There are 12 voting members on the FOMC. How does Trump get a majority?
FOMC Voting Committee
The FOMC has 12 voting members: the seven members of the Board of Governors and five of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank presidents. The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is a permanent voting member, while the other four voting seats are held by Reserve Bank presidents on a one-year rotating basis.
Board of Governors
The President appoints members to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, with the U.S. Senate providing “advice and consent” through a confirmation process. The process requires the Senate Banking Committee to question and approve nominees before the broader U.S. Senate gives its final confirmation. Governors are appointed to staggered 14-year terms.
Trump wants Fed Chair Powell to resign but he refuses.
Jerome Powell’s term as Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors ends on May 15, 2026. He can, however, continue to serve as a member of the Board of Governors until his term expires on January 31, 2028.
Trump Appointments
As of September 1, 2025, the active Federal Reserve Governors appointed by Donald Trump are:
- Jerome H. Powell: Initially appointed as a governor by President Barack Obama in 2012, but nominated by Trump as Chair in 2017 and re-nominated for a second term as Chair. His term as Chair expires in May 2026, and his governor term extends to January 2028.
- Michelle W. Bowman: Appointed by Trump in 2018, currently serving as Vice Chair for Supervision with her term as a governor extending to January 2034.
- Christopher J. Waller: Appointed by Trump in 2020, with his term as a governor extending to January 2030.
These three are the currently active Federal Reserve Governors appointed by Trump. Note that Trump has also nominated Stephen Miran to replace Adriana Kugler, but this nomination is still pending Senate confirmation and is not yet active.
Adriana Kugler unexpectedly resigned with no reason given on August 8, 2025.
Bowman, Waller, and Kugler’s replacement (likely Stephen Miran) will all vote with Trump.
Trump Fired Lisa Cook
When: President Donald Trump announced his intent to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook on August 25, 2025, stating in a letter posted on Truth Social that her removal from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors was “effective immediately.” However, as of the latest available information, no court ruling has finalized her removal, and Cook remains listed as an active governor pending legal proceedings.
Why: Trump cited allegations of mortgage fraud as the reason for attempting to fire Cook. Specifically, he referenced claims by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, a Trump ally, who accused Cook of falsifying mortgage applications by claiming two properties (one in Atlanta, Georgia, and one in Ann Arbor, Michigan) as her primary residence in 2021, before she joined the Fed, potentially to secure lower interest rates. Trump argued in his letter that this alleged conduct compromised Cook’s integrity and her ability to serve as a financial regulator, stating, “The American people must be able to have full confidence in the honesty of the members entrusted with setting policy and overseeing the Federal Reserve.” Additionally, on August 29, 2025, Pulte filed a second criminal referral alleging misrepresentations related to a condominium in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in Cook’s government ethics filings during her Fed tenure.
Legal Challenge: Cook, through her attorney Abbe Lowell, has contested the firing, arguing that Trump lacks the authority to remove her without sufficient cause under the Federal Reserve Act, which allows presidential removal of governors only “for cause” (e.g., malfeasance or misconduct). Cook has not been charged with any crime, and her lawyer called the allegations “unsubstantiated” and part of a “smear campaign.” On August 29, 2025, Cook sought an emergency temporary restraining order in federal court to block her removal, with a hearing before Judge Jia Cobb ending without an immediate ruling.
What If Cook Removal is Successful?
If the Cook removal is successful, Trump will have four voting Fed governors in his pocket.
That’s only four votes of the 12 voting FOMC members.
However, it’s four of seven Fed governors.
Can Fed Governors Remove Regional Fed Presidents?
Legal Authority and the 2019 DOJ Opinion – Courtesy of Grok AI
- Federal Reserve Act Provisions:
- The Federal Reserve Act, specifically 12 U.S.C. § 248(f), states that the Board of Governors has the power “to suspend or remove any officer or director of any Federal Reserve Bank, the cause of such removal to be forthwith communicated in writing by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to the removed officer or director and to said bank.” The use of “cause” in this section suggests that some justification (e.g., misconduct, neglect of duty, or malfeasance) is required for removal, though the term is not explicitly defined in the statute.
- Conversely, 12 U.S.C. § 341 (Fifth) notes that the board of directors of a regional Federal Reserve Bank can dismiss officers “at pleasure,” which introduces ambiguity about whether the Board of Governors’ authority is similarly unconstrained or bound by a “for cause” requirement.
- 2019 Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) Opinion:
- A 2019 OLC opinion, as referenced in the Google AI response, concluded that regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents are “inferior officers” under the U.S. Constitution and are subject to “plenary removal” by the Board of Governors, meaning they can be removed at will without requiring cause. This opinion argues that the Board of Governors has broad authority to oversee regional banks, including the power to remove their presidents.
- However, this opinion has not been tested in court, and its legal weight remains speculative. The OLC’s interpretation hinges on the constitutional classification of regional presidents as inferior officers, which allows for broader removal powers under Article II, but it does not reconcile the apparent tension with the Federal Reserve Act’s mention of “cause” in § 248(f).
Reappointment Process:
- Regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents are appointed for five-year terms by their respective bank’s Class B and C directors, subject to approval by the Board of Governors. These terms expire on the last day of February in years ending in 1 and 6 (e.g., 2026, 2031). The Board of Governors’ role in approving reappointments gives it indirect influence over whether a president continues in their role. By declining to approve a reappointment, the Board could effectively end a president’s tenure without formally “removing” them during their term. This is a practical workaround but not equivalent to a mid-term dismissal.
- Historically, presidents are routinely reappointed unless they retire, resign, or reach the mandatory retirement age (65, or 75 if appointed after 55). The Board has never declined a reappointment to force a president out, making this a theoretical rather than practical mechanism.
Historical Practice:
- The Board of Governors has never removed a regional Federal Reserve Bank president in the history of the Federal Reserve System. This lack of precedent underscores the cautious approach to exercising such authority, likely due to the quasi-independent structure of the regional banks and the desire to maintain stability and cooperation within the system.
- Regional banks operate as private entities with public functions, and their presidents are not federal employees in the traditional sense, which complicates direct intervention by the Board.
Grok Conclusion
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors has the theoretical authority to remove regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents, based on the 2019 Department of Justice OLC opinion, which asserts at-will removal power. However, the Federal Reserve Act’s language suggests a “for cause” requirement, creating legal ambiguity that has not been resolved in court. In practice, the Board’s influence is more likely exercised indirectly through its approval power over reappointments every five years, but it has never used this to oust a president. The lack of historical precedent and the potential for legal challenges make any attempt to remove a regional president a significant and untested action.
It Could Backfire
The New Republic reports Furious Trump’s Firing of Fed’s Lisa Cook May Be About to Backfire
To execute his authoritarian takeover, President Donald Trump requires the devoted service of willing accomplices. He needs loyalists in strategic positions who will bend or break the law to carry out his designs, from unleashing state-sponsored retribution against enemies to illegally renditioning people to foreign gulags to occupying American cities with U.S. troops.
Trump, plainly, has become newly emboldened in recent days. But another thing that makes this moment so ominous is that his accomplices also appear to be newly emboldened. They are acting freshly unconstrained—brashly, arrogantly certain they will never face accountability no matter what they do to carry out Trump’s corrupt bidding.
Case in point: Trump’s appalling new effort to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors. On Monday night his anger at Cook peaked as he announced that he’s removing Cook—who has infuriated him for months by helping to keep interest rates higher than he wants—essentially declaring Fed independence a dead letter.
Yet this maneuver may yet backfire on Trump—in part because the accomplices helping carry it out have grown almost absurdly brazen in doing so.
The move appears to be illegal, though Trump may still get away with it. The law allows a president to remove a Fed board member “for cause,” which has generally meant something like a real reason grounded in actual misconduct, not a fake reason that the president pulled out of his rear end.
Enter Trump’s accomplices. The “cause” he cited is the charge that Cook committed mortgage fraud, a claim manufactured for him by William Pulte, a staunch Trump loyalist who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage markets. Pulte tweeted “findings” that Cook has fraudulently declared several principal or primary residences for mortgage purposes.
Tellingly, Pulte has done a similar maneuver for other Trump foes like Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats. They’ve all denied wrongdoing, but all three have been referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.
The real question this raises is: Why is Pulte scrutinizing mortgages that just happen to belong to many high-profile opponents of Trump, and how did he come to select these targets? Experts recently told me that this use of the FHFA mortgage-fraud process appears highly suspect at best. When a Washington Post reporter asked FHFA to identify the procedural basis for Pulte to single out these targets, she received no answer.
Cook just announced that she’s suing to challenge her firing, and people with experience in mortgage law and governance tell me that Cook’s lawyer, well-known D.C. attorney Abbe Lowell, has a major opening in the coming litigation. He can use the discovery process to shed light on why Pulte targeted these mortgages and on any White House involvement in that.
“I’d be highly confident that Abbe is going to explore every avenue of discovery to determine what role, if any, the White House played in instigating this investigation,” Benjamin Klubes, a former acting general counsel at HUD and now a white-collar criminal defense attorney in D.C., told me. Notably, Lowell is also James’s attorney, so he’ll have two avenues to explore. “Abbe will definitely focus on Pulte’s role to determine how and why he chose these targets,” Klubes said.
If and when all this becomes the story—when Pulte’s misconduct and any White House involvement in it gets flushed out into the open—it may suddenly start looking very different from what Trump hoped.
Trump’s Comment
“We’ll have a majority very shortly,” said Trump at a recent cabinet meeting. “So that’ll be great.”
The process is as easy as I describe, at least in theory. Whether that majority would act to remove regional Fed presidents is the key question.
But If Trump replaces Cook and Adriana Kugler with total loyalists that’s two of the needed four votes.
I wonder if any other board members resign in disgust.
So there you have it, theory and practice. In theory, this is very easy. And it’s clear this is the path Trump is taking.
In practice, can Trump find four Fed governors who will go along?
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“The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is a permanent voting member, while the other four voting seats are held by Reserve Bank presidents on a one-year rotating basis.”
Not a sign of equity. The New York FED should not have special voting rights. All should be subject to rotating basis.
There are no check and balances if only one branch has the guns. I bet somebody bought this up as the constitution was being drafted, and got shushed.
the idea of fed independence is a modern construct post ww2. it’s also the 3rd central bank of the US. the other two went away.
Biden should have nominated only people who didn’t commit mortgage fraud.
He did
Dovetails so beautifully with Trump arm-twisting banks to lend to crypto (operated by such vultures as his sons). Can’t wait to see the numbers linked to success of Melania coin.
This year Waller and Bowman voted against Trump until July, Because of the data. In July employment data, at one blush, appeared to be rosy. And even then, they aggressively voted against Trump’s desire for a 1% rate. They argued for a 1/4 point.
…Voting against this action were Michelle W. Bowman and Christopher J. Waller, who preferred to lower the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage point at this meeting. …
So now it’s likely the data will call for a 1/4 point cut, and they will all obey the data. This will have absolutely nothing to do with Trump. Except in the media, and the “independence” of the FED will probably be gone.
Once trump has flunkies in place to provide the appropriate numbers.
Here comes the total Lirafication of the US Dollar….although in all honesty this process has been ongoing for a couple of decades..although not a uniquely US disease, see https://www.marketwatch.com/story/treasury-yields-jump-as-u-k-government-bonds-are-the-latest-casualty-of-budget-deficit-angst-caf90313
Too bad my social security purchasing power depends on USA regime choosing peaceful high-probability win-win global cooperation rather than violent zero-sum domination (that was tremendously “successful” from 1776 to 2014 but less so now).
Comments from another blog:
…Obama and Biden pushed Russia into the arms of China. And Trump managed to push India into the arms of Russia and China.
As the rest of the world is growing the relative position of the US is getting weaker. The logical reaction would be to reconstruct its alliances so that they at least appear to be alliances of equals. But the US is reacting the opposite way. The more it is losing relative control, the more it wants absolute control.
In that respect the way the US is dealing now with Europe is very similar to how it delt with Russia and India.
Politicians always want lower rates. I’m always amused when Fox News sycophants argue that Ronald Reagan defeated inflation. In fact, the Reagan administration fought Volcker’s high-rate policy until they finally got rid of him in favor of “easy Al”. I look for lower short-term rates and a good chance of higher long-term rates.
Fed governors should be well-versed in the practice of illegal financial activities and the best way to get that knowledge is by partaking in some themselves. In fact that should be a condition of employment and any who has not swum in the sea of illegal financial activities should not be even be considered for the job. Insider trading used to be enough to qualify but because its definition is fuzzy we need something clear-cut illegal and mortgage fraud fits the bill nicely. What we do need in the future is a Madoff-type character who has experience running Ponzi schemes because the Fed is the biggest one one of all and that expertise would be invaluable for a Fed governor.
But..but, that would violate their academic purity, a pristine pasture of theoretical view of the world.
because deficit is $2 trln per year, and nobody wants to cut one,
IT WILL DROP DEFICIT TO $1.5*1.4 trl per year just!
USA is done!!!!! IT IS BANANA REPUBLIC ON STEROIDS
SEE GOLD PRICE!! BY END OF 2025 it is 4000$, and each next year 1000$ per year increase like forever!!
= trump fed low rates
IT WON;T CHANGE NOTHING!!
DEBT IS so high, and deficit is so big,even if %rates dropped to %1, cost of servicing
will be $ 500 bil soon!
=====
and as because deficit is $2 trln per year, and nobody wants to cut one,
IT WILL DROP DEFICIT TO $1.5*1.4 trl per year just!
USA is done!!!!! IT IS BANANA REPUBLIC ON STEROIDS
SEE GOLD PRICE!! BY END OF 2025 it is 4000$, and each next year 1000$ per year increase like forever!!
alx
End the Fed.
That’s my position.
Any way, just end it.
Erdogan on the Potomac is now a real possibility. We may not get 80% inflation like Turkey, but I doubt we will get away below 10% if that happens.
The gold market is responding with a resounding rally to new all time highs as Trump destroys global confidence in the Federal Reserves ability to remain independent.
Imagine the damage trump would do if he could drop interest rates to zero and destroy the value of the dollar? Inflation would simply run rampant like it did at the end of his first nightmare term.
Also, imagine what would happen to Gold prices and the value of high quality mining companies like AEM or NEM that have paid dividends for decades. As an example, look at what happened to share appreciation and dividends paid to shareholders of Homestake Mining during the Great Depression.
Who does Trump work for?
<<<
Things were actually incredibly calm during his first term, especially compared to this term.
Things everywhere around the world went sideways when Covid happened in early 2020 (his final year). Arguably the world still hasn’t recovered from what happened during 2020-2022 and I don’t just mean monetarily, I mean society in general all around the world.
I predict Thiel uses Vance to overthrow Trump. Thiel is scheduled to give a multisession talk on the antichrist in San Francisco to a conservative group. Trump has served the conservative movement well but he won’t be of any use much longer. Vance trained under Thiel in 2019 and 2020 before switching to the Republican party. The Republican party is just a vehicle now for continual overthrow of government for a religious state. Big changes are coming soon.
Will the Trump cult follow a sycophant like Vance if MAGA’s malignant narcissist is not the leader?
Yes. The same way they do for Orbàn or Putin or Thommy Robison in the case of other countries.
Vance has zero charisma, and I don’t think he can control us with force.
if he won;t, will you ram your head into wall?
– The FOMC has 12 voting members: all seven governors, the New York Fed president (who serves as permanent vice chair), and four rotating regional bank presidents. The rotation follows a specific pattern.
> The 12 sort of stands for the total number of factions that work together. So let’s piece it together better. The 7 Members that make up together, “The Board of Governors” are Nominated by the President, and Confirmed by the Senate. The term is for 14 years, but they can be replaced at any time by The President (I do believe). So I would guess that the 7-Members would / should theoretically be supporting the President most often, but not always.
>> This leaves 4-Regional Bank Presidents. I suggest for purposes of my theory, that it probably has some Regional Influence, and splits 50/50 OR So..,more often than not. Would / Could obviously be affected by which 4 Regions too.
That makes it 9-2 / 8-3? The NY Fed Chair (we all know). So 10-2 / 9-3 should be the vote of these 12, in theory based upon how they are selected, and the location that they are from.
During each FOMC meeting, the Board of Governors and all twelve Federal Reserve Banks share their views on both the local and the global economic conditions and their financial forecasts. After the discussion and deliberation, >>> the 12-Members of the FOMC vote on the issue at hand.
– The Federal Reserve System was created with “just” two objectives: protecting the value of the Dollar and maintaining maximum employment.
> I would have to add, that this Job could / should be done better. Perfect time for a shake up where / if possible perhaps?
With cause of course, but not a mandatory time frame…
The Federal Reserve System was created to prevent banking panics.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
This does literally, represent “Cause” for nearly if not all, of the FOMC Members. They have failed miserably, at there ONLY 2 Charters, over and over again. 1. Value of the Dollar = Fail and 2. Maximum Employment = Fail. This would be Justification I would surmise…
Not to prevent them but to keep them from spreading to the whole financial system.
Either way they appear to have failed.
They have failed miserably, if that’s the case!
This is false: “The term is for 14 years, but they can be replaced at any time by The President (I do believe).”
If they could be replaced at any time, they would have been, over and over again, in documented historical events. If Fed Governors were like most political appointees, they would be replaced with changes of administration, but they aren’t.
Presidents have browbeaten, verbally harassed, politically pressured and occasionally physically challenged the FOMC chair many times, for over 50 years, Precisely Because presidents don’t have “the power to fire” the governors at-will.
Wikipedia has a complete listing of all the Fed Governors since the Fed’s formation. Most of them have resigned before their term ended; a few died while in office.
“I wonder if any other board members resign in disgust.”
More than likely Pulte has something on Kugler, so she jumped ship.
The Dems have been playing hard ball for decades now, so it’s refreshing to see Trump handing it back to them.
In addition, when you consider how hard left everything has moved during this time from the Fed, academia, judges, moderate Dems, prosecutors, mayors, governors, police chiefs, NGOs, & the deep state, there’s a whole lotta “taking over” Trump has to accomplish to put a conservative agenda ahead.
“A conservative agenda”, that would be nice indeed. Rule of law, free trade, freedom of speech, no corruption. If only trump wanted to achieve those instead of the opposite.
When liberals take over academia & suppress free speech like they’ve been doing for decades, that’s NOT RULE OF LAW.
When all of these other groups that I mention bend the rules so far or even break them, then that’s NOT RULE OF LAW.
America has been covertly pushed further & further to the left by actual breaking of laws, lack of appropriate adjudication for so long now, many Americans have forgetten what it’s like to have the RULE OF LAW governing their dos & don’ts
It appears as though they all should.
If it’s so easy to take over the Fed, why isn’t Trump’s guy (Powell was selected by Trump in his first administraiton) voting the way that Trump wants?
The Fed is independent, not because the appointments are non-political, but because FOMC members have long-term appointments and are very difficult to remove except when they personally screw up. That gives them the freedom to choose policies themselves, and to vote differently from the guy or gal who appointed them would like.
That doesn’t make it less screwed up otherwise. But a dovish Fed historically was its own undoing. Put another way, even if Trump gets his way the market will have its way if the Fed doesn’t do its job well.
If Trump could come up with and execute this strategy, then why couldn’t Biden’s administration?
Joe Biden even when he wasn’t mentally incoherent has never had one tenth of the audacity that Donald Trump has so there is no way he would have ever considered it.
But now the playbook is opened for all to see so you can imagine future presidents of both parties will be doing this unless it’s nipped in the bud now.
Thanks Mish. What a show! We live in interesting times.
I still think Waller and Bowman will vote with the data.
Can you imagine the economic chaos that will follow a Trump takeover of the Fed board?
TACO is fiddling with things he does not understand.
This could lead to:
At this point, I don’t even care anymore. Nothing is going to stop Trump. You can’t even count on the Supreme Court. No one cares. The system is imploding.
Never underestimate the extent that taco will go to get what he wants. Apparently, there is no one with a spine who will stand up to him.
Trump stated that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shoot someone, and not lose any voters”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBOi7nfrd8k
Trump voters remind me of WWF fans. Unable to separate reality from outright fantasy. It is a strange cult…