Fed Chair Kevin Warsh held interest rates steady this week and the Senate Democrats' likely next No. 2 promised a "fight on key values" if his party takes the majority — and both moves serve the permanent Washington class, not the voters who pay the tab.
The establishment press is celebrating Warsh's refusal to cut rates as "independence" from President Trump. The New York Post framed his first Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting as proof he is "no Trump loyalist" and "his own man." Warsh held rates steady despite persistent inflationary pressures, delivered a short press conference, and rejected the Fed's traditional "dot plot" forward guidance — all moves the Post praised as "data over politics." But "independence" from the elected president is loyalty to somebody else. In this case, it's loyalty to Wall Street, which loves a hawkish Fed that protects asset values while working Americans pay higher borrowing costs and higher grocery prices. Warsh's predecessor, Jerome Powell, got a free pass from the press while "transitory inflation" ate away wages during the Biden years. Now Warsh gets praised for holding the line — but the line is still above the Fed's own 2% target, and the people feeling it are the ones who can't afford it.
Meanwhile, Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii — widely expected to succeed retiring Sen. Dick Durbin as Democratic whip — told CNN that if Democrats take the Senate majority this fall, "it's going to be a fight" on "core American values." What are those values? Blocking nominees like Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., and Bill Pulte. Impeachment — Schatz said Trump has done "a million impeachable things" but called it an "important tactical question" about timing. And Supreme Court confirmations: "I don't think they'd be able to ram anybody through," he vowed.
Schatz did mention one area where his stated position aligns with constitutional limits: he said Democrats would push for a congressional vote to authorize military force in Iran, arguing Trump "never bothered to make the case" for the war. That's a position the Founders would have recognized — Congress alone has the power to declare war. But it's worth noting that Democrats never exercised that power when Joe Biden was launching military actions abroad. The concern about "foreign policy adventurism" only seems to activate when the other party holds the White House.
Schatz also named healthcare and tariffs as areas where Democrats could push back. Those tariffs are the ones Trump imposed to protect American industries — the kind of economic policy that the bipartisan establishment has opposed for decades while shipping jobs overseas.
Here is the bipartisan failure in plain view: both parties agree on the big items — sending your money abroad, policing your speech, protecting institutional power. The only fight is over who runs the machine. Elizabeth Warren attacked Warsh as a Trump tool; the Post defended him as independent. Neither side asked the question that matters: who does the Fed actually answer to? Not you. Schatz promises a "fight" on values; those values are about who gets confirmed and who gets impeached, not about whether Washington stops spending your money on foreign commitments that compete with your needs at home.
Warsh says data over party. Schatz says fight on values. The data that matters to most Americans is their grocery bill and their mortgage rate. The values that matter are whether anyone in Washington answers to the people who elected them. Both parties are fighting over who sits in the chair — nobody's fighting for the people paying for the room.
