David Frum

And so Fort Bragg is what we will call it.

And at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, a state where there's a Senate election in 2026, a Senate election that may prove decisive for controlling the balance of the United States Senate after 2026, President Trump appeared on stage with the Republican candidate for Senate and urged military personnel to vote for that candidate.

The military is, of course, the most important apolitical institution.

Presidents address the military all the time, but they are not supposed to make political speeches, rally speeches, to ask the military to vote a certain way.

That's unheard of.

That's shocking.

It's the prelude to authoritarian rule.

Now, fortunately, again, as with the rejection of the attempt to indict members of Congress for what they said,

The attempt to mobilize the troops as political actors, that also looks to have fallen flat.

Reporters who are present noted that the soldiers, who maybe were warned by their commanding officers, made a point of clapping for the president's appearance, clapping when the president talked about raising their pay.

Well, that's traditional.

But keeping very quiet when the president made his pitch that they should vote for the president's preferred candidate for the United States Senate.

But in both cases, these are mere instances of failure, not stories of the successful pushback by institutions.

But there is a story from the past week that is a much happier story about institutions actually resisting.

One of the most important independent institutions in the United States government is the Federal Reserve.

Again, the president appoints members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, but they are not in any way the president's creatures.

And the theory of the Federal Reserve, which is created by act of Congress, not by an action of the executive, is the Federal Reserve makes monetary policy based on facts and realities as best they can determine in their judgment and not for political reasons.

There have been deviations from this ideal.

They've usually ended in catastrophe.

inflations depressions and in recent times the federal reserve has been generally regarded by all people republicans and democrats as setting a model of independence president trump has now made some new appointments to the federal reserve he's appointed a new chairman to replace jerome powell the existing chairman powell's term expires in may and president trump has put forward a nominee but not content with simply replacing powell which of course is his right as powell's term expires but