Trump Wants Powell Out, Administration Risks Contempt, and Homegrowns Are Next
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President Trump is blasting the nation's monetary policy chief over interest rates. But can Trump push Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell out more than a year before his term ends? I'm Michelle Martin, that's Anne Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News.

A judge says the Trump administration ignored his orders to turn around two planes carrying alleged gang members to detention centers in El Salvador. Treating court orders as if they are optional. Will there be any consequences? And President Trump says he would like to find a way to lock up Americans abroad. That's the real fear that we have now is that he is going to try to evade judicial review of deportations of U.S. citizens. Can the U.S. government actually do that?

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Since Donald Trump took office in January, a lot has happened. The White House Budget Office ordered a pause on all federal grants and loans. The impact of the Trump administration's tariffs is already being felt in President Trump's efforts to radically remake the federal government. The NPR Politics Podcast covers it all. Keep up with what's happening in Washington and beyond with the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen every day.

President Trump is feuding with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump said Powell's termination, quote, "...cannot come soon enough," unquote.

Now, it isn't clear whether the president was calling for the Fed chair to be dismissed immediately or at the end of his term in May of 2026. In his post, Trump said Powell was, quote, too late and wrong, unquote, on interest rates. This all comes as Americans are feeling gloomier about the economy. Let's talk to NPR's Scott Horsley. So, Scott, what can you tell us about the tension between Trump and Powell?

Well, President Trump has been urging the Fed for some time to lower interest rates. He always wants to see borrowing costs as low as they can be.

But the president's making that more difficult, actually, with his trade war. Chairman Jerome Powell gave a speech in Chicago yesterday where he warned that Trump's tariffs will almost certainly push prices in the U.S. higher, at least in the short term. And that suggests interest rates may need to stay elevated in order to avoid rekindling inflation.

Now, you know, the president's social media post this morning criticizing that move and saying that the Fed is too late to cut interest rates certainly raises the temperature between Trump and Powell. The Fed chairman's term does run through next May, and Powell has been adamant that he plans to serve out that term. He has tried to keep a low profile and avoid antagonizing the president, but that's a favor that Trump has not returned.

Yeah. And you know what? When I think about like the way people have thought about spending, I mean, spending was up last month. So, I mean, if there's all this uncertainty, why are people spending money? Well, people are spending money in large part to avoid Trump's tariffs. A lot of the spending that we saw in March was at auto dealers. Auto sales were up almost 6% last month.

And, you know, that suggests people were maybe advancing their car purchases to beat the tariffs that took effect at the beginning of April. And with good reason. The Center for Automotive Research says those new import taxes will add between $4,000 and $9,000 to the price of a new car. So if you can get in early, they can save some serious money. Even domestic cars typically contain a lot of imported parts, so they're going to get more expensive as well.

Now, where else should we look for the effects of these tariffs if we're kind of trying to search for them? Well, you know, if people splurged in March to get ahead of the tariffs, we're likely to see some payback in the months to come with reduced spending. Gene Sirocco heads the Port of Los Angeles, which is one of the busiest container ports in the country. It handles a lot of cargo traffic coming in from Asia. Of course, China has been hit with these triple-digit tariffs in the Trump era.

And Soroka is projecting at least a 10% drop in incoming cargo in the second half of this year. Global trade will slow, which will hit the economy worldwide because of these policies. And of course, prices for us will go up markedly.

Buckle up. This is going to get really bumpy for us. The irony here is before Trump launched this trade war, we were seeing real progress on inflation, which might have paved the way for the interest rate cuts that the president says he wants to see. Core inflation last month was the lowest it's been in four years. But

but hopes that Jerome Powell and his colleagues on the Fed could engineer a soft landing have really been battered by Trump's tariffs. Forecasters are now projecting a double whammy of both higher prices and slower economic growth. That's all we seem to be doing, Scott. It's just buckling up all the time with the economy. That's NPR's Scott Horsey. Scott, thanks. You're welcome. ♪

The Trump administration demonstrated, quote, willful disregard for a court's order and is likely in criminal contempt. That's what U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled yesterday. He said the government ignored his order last month to turn back two planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador. It's just one of the high-profile cases in which federal judges are trying to hold the Trump administration accountable for flouting judicial orders. NPR's Adrian Florido joins us now. So tell us what the judge said in this ruling.

Well, Judge Boasberg said that government officials could have obeyed his order to turn those planes around, but chose not to. A little context, on March 15th, President Trump said he'd invoked the Wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 so he could quickly deport members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua without hearings. That same day, officials in Texas loaded dozens of men onto two airplanes.

The ACLU, though, found out what was happening and sued because it said these men needed to be allowed to challenge their deportations. During an emergency hearing in D.C. that evening, Judge Boasberg told the government lawyers that if those planes had already left, they needed to turn them around. That didn't happen, though. The planes landed in El Salvador and the country's press.

president locked the men up. Boasberg, in his ruling yesterday, said the government could have returned the planes because they took off during his hearing. And he wrote that, quote, the Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders. Okay, so then what does the ruling mean now for the Trump administration?

Well, Boasberg gave the government until next week to do one of two things. He said it could, in his words, reassert custody of the men it deported so they can challenge their deportations in federal courts. They are still in that Salvadoran prison, and many of their families have denied that they are gang members.

If the government chooses not to do that, though, Boasberg said, then he wants the names of the specific government officials who ignored his order. He said he will force them to testify and if necessary, he will appoint a lawyer to criminally prosecute them for contempt and they could face fines or prison. OK, well, so how is the White House responding?

Well, the Justice Department called the ruling a judicial power grab and has appealed. A White House spokesman said the president is committed to ensuring that, quote, criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans. On

On the other side of this case, the ACLU and Democracy Forward, the two groups who brought it, are celebrating the ruling. This is Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward. This ruling, it's clear that we've seen the government has acted in blatant disregard for the judiciary, treating court orders as if they are optional. And that's not how our systems of checks and balances works here.

She said her team will continue moving the case forward in courts to ensure that everyone in the U.S., including immigrants, gets due process. Yeah. And this is not the only case where judges are trying to force the Trump administration to obey court orders. A judge in Maryland also demanded an explanation for why it's ignoring her order to help bring back a man mistakenly sent to El Salvador despite having legal status. What's the big picture here, Adrian?

Well, members of the Trump administration have said that they are not going to let courts get in their way of carrying out the president's priorities. Yesterday's ruling by Judge Boasberg, though, is the first time a judge has clearly said that government officials will be punished for not obeying the courts. If they still refuse, that is where legal experts say that we will have a full-blown constitutional crisis. That's NPR's Adrian Florido. Thanks a lot. Thank you.

President Trump says his administration is exploring how to use prisons in El Salvador to detain U.S. citizens who commit crimes. Some legal experts told NPR they fear the White House is preparing to move ahead with that plan, even though they say jailing Americans overseas is unconstitutional. NPR's Brian Mann is following this. Brian, I've seen the video and you're about to play it. I mean, it sounds like the president is serious about locking up American citizens abroad.

Yeah, the White House says this is something President Trump keeps bringing up in public and in private meetings. As far back as February, Trump said he would do it in a heartbeat. That's a quote, if a legal way can be found. And then appearing on Monday with El Salvador's leader, the president could be heard on tape predicting this will happen. Homegrowns are next. The homegrowns. You've got to build about five more places. Yeah, that's better. All right.

Homegrowns are next. Trump says they're referring to U.S. citizens. He then suggests El Salvador needs to build more prisons to house Americans. Later in that press conference, the president said he had ordered Attorney General Pambani to search for a legal pathway to deport Americans in this fashion.

And also he suggested he's negotiating with other countries, which he didn't name, that might also be willing to imprison Americans overseas. And you've been speaking with legal and constitutional experts. I mean, do they think this is something the U.S. government can actually do?

You know, the Trump administration keeps pushing boundaries. El Salvador is already holding hundreds of people in a maximum security prison, as we've been hearing. They were detained in the U.S. for allegedly lacking legal status or having gang affiliations. But there are big legal questions about that, including yesterday's contempt finding.

All the experts I spoke to say taking this next step, deporting American citizens, would cross another line. Lauren Brooke Eisen is with the Brennan Center's Justice Program. That's a progressive think tank at New York University. She said this policy would be illegal and morally wrong. There are profound ethical questions that this would signal about how we treat human beings who are U.S. citizens. No.

Now, NPR reached out to three prominent conservative legal scholars and also contacted three leading conservative legal think tanks. All declined to comment on this policy idea or they didn't respond. And we could also find no instances of GOP leaders in the House or Senate commenting publicly on this proposal to deport Americans.

We reached out to them for comment and got no response. Okay. So Brian, if the Trump administration moves forward with this idea, I mean, do we know what the deportation of American citizens would look like?

We don't. President Trump and Attorney General Bondi have said this would only include violent criminals, but we don't have details. One concern raised by David Beer, he's at the Libertarian Cato Institute, is that Trump could move forward with this without offering a lot of clarity, even if courts and judges object. That's the real fear that we have now, is that he is going to try to evade judicial review of

of deportations of U.S. citizens. One more thing, a Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor published an opinion last week saying recent legal arguments made by the Trump administration suggest the federal government already believes it can, and I'm quoting the justice here, deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens. So we'll be watching this to see where it goes. All right, that's NPR's Brian Mann. Brian, thanks. Thank you, A.

And that's Up First for Thursday, April 17th. I'm A. Martinez. And I'm Michelle Martin. The NPR app lets you keep public radio in your pocket. You'll find a mix of local, national, and international news, plus the best podcasts from the NPR network. Download the NPR app in your app store. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Jerry Holmes, Eric Westervelt, Rafael Nam, Mohamed El-Bardisi, and Jenea Williams. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hainas and our

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