After three years of stillness, the Federal Reserve is preparing to raise its benchmark interest rate — a quiet but consequential act that reasserts the primacy of institutional independence over political convenience. The move, aimed at taming inflation that has outlasted many predictions, arrives amid open pressure from former President Trump to hold rates low, making this not merely a monetary decision but a statement about who governs the economy and why. For millions of Americans, the shift will arrive not as an abstraction but as a higher number on a mortgage statement, a credit card bil