Politics
Trump Sets May Deadline to Fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell
By Mike Harper · April 16, 2026
The clock on Jerome Powell’s chairmanship was already running out. Trump just lit a match under it.
In a Fox Business interview that aired Wednesday, President Trump made his threat explicit: if Powell stays on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors after his chairmanship expires May 15, “then I’ll have to fire him.” Trump added he had “held back” firing Powell already. “I’ve wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial.”
The statement is more consequential than Trump’s previous Powell threats because of what surrounds it. Powell’s chairmanship ends next month — but his governor term runs through 2028. If he chooses to stay on the board rather than resign entirely, Trump is now saying he’ll remove him. Whether a president legally can fire a Fed governor is itself unsettled — a Supreme Court case on a related matter is still pending — but Trump is clearly prepared to test it.
The complication is that the very investigation Trump is championing may doom his own nominee. The Justice Department opened a criminal probe into Powell over cost overruns at the Federal Reserve’s $2.5 billion headquarters renovation. Powell called the probe retaliatory — and a federal judge agreed, writing that the government offered “no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President.” Prosecutors have not backed down. On Tuesday they showed up unannounced at the Fed construction site and were turned away.
Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina — a Republican on the Senate Banking Committee — has tied the two issues together in a way that creates a genuine blockade. Tillis said he will not vote to confirm Trump’s Fed nominee Kevin Warsh until the DOJ probe is dropped. Without Tillis, Warsh cannot clear the committee. Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged the obvious: “I think it’s in everybody’s best interest to wrap up the investigation.”
Trump’s response was to keep the probe going anyway. “Don’t you think we have to find out what happened there?” he said Wednesday. The president told Bartiromo he cannot instruct prosecutors to drop the case.
What this means practically: Trump wants Powell gone, wants Warsh confirmed, and is championing the investigation that prevents both from happening cleanly. The May 15 deadline is five weeks away. Warsh’s confirmation hearing was already delayed once. Whether anything resolves before that clock expires is genuinely unresolved — and the market consequences of a messy Fed leadership transition are significant. Economists and investors have been watching the Powell situation closely all year.