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- Jerome Powell defended the Federal Reserve’s D.C. headquarters renovations in a detailed response to White House budget director Russ Vought, rejecting claims of extravagance and reaffirming that all work follows historic preservation and accessibility standards. The exchange highlights growing tensions between Fed Chair Powell and President Trump, who has pushed for rate cuts and threatened to fire Powell despite the bank’s independence.
Jerome Powell has responded to sharp criticism from the Trump administration about renovations to the Fed’s offices, answering questions about changes to the project as well as reaffirming the central bank’s commitment to “transparency for our decisions and to be accountable to the public.”
Powell was responding to a letter from Russel Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Last week, Vought made public a letter he had sent to the Fed chairman which said the president is “extremely troubled by your management of the Federal Reserve System” particularly relating to the “ostentatious overhaul of [the Fed’s] Washington D.C. headquarters.”
Despite the Fed having the autonomy to make its own decisions and budgetary calls about its office buildings, Powell responded to Vought’s request to answer a series of questions.
Those questions included whether previous plans for rooftop garden terraces, private dining rooms and elevators, and water features are still planned to go ahead.
Vought also questioned whether the project is still in accordance with proposals submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) in 2021, and whether the updated plans had been approved by the commission.
The total of 11 questions prompted a point-by-point explanation from Powell, who responded to the inquiries within a week of receiving them—as requested by Vought.
Powell framed the scope of work in his response, outlining: “The project is large … because it involves the renovation of two historic buildings on the National Mall and that were first constructed in the 1930s. While periodic work has been done to keep these buildings occupiable, neither building has seen a comprehensive renovation since they were first constructed.”
The sites in question are the Eccles Building and 1951 Constitution Avenue Buildings.
Work is being carried out to make the “buildings safe, healthy, and effective places to work” with tasks including the removal of asbestos and lead contamination from the structure, wrote the Fed chairman first appointed by Trump.
Powell also wrote that the project is proceeding in accordance with the plans approved by the NCPC in 2021, and a new public section on the Fed’s website has been created to “provide information on the project’s history, goals, engagement with state and federal entities, cost drivers, and specific features of the project.”
Rooftop gardens, budgets and water features
On the specifics, Powell responded to the query about the “VIP elevators,” stating that it was never in the proposal to have special or private lifts. Instead, he said, a set of elevators in one building are being remodeled with an 18-inch extension to allow for more accessibility for people with disabilities.
The “VIP dining rooms” mentioned by Vought are also not additions to the site, but are existing conference rooms which can be used for mealtime meetings, and are being “renovated and preserved” Powell added.
Powell also shed light on the “rooftop garden terrace” which Vought had questioned, saying the area is a ground-level lawn build on the roof of an underground parking lot below. This “vegetated roof” or “green roof” is common, he added, used by agencies including the “Departments of Justice, Interior, and many others, and are encouraged by the General Services Administration.”
On the water features, he added, plans for the Constitution Building were scrapped while existing fountains in the Eccles building are being restored. The story is similar with the buildings’ stonework, with the original marble for façades and stonework being restored and areas too damaged to be fixed replaced with similar materials “to keep with historic preservation guidelines and to address concerns raised by external review agencies.”
Vought had added that the building costs were overrunning with $700 million spent so far, though Powell confirmed the budget had been subject to Fed board approval each year—and has the legal power to levy its own budget surpluses to handle expenditures.
Why the interest?
Although the back and forth tracks with Trump 2.0’s push for efficiency and cost-cutting across federal departments, it is unusual for the White House to be taking such an interest in the federally mandated central bank.
In the scope of Trump’s second administration however, this does mark a progression—or potentially an escalation—in the battle between the Oval Office and the Federal Open Market Committee.
President Trump has lobbied for rate cuts since winning the 2024 election, presenting Powell as being hard-headed for not cutting rates to a more normalized level from their current position of 4.25 to 4.5%.
However, Powell and the FOMC have, unanimously, repeatedly voted to keep the base rate at this target given—in part—fears about Trump’s tariff agenda and how the policy may impact the Fed’s dual mandate of keeping inflation at 2%.
With Powell so far resisting pressure from the White House, the president has threatened to fire the chairman before the end of his term in 2026—a comment he then walked back—but this week confirmed he had talked to lawmakers about how legitimately he could dismiss Powell from the role.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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