WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is defending the central bank’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also praised government employees and U.S. universities in a Princeton University speech during a baccalaureate service Sunday. Powell is an alumni of the Ivy League school, which holds its commencement Tuesday. Powell and the Fed have been subject to extensive criticism in recent weeks by Trump and a potential successor for the central bank’s unchanged key rates and inflation. Powell has acknowledged that the Fed could have moved quicker to raise interest rates once inflation began to rise in 2021. Still, on Sunday, he defended the Fed’s pandemic record.