The September 2025 FOMC gathering will be a surreal experience. For markets, but also for the Fed itself.

Here it is four days before the beginning of the meeting and we still don’t know, with certainty, who’ll be voting, let alone what the specifics of the decision will be, other than that the Fed will cut rates.

Donald Trump’s legal team still wants to exclude Lisa Cook from policymaking while her lawsuit against the administration works its way up to the Supreme Court. Earlier this month, Cook secured a reprieve from a US district court which allowed her to carry on, in an interim capacity at least, as a Fed governor, but lawyers for Pam Bondi’s Justice Department asked an appeals court to stay that injunction in time to prevent Cook from attending this coming week’s proceedings.

“We respectfully [ask] that the Court act on the request for an administrative stay or a stay pending appeal by the close of business on Monday, September 15, 2025, as the FOMC is scheduled to meet on September 16,” the government’s request read.

Notably, Cook might not have committed mortgage fraud after all, or at least not in the clear-cut, unambiguous manner that Bill Pulte and Trump allege. Specifically, Cook declared the Atlanta property at the center of the allegations a “vacation home,” according to a loan estimate seen by Reuters. The document, the article notes, “appears to counter other documentation that Cook’s critics have cited in support of their claims.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Miran — also known as the mastermind of sundry macro-market MAGA schemes including the so-called “Mar-a-Lago Accord” — will almost surely vote on policy this week after being rushed through the Senate confirmation process by Republicans. The Senate Banking Committee advanced his nomination and he’ll presumably be confirmed on Monday, just in time to sit for the meeting.

It’s still unclear whether the Fed will cut by 25bps or 50bps. Recent labor market data gives doves plausible deniability to make the case for a half-point reduction, but regardless of how you want to describe the August CPI report (you say benign, I say “benign” with scare quotes), the fact remains that core inflation’s running a full percentage point above the Fed’s target.

Politics is a factor there too, and not a small one. Inflation wasn’t exactly low when the Fed cut by 50bps this time last year. What’s different now? Nothing, except who’s president. (Actually a lot’s different, but that’s what Trump will say.)

Miran won’t be convincing anyone of anything. Everyone in that room, including what I have to believe is a minority of the Committee who pulled the lever for Trump last year, will view him as exactly what he is: A sycophantic mole who might be wearing a wire. Not literally. Or hell, who knows, maybe literally.

So, if Chris Waller and Miki Bowman are going to vote for 50, it won’t be because Miran convinced them on the merits. It’ll be because they were already convinced of the merits, because they want the 25bps they dissented for in July plus 25bps more in September, because they want to please Trump or all three.

If Miran, Waller and Bowman all convey their intention to vote for 50bps, Jerome Powell would be in a really tough spot assuming he’d rather 25bps. As the figure below reminds you, dissents from Waller and Bowman at the July FOMC meeting marked the first time in three decades that two governors dissented.

The optics around two governor dissents would be challenging even in normal political circumstances. Three governor dissents in abnormal political circumstances is probably a non-starter.

That said, it’s possible Powell can swing it given that i) policy will at least be moving in the same direction as the dissents (i.e., the Fed’s still cutting) and ii) everyone knows Miran’s just Trump wearing a nerd mask, so it wouldn’t be three governor dissents, it’d be the same two governor dissents from July plus Trump. (“Voting against this action was Donald J. Trump, who preferred to lower the target range for the federal funds rate by 15 percentage points at this meeting.”)

Note that Nick Timiraos apparently doesn’t know which way this is going. “Firm Inflation, Soft Jobs Data Pull Fed in Opposing Directions,” he wrote. If Nick doesn’t know, nobody knows. Including Powell.

All of the above just covers the politics. I’ll elaborate on the macro-market setup, as well as different SEP permutations, in a separate FOMC preview on Sunday.