Warsh vows to shield Fed from Trump pressure in first hearing

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh told lawmakers he would “do my job” if President Donald Trump challenged him, using his first congressional hearing as a public defense of the central bank’s independence. At a 10 a.m. ET hearing before the House Financial Services Committee in Washington, Warsh faced questions about whether he would hold the line if Trump kept pressing the Fed, including after an attempted firing of Governor Lisa Cook.

The hearing carried unusual weight because it was Warsh’s first congressional testimony since taking over the central bank and the first of two days of semiannual monetary policy testimony. He was due back on Wednesday before the Senate Banking Committee, with the Federal Reserve presenting its semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress. Warsh told lawmakers there was plenty of politics outside the Fed, but said his aim inside the institution was for there to be none.

The legal backdrop loomed over every exchange. On June 29, the Supreme Court of the United States let Lisa Cook remain in office while litigation continues over Trump’s effort to remove her, and the court described Cook as the first Federal Reserve governor ever targeted for removal in the institution’s 111-year history. Warsh pointed lawmakers to the court’s recent ruling as part of his defense of the Fed’s authority to set monetary policy without direct political control.

Democrats on the committee pressed him not to lean on the courts alone. House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters said in her opening statement that Democrats would continue fighting to protect the independence of the Fed and other agencies, casting the dispute as a fight over working families rather than the president, the wealthy, or the well-connected. That made the hearing less a routine policy check-in than a test of how openly the Fed’s new chief would distance himself from Trump’s pressure campaign.

The exchange came on the same day the Bureau of Labor Statistics said consumer prices fell 0.4% in June 2026, a sharp monthly drop that eased some immediate inflation concerns. Warsh said the Fed has “no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation” and a “resolute commitment to restoring price stability,” keeping the focus on price growth even as the bigger institutional question remained whether markets, lawmakers and households would see the central bank as insulated from the White House.