# Federal Open Market Committee The **Federal Open Market Committee** is the [[Federal Reserve]]'s rate-setting body: twelve voting members — the seven governors, the president of the New York Fed permanently, and four of the other eleven Reserve Bank presidents on a one-year rotation — who set the target range for the [[Federal Funds Rate]] and direct the open-market operations, including asset purchases and runoff, that implement it. All twelve presidents attend and speak; only five vote. It meets eight times a year on a published calendar, releases a statement at 2 p.m. Eastern on the second day, publishes minutes three weeks later, and four times a year issues the Summary of Economic Projections with the "dot plot" of each participant's rate expectation. The Board chair traditionally chairs the Committee — [[Kevin Warsh]] since May 2026 — and the New York Fed president is vice chair. See [[Federal Reserve System Tree]] for the structure and roster, and [[Monetary Policy Transmission Flow]] for what happens after the vote. ## How a decision is made The staff briefs; each participant gives an economic assessment; the chair proposes; the vote is recorded with dissents named and their preferred alternative stated. The statement language is drafted to move markets by degrees — "patient," "some time," "in coming meetings" are terms of art — and the dot plot, introduced in 2012, has become the instrument by which the Committee talks to the bond market without committing itself. Dissents are rare by design: through the 2010s most meetings were unanimous, and three dissents in one direction is unusual enough to be news. ## 2026 The Committee is the institution the second term has tried hardest to bend and, so far, the one it has bent least. The sequence: the campaign against [[Jerome Powell]] through 2025; the attempted removal of Governor [[Lisa Cook]], which the Supreme Court blocked in *[[Trump v. Cook]]* on June 29, 2026 — the same day *[[Trump v. Slaughter]]* overruled *Humphrey's Executor* for every other independent agency, leaving the Fed as a judicial exception held by one vote; the Justice Department's criminal inquiry into the Fed in January 2026; and the arrival of Warsh, a Trump appointee who has nonetheless defended the Committee's independence in public. At the **July 28–29, 2026** meeting it held the target range at 3½–3¾ percent on a **9–3 vote**, and all three dissents — [[Beth Hammack]], [[Neel Kashkari]], [[Lorie Logan]], all Reserve Bank presidents — wanted a quarter-point *increase*, against a President demanding cuts. That is the structural point the [[Federal Reserve System Tree]] makes: the regional presidents are not presidential appointees, their banks are owned by member banks, and they hold five of the twelve votes. The independence of American monetary policy now rests less on the doctrine of *Humphrey's Executor* than on the arithmetic of the Committee. ## See Also - [[Federal Reserve]] · [[Federal Reserve System Tree]] · [[Monetary Policy Transmission Flow]] · [[Federal Funds Rate]] - [[Kevin Warsh]] · [[Jerome Powell]] · [[Lisa Cook]] · [[Beth Hammack]] · [[Neel Kashkari]] · [[Lorie Logan]] - [[Trump v. Cook]] · [[Trump v. Slaughter]] · [[Independent Regulatory Commissions Hub]]