The Fed’s on hold until June most probably. And Jerome Powell wants no part of the internecine partisan warfare on Capitol Hill.

Those were the main takeaways from Powell’s Senate testimony on Tuesday. The proceedings were predictably uneventful, where that means there wasn’t much to trade around.

As discussed at some length in this week’s macro preview, Powell simply isn’t a guy who’s amenable to being baited, and particularly not by a group of people (i.e., politicians) who aren’t his intellectual equals.

He did defend Fed staff in the context of Elon Musk’s assertions that the institution could do with far fewer employees, and he sounded a somewhat urgent tone on America’s fiscal trajectory, but other than that, Powell was his stoic self.

Don’t forget: In Powell, we’re talking about a lawyer. And no slouch of one at that. It’s not hard to trip him up on matters macro (reporters do it all the time during his press conferences), but it’s very difficult for politicians to get a rise out of him.

If anything, Powell’s too dispassionate for the moment (this moment), assuming that’s possible for a technocrat. Whether he likes it or not, Powell’s in charge of the most important apolitical institution on Earth at a critical juncture for that institution’s independence.

Although Donald Trump may well decide to just wait out Powell’s term rather than brave the market fallout from an overt bid to commandeer US monetary policy, Trump’s not a man famous for restraint, and the clock’s ticking in several respects. If what’s happening at Treasury’s any indication, it’s just a matter of time before the barbarians show up at Powell’s gates.

On Tuesday, he said the drama at Treasury has nothing to do with the Fed, which is merely a fiscal agent. He expressed confidence that the system’s safe, but that confidence isn’t shared by the five former Treasury secretaries who earlier this week warned that Musk’s meddling represents an unacceptable break from anything that even looks like normal.

Under questioning from Elizabeth Warren, Powell conceded the unavoidable: There’s no other federal entity set up to perform the functions of the CFPB, which means dismantling it will leave a void, or anyway leave the job to state attorneys general, which in red states means the job won’t get done.

“If you keep the laws the same on the books, but you fire the cops, you’re going to have a lot more crime,” Warren told Powell, of the Musk-led effort to defund the police (sorry). Her point: Everyday people are, at least temporarily, at the mercy of sometimes unscrupulous financial actors, including the big banks, who now have the kind of carte blanche that existed prior to the financial crisis.

Just hours earlier, Eric Halperin, assistant director for the Office of Enforcement at the CFPB, and Lorelei Salas, assistant director for Supervision Policy, informed their respective teams of their intention to resign after each was put on leave by the head lawyer for Trump’s OMB. “I know you are concerned about your futures, the future of the bureau and more importantly, the impact these sweeping changes will have on everyday consumers, on all of us,” Salas wrote, in a memo.

Trump, writing in his own “memo,” chastised the bureau and derided Warren personally. The CFPB, he said, is “her little agency to go around and destroy people.”

Whatever his views on the subject (Powell’s not the world’s biggest fan of regulation), whatever his political affiliation (he’s a Republican, even as he probably didn’t vote MAGA) and however often he’s clashed with Warren (every, single time he goes to Capitol Hill), it’s safe to say Powell wouldn’t agree with Trump’s characterization of the CFPB. If we’re honest, it’s equally safe to assume that if he weren’t currently serving in an official capacity, Powell would speak out publicly against pretty much everything Trump and Musk have done over the past three weeks.

Before anyone brands Powell a coward, it’s worth noting that he chafed in November at the notion that Trump might try to unilaterally remove Fed officials and replace them with his own acolytes. Such a power grab, Powell said, in what for him counted as an overtly abrasive tone, is “not permitted under the law.”

As you might’ve noticed, Trump and Musk don’t so much care what is or isn’t legally permissible, though, and they’re perfectly willing to test the boundaries and push the envelope. As noted above, they could (and should) just wait Powell out. But something tells me they won’t.

Powell, no stranger to adversity as Fed Chair, will probably be tested one more time before he’s ushered, legally, off stage next year.