Has the Federal Reserve lurched to the left? That’s the finding by the Manhattan Institute, which traces an “increasingly left-leaning, activist, and demographically diverse” tilt — and less experience, to boot — among directors of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks. Can the ostensibly nonpartisan, independent central bank be brought back to the vital center? The question is ripe with President Trump headed to the White House and the GOP poised to run Congress.

“Moving Left” is how the institute headlines its report. The case is compelling. The reserve banks — “crucial for American policy and financial regulation,” the report reckons — are supposed to be run by boards of directors who “reflect all sectors of the American economy and be nonpolitical.” Not lately, though. The directors in recent years lean “increasingly left ideologically,” the report states, and often come “from consumer & community, and labor groups.”