneapolis shooting is actually good politics — the thinking being that it pulls the public conversation away from Jeff Epstein and the cost of living and refocuses it on to protestors and blue cities, things that feel like they’re in the GOP’s comfort zone. I don’t buy this. It is in their comfort zone. But comfort zones don’t equal good politics.
If you’ve been watching reportage and viral videos of immigration raids over the last six months, you’ll remember that often there will be law enforcement officers or agents with uniforms that simply say “DHS Police.” Not Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Patrol, just “DHS Police.” As far as I know, there is no such agency under DHS. DHS employs some 80,000 law enforcement officers spread across nine agencies and offices. So I think that the uniforms just provide a general designation that these are law enforcement officers from within the Department of Homeland Security. That’s a vast amount of coercive power concentrated in this one department, notwithstanding the fact that most of these offices and agencies exist for fairly narrow areas of enforcement, administering points of entry into the U.S., inspecting persons and luggage getting on to commercial passenger jets, protecting federal officials and federal installations.
But what was clear from DHS’s creation was that that power could all be directed and concentrated toward some corrupt or illegitimate purpose. And that, among many other things, is what we’ve seen over the last year.
National outrage continues to escalate over the Trump administration’s violent immigration crackdown. Over the past two days, protesters urging Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol to leave their cities took to the streets from Minneapolis and Chicago to Houston, Texas; Portland, Oregon; New York; Oakland and San Diego, California.
