A couple of months ago, I appeared on national television talking about what it meant for the future of JPMorgan Chase when Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier opened a probe into the bank’s role in de-banking conservative enterprises and political figures. At the time, many treated it as a warning shot, an early sign that the unchecked political power of Wall Street might finally face scrutiny.
Now we know that warning has become a full-blown reckoning. President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, seeking at least $5 billion in damages.
The lawsuit, filed January 22, 2026, in Miami-Dade County state court, accuses the banking giant of cutting off Trump’s long-standing accounts for explicitly political reasons, reflecting ideological and religious discrimination and blatant de-banking of a sitting president and his affiliated companies.
This isn’t about one man anymore. It’s about an entire system that has operated outside the reach of accountability for too long.
For years, conservative voices were told that claims of de-banking were nothing more than conspiracy theories, that no bank would ever punish customers for their political beliefs. That turned out to be a lie.
Under both the Obama and Biden administrations, the federal government helped normalize political pressure on financial institutions. Programs like Operation Choke Point created a roadmap for pressuring banks to cut off lawful businesses and individuals based on ideology. What began as an attack on payday lenders and gun dealers metastasized into a much wider purge: conservative media figures, faith-based nonprofits, energy companies, and even political campaigns found themselves on the wrong side of a financial blacklist.
And the banks complied. In many cases, they went further than any government mandate.
Institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and others became the shadow enforcement arm of progressive political goals. They didn’t need explicit instructions, just a cultural consensus among senior executives that certain viewpoints were unworthy of financial participation.
That’s not capitalism. Let’s be honest – that’s soft totalitarianism.
Meanwhile, those silenced or economically marginalized have learned to adapt, innovate, or create alternatives. Conservatives did exactly that, launching new platforms in tech, media, and commerce. But the banking system is different. There’s no true alternative to the banking cartel that controls access to capital, credit, and basic economic participation.
President Trump’s recent lawsuit changes the game. The legal filing escalates de-banking from a murky accusation to a clear judicial confrontation with one of the most powerful financial institutions on the planet.
Rather than just investigating, Florida launched legal scrutiny. Now, the president himself is taking JPMorgan to court. That sends a message no bank can ignore any longer.
It’s not just about Trump’s personal accounts. It’s about whether unelected corporate executives have the right to decide who gets to participate in the heartbeat of the American economy.
The predictable defenses are already emerging: banks are “private companies”; they can choose their customers; they act based on risk, not politics. But that defense falls apart under scrutiny. When your institution benefits from federal guarantees, taxpayer-backed bailouts, and regulatory privilege, you are no longer merely a private entity. You are part of the civic infrastructure, and infrastructure cannot operate as an ideological filter.
Make no mistake: this lawsuit strikes at the principle of political neutrality in financial services. If banks can deny services based on viewpoint, the next step is denial of loans to dissenting publishers, denial of credit to patriotic business owners, and denial of checking accounts to voters with the “wrong” views.
Conservatives have long argued this was happening. We helped a de‑banked conservative customer present his case to U.S. Bank’s board and shareholders at their annual meeting via the shareholder proxy process.
Now, they can prove it in court.
The bank will claim there was “no political motivation,” that it acted on “regulatory risk,” and that it did nothing wrong. But it was not just Trump. Many conservatives have watched as entire sectors were effectively blacklisted, not for illegal behavior, but for values the bank leadership disagreed with.
If JPMorgan is allowed to hide behind private-company status while exercising political discrimination, then every institution with economic power becomes a potential censor. That’s not the United States of America. That’s a new form of corporate feudalism.
The era of unaccountable financial institutions acting as ideological gatekeepers must end. It’s long overdue that institutions, even the most powerful like JPMorgan, be held accountable for their complicity with political pressure campaigns from Obama’s regulatory overreach to Biden’s expansion of de-banking culture.
The message should be clear: the financial system should empower all Americans, not punish them for their beliefs.
True change can only result from a new corporate culture at these financial institutions. Today’s lawsuit may be just the beginning.
Tom Carter is the Co-Founder and President of The American Conservative Values ETF (ACVF), an actively managed, diversified large-cap ETF designed for investors seeking to align their portfolios with conservative values while maintaining exposure to the broader U.S. equity market. Learn more: https://investconservative.com/