Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell could be fired by President Donald Trump as part of a purge that could disrupt U.S. markets, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday.
Warren said the expansive authority Trump has claimed to get rid of officials at independent agencies means "nobody is safe, not even the chairman of the Federal Reserve."
Contending that Trump's actions are illegal, Warren said that "if he can just mow through every civil servant, if he can just mow through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it's a form of lawlessness and all the power belongs to the king."
Although Warren opposed Powell's reappointment by former President Joe Biden due to the Fed chair's support for reducing financial regulations, the Massachusetts senator said she stands behind the independence of the Fed as well as agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and others, including inspectors general, who Trump has targeted despite laws intended to protect their independence.
Warren also criticized large-scale dismissals of federal workers by Elon Musk and Trump as "lawlessness."
She also said that loosening regulations that protect investors risks weakening the appeal of U.S. capital markets and ultimately the nation's economy.
"The reason our stock market is so valuable is in part because it has level, transparent rules that are strictly enforced," she said. She harshly criticized Paul Atkins, Trump's choice to be chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, for voting for looser regulations ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, and suggested he didn't learn his lesson about the crisis and the taxpayer bailouts that followed it.
"He had the chance to have 20-20 hindsight," she said. "He has 20-zero hindsight."
Warren also broke with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's decision to drop a procedural blockade against a Republican spending package that averted a government shutdown earlier this month.
Many Democrats had wanted the New York Democrat to use the moment to limit Musk's large-scale firings of federal workers and contract cancellations.
"I think there's a moment when you stand and fight," she said. "We cannot avoid this fight, because Donald Trump and Elon Musk, truly they want to take this country over for just a handful of people and they want even more wealth and power to go to them while everybody else has to pay for it."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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