{"id":133544,"date":"2025-09-18T16:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T00:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/09\/18\/trump-asks-supreme-court-to-pretend-it-didnt-just-tell-him-he-cant-fire-the-fed\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T16:29:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T00:29:00","slug":"trump-asks-supreme-court-to-pretend-it-didnt-just-tell-him-he-cant-fire-the-fed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/09\/18\/trump-asks-supreme-court-to-pretend-it-didnt-just-tell-him-he-cant-fire-the-fed\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Asks Supreme Court To Pretend It Didn\u2019t Just Tell Him He Can\u2019t Fire The Fed"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
(Photographer: Samuel Corum\/Bloomberg)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Donald Trump has never been big on the word \u201cno.\u201d Courts have taken judicial notice of this fact<\/a>. So when the Supreme Court went out of its way to issue a little \u201cadvisory opinion dicta,\u201d informing the president that even his puppet majority wouldn\u2019t go along with him firing the Federal Reserve Board, it was only a matter of time before Trump did exactly that<\/em> and dared the Court to resist. And now, we\u2019re here. Earlier today, the Trump administration filed an application asking the Supreme Court to allow him to issue an injunction, allowing him to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook.<\/p>\n

Back in May, while deciding another stay boiling down to whether Trump can unilaterally remove NLRB commissioners, in spite of clear protections from politically motivated firings, the Court brushed off the statutory \u201cfor cause\u201d provisions, claiming that Article II gave the president the power to fire anyone exercising any executive power. But this ruling, taken to its logical end, authorized the president to fire Federal Reserve Board members, including Chair Jerome Powell. This wasn\u2019t an idle concern, either, as Trump had been whining incessantly about wanting to be rid of Powell and blasting the idiot who appointed him.<\/p>\n

Which was actually Trump himself<\/a>, but this is what happens when someone with clear signs of dementia occupies the Oval Office. <\/p>\n

To avoid watching their own blue chip stock portfolios turn into a bundle of NFTs \u2014 and to a lesser extent, from their perspective, \u201cdestroying the economy\u201d \u2014 the conservatives threw in \u201cout of the blue\u201d as Justice Kagan noted in dissent<\/a>, an advisory carve out for the Fed on the grounds that \u201cThe Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n

At which point, the White House began plotting how it would grab the Court by the proverbial genitals. <\/p>\n

The administration found its test case in Lisa Cook. The Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, William Pulte \u2014 who has so far done very little \u201cdirecting of federal housing finance\u201d and a whole lot of \u201ccombing the financial records of Trump\u2019s personal enemies looking for typos\u201d \u2014 discovered what he claimed were two mortgage applications filled out by Cook that listed two separate properties as a primary residence. Upon investigation, this accusation appears to be false<\/a>, but Trump didn\u2019t wait for any fact-finding before writing Cook to tell her he was firing her \u201cfor cause,\u201d claiming that such a financial screw-up would undermine public trust in an official with power over the economy.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Secretary of the Treasury also apparently filed contradictory residence pledges on mortgage documents<\/a>. His lawyer, the ubiquitous Alex Spiro, denies the report, but given that an unsubstantiated claim against Cook was all it took for Trump to claim an erosion of public trust, the Treasury Secretary still having a job speaks to an arbitrary and capricious executive.<\/p>\n

The lower courts have all agreed that Cook should keep her job in the interim, since Trump\u2019s argument that he can fire a Fed governor over this rates between flimsy and none.<\/p>\n

In a disingenuous nod to the earlier Court ruling, the brief notes specifically that the administration \u201cdoes not contest the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve Board\u2019s for-cause removal provision.\u201d Cold comfort, to be sure. There\u2019s an old Winston Churchill story that he once asked a gentlelady if she\u2019d have sex with him for a million pounds. After she said, \u201cyes,\u201d he asked if she would do it for one pound and when she asked if he took her for a whore, he replied that they\u2019d already established what she was and were now haggling over the price. Well, the Chief Justice already knows he\u2019s a whore<\/a>, so he should recognize this submission as haggling. The administration will live with \u201cfor cause\u201d provisions as long as the Supreme Court whittles the standard down to allow any pretext \u2014 no matter how minor or remote in time \u2014 to count as \u201cfor cause.\u201d <\/p>\n

If the Court accedes to this request, expect Jay Powell to learn that the administration thinks the Fed\u2019s office renovation<\/a> \u201cundermines public trust in the agency.\u201d (Fun fact: that renovation budget ballooned because the first Trump administration demanded a design with more marble<\/a> than the simple steel and glass design the Federal Reserve intended.)<\/p>\n

\n

In addition, what type of hearing does the Due Process Clause require? Must the President preside himself, or may he delegate that task to subordinates? Must he hold a formal evidentiary hearing, or does an informal discussion suffice?\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Which is all to say, \u201ceven if we must respect a \u2018for cause\u2019 provision, we reject the notion that the president would be required to defend the claim.\u201d It\u2019s at will employment with extra steps, exactly what the Supreme Court claimed \u2014 a few months ago \u2014 the history and tradition of the United States did not countenance.<\/p>\n

\n

But Article II creates \u201can energetic, independent Executive,\u201d Trump <\/em>v. United States<\/em>, 603 U.S. 593, 642 (2024)\u2014not a subservient Executive that must follow judicially invented procedures even when exercising core executive power.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a glib way to answer this claim, but there\u2019s a reason it\u2019s Article TWO. The Framers\u2019 pretty clearly understood the Constitution to create a limited, subservient Executive constrained by the power of Congress. There may be good justification for a modern society to afford the Executive branch more power than the Framers would\u2019ve envisioned, but it\u2019s a bald-faced lie to claim \u201cArticle II\u201d created that spin on the office. But this Supreme Court set that standard, and now we\u2019re living in the wake of those vibes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s what this petition is about. Pretending, with one hand, to respect the \u201cfor cause\u201d protections insulating the Fed, while using the other hand to demand unfettered executive power.<\/p>\n

To back up this argument, Solicitor General Sauer cites\u2026 a whole lot of dissents. Indeed, mostly the dissent written by Judge Gregory Katsas in this very case. When he needs to find some actual binding caselaw to cite, he litters the brief with a bunch of cases from the 1800s when Andrew Jackson was still threatening to duel the Supreme Court. Normally, someone intervenes to explain that a brief based on dissents and 19th century precedent (which, notably predates the Fed itself) before that lawyer finishes their summer associate gig \u2014 and in any event, before they become Solicitor General of the United States. But here we are.<\/p>\n

This is a crisis of the Court\u2019s own making. Had it stuck to precedent and applied the law as the judiciary had recognized it for decades upon decades<\/em>, it would\u2019ve shut down Trump\u2019s attempt to fire commissioners from all the statutorily established independent agencies and wouldn\u2019t have to be worried about Trump taking over monetary policy and turning the U.S. economy into a carbon copy of Turkey\u2019s<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Though, as Mayor Eric Adams might say, in many ways, Washington D.C. is the Ankara of the America. <\/p>\n

But the extremists got greedy. They couldn\u2019t abide by a world where Trump might have to slow down while bulldozing labor rights or consumer protection laws, so they invented a new standard of broad authority and thought they could carve out the one exception they wanted with an aside buried in a shadow docket opinion.<\/p>\n

It turns out, that\u2019s not how it works when dealing with someone willing to send a mob into the Capitol when he\u2019s mad about losing an election. They crafted a dubious exemption, and the administration intends to put them to defending the indefensible. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re haggling over the price. The Republican justices just received Donald Trump\u2019s one dollar bid. <\/p>\n

(Check out the petition on the next page\u2026)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The post Trump Asks Supreme Court To Pretend It Didn\u2019t Just Tell Him He Can\u2019t Fire The Fed<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
(Photographer: Samuel Corum\/Bloomberg)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Donald Trump has never been big on the word \u201cno.\u201d Courts have taken judicial notice of this fact<\/a>. So when the Supreme Court went out of its way to issue a little \u201cadvisory opinion dicta,\u201d informing the president that even his puppet majority wouldn\u2019t go along with him firing the Federal Reserve Board, it was only a matter of time before Trump did exactly that<\/em> and dared the Court to resist. And now, we\u2019re here. Earlier today, the Trump administration filed an application asking the Supreme Court to allow him to issue an injunction, allowing him to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook.<\/p>\n

Back in May, while deciding another stay boiling down to whether Trump can unilaterally remove NLRB commissioners, in spite of clear protections from politically motivated firings, the Court brushed off the statutory \u201cfor cause\u201d provisions, claiming that Article II gave the president the power to fire anyone exercising any executive power. But this ruling, taken to its logical end, authorized the president to fire Federal Reserve Board members, including Chair Jerome Powell. This wasn\u2019t an idle concern, either, as Trump had been whining incessantly about wanting to be rid of Powell and blasting the idiot who appointed him.<\/p>\n

Which was actually Trump himself<\/a>, but this is what happens when someone with clear signs of dementia occupies the Oval Office. <\/p>\n

To avoid watching their own blue chip stock portfolios turn into a bundle of NFTs \u2014 and to a lesser extent, from their perspective, \u201cdestroying the economy\u201d \u2014 the conservatives threw in \u201cout of the blue\u201d as Justice Kagan noted in dissent<\/a>, an advisory carve out for the Fed on the grounds that \u201cThe Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n

At which point, the White House began plotting how it would grab the Court by the proverbial genitals. <\/p>\n

The administration found its test case in Lisa Cook. The Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, William Pulte \u2014 who has so far done very little \u201cdirecting of federal housing finance\u201d and a whole lot of \u201ccombing the financial records of Trump\u2019s personal enemies looking for typos\u201d \u2014 discovered what he claimed were two mortgage applications filled out by Cook that listed two separate properties as a primary residence. Upon investigation, this accusation appears to be false<\/a>, but Trump didn\u2019t wait for any fact-finding before writing Cook to tell her he was firing her \u201cfor cause,\u201d claiming that such a financial screw-up would undermine public trust in an official with power over the economy.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Secretary of the Treasury also apparently filed contradictory residence pledges on mortgage documents<\/a>. His lawyer, the ubiquitous Alex Spiro, denies the report, but given that an unsubstantiated claim against Cook was all it took for Trump to claim an erosion of public trust, the Treasury Secretary still having a job speaks to an arbitrary and capricious executive.<\/p>\n

The lower courts have all agreed that Cook should keep her job in the interim, since Trump\u2019s argument that he can fire a Fed governor over this rates between flimsy and none.<\/p>\n

In a disingenuous nod to the earlier Court ruling, the brief notes specifically that the administration \u201cdoes not contest the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve Board\u2019s for-cause removal provision.\u201d Cold comfort, to be sure. There\u2019s an old Winston Churchill story that he once asked a gentlelady if she\u2019d have sex with him for a million pounds. After she said, \u201cyes,\u201d he asked if she would do it for one pound and when she asked if he took her for a whore, he replied that they\u2019d already established what she was and were now haggling over the price. Well, the Chief Justice already knows he\u2019s a whore<\/a>, so he should recognize this submission as haggling. The administration will live with \u201cfor cause\u201d provisions as long as the Supreme Court whittles the standard down to allow any pretext \u2014 no matter how minor or remote in time \u2014 to count as \u201cfor cause.\u201d <\/p>\n

If the Court accedes to this request, expect Jay Powell to learn that the administration thinks the Fed\u2019s office renovation<\/a> \u201cundermines public trust in the agency.\u201d (Fun fact: that renovation budget ballooned because the first Trump administration demanded a design with more marble<\/a> than the simple steel and glass design the Federal Reserve intended.)<\/p>\n

\n

In addition, what type of hearing does the Due Process Clause require? Must the President preside himself, or may he delegate that task to subordinates? Must he hold a formal evidentiary hearing, or does an informal discussion suffice?\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Which is all to say, \u201ceven if we must respect a \u2018for cause\u2019 provision, we reject the notion that the president would be required to defend the claim.\u201d It\u2019s at will employment with extra steps, exactly what the Supreme Court claimed \u2014 a few months ago \u2014 the history and tradition of the United States did not countenance.<\/p>\n

\n

But Article II creates \u201can energetic, independent Executive,\u201d Trump <\/em>v. United States<\/em>, 603 U.S. 593, 642 (2024)\u2014not a subservient Executive that must follow judicially invented procedures even when exercising core executive power.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a glib way to answer this claim, but there\u2019s a reason it\u2019s Article TWO. The Framers\u2019 pretty clearly understood the Constitution to create a limited, subservient Executive constrained by the power of Congress. There may be good justification for a modern society to afford the Executive branch more power than the Framers would\u2019ve envisioned, but it\u2019s a bald-faced lie to claim \u201cArticle II\u201d created that spin on the office. But this Supreme Court set that standard, and now we\u2019re living in the wake of those vibes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s what this petition is about. Pretending, with one hand, to respect the \u201cfor cause\u201d protections insulating the Fed, while using the other hand to demand unfettered executive power.<\/p>\n

To back up this argument, Solicitor General Sauer cites\u2026 a whole lot of dissents. Indeed, mostly the dissent written by Judge Gregory Katsas in this very case. When he needs to find some actual binding caselaw to cite, he litters the brief with a bunch of cases from the 1800s when Andrew Jackson was still threatening to duel the Supreme Court. Normally, someone intervenes to explain that a brief based on dissents and 19th century precedent (which, notably predates the Fed itself) before that lawyer finishes their summer associate gig \u2014 and in any event, before they become Solicitor General of the United States. But here we are.<\/p>\n

This is a crisis of the Court\u2019s own making. Had it stuck to precedent and applied the law as the judiciary had recognized it for decades upon decades<\/em>, it would\u2019ve shut down Trump\u2019s attempt to fire commissioners from all the statutorily established independent agencies and wouldn\u2019t have to be worried about Trump taking over monetary policy and turning the U.S. economy into a carbon copy of Turkey\u2019s<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Though, as Mayor Eric Adams might say, in many ways, Washington D.C. is the Ankara of the America. <\/p>\n

But the extremists got greedy. They couldn\u2019t abide by a world where Trump might have to slow down while bulldozing labor rights or consumer protection laws, so they invented a new standard of broad authority and thought they could carve out the one exception they wanted with an aside buried in a shadow docket opinion.<\/p>\n

It turns out, that\u2019s not how it works when dealing with someone willing to send a mob into the Capitol when he\u2019s mad about losing an election. They crafted a dubious exemption, and the administration intends to put them to defending the indefensible. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re haggling over the price. The Republican justices just received Donald Trump\u2019s one dollar bid. <\/p>\n

(Check out the petition on the next page\u2026)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

1<\/strong> 2<\/a>Next \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Photographer: Samuel Corum\/Bloomberg) Donald Trump has never been big on the word \u201cno.\u201d Courts have taken judicial notice of this fact. So when the Supreme Court went out of its way to issue a little \u201cadvisory opinion dicta,\u201d informing the president that even his puppet majority wouldn\u2019t go along with him firing the Federal Reserve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":133524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Headshot-300x200-jGjfzA.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}