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For well over a year, Donald Trump has made it very clear he has beef with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. From calling him a “numbskull” to a “stubborn moron” and threatening Powell with a “major lawsuit,” the president has been consistently bullying the chair to lower interest rates. Yet so far, Powell has not given in to Trump: On Wednesday, the Fed again declined to lower rates in the face of threats from Trump and after yet another report showing inflation to be stubbornly high.

Naturally, Powell’s refusal to yield led Trump to escalate, and soon enough the U.S. attorney’s office for D.C. launched a dubious criminal investigation to examine if Powell lied to Congress about the Fed’s yearslong renovation project of its headquarters. When prosecutors tried serving subpoenas to members of the Fed board last month, it immediately triggered a legal battle. And last week, James Boasberg—chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia—weighed in, mincing no words when agreeing to quash those subpoenas.

“There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell,” Boasberg wrote, “either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will.” The judge went on to point to “a mountain of evidence,” citing over a year’s worth of Trump’s own words, from interviews to Truth Social posts, in which he complained about Powell and said, again and again, that he wanted lower interest rates.

It’s worth mentioning that the president himself appointed Powell as Fed chair during his first term. Joe Biden then reappointed him to a second four-year term, which is set to end in May. Powell may not be going far, though, as he was separately confirmed to a 14-year term as Fed governor, a position that allows him to stay on the board of the Federal Reserve until 2028. (Governors typically resign altogether when their term as chair is up, but they have no obligation to do so, and Powell may not.) It is his continued presence on that board—along with Trump’s transparent desire to cow any other officials who might not bend to his whims—that has fueled Trump’s relentless pressure campaign, despite the fact that Powell has only two more months in the top job.

On Wednesday, following the Fed’s rate announcement, Powell upped the ante. After announcing that the Fed was holding interest rates, he vowed to remain in the job so long as the investigation into the Fed renovations was ongoing. “I have no intention of leaving the board until the investigation is well and truly over with transparency and finality,” he told reporters. He added that he hadn’t yet decided whether he would stay on as a member of the board after his term as chair ends, a successor is confirmed by the Senate, and the investigation is concluded, but suggested he could certainly stay in the job. “I will make that decision based on what I think is best for the institution and for the people we serve,” he said.

Why does Powell feel such freedom to stand up to Trump? The court’s role, and particularly Boasberg’s recent opinion, surely must be playing into this. “Apparently running out of patience, the White House recently launched a campaign to investigate Powell,” Boasberg wrote of the subpoena effort. Initiating a probe into the Fed’s renovations was a thinly veiled harassment campaign, as Boasberg concluded that the U.S. attorney’s office “produced essentially zero evidence to suspect........

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