How the Supreme Court expanded Trump's power

0:02WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Trump should be very, very happy today because he has pretty much enshrined the unitary executive theory into law, and he is our nation's very first unitary executive. The Supreme Court just gave President Trump more power.

0:25It's Monday, June 29th, and this is Here and Now Anytime. From NPR and WBUR Boston, I'm Ashley Locke. Today on the show, justices rule on two big Trump firing cases. And a new bridge is supposed to help with traffic backups between the U.S. and Canada. But the opening is being delayed again. At the very last minute, due in large part to a tweet from President Trump, it was suddenly canceled. But first, the Supreme Court released a major decision expanding presidential power today. It overturned nearly a century of precedent and gave President Trump the authority to fire most independent regulators.

1:09However, in a separate but related case, the justices upheld the independence of the Federal Reserve, ruling its members cannot be fired at will. And Deera Lakshmanan learns more with Mark Joseph Stern. He covers the courts and the law for Slate. He starts out explaining the case that looked at the president's efforts to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter. By a six to three vote, the justices ruled that the president may generally remove the heads of independent agencies without good cause just because he disagrees with them or dislikes their political affiliation.

1:45So this allows him to fire slaughter from the FTC. She was a Democrat. But it will also allow Trump to assert significantly greater control over a range of agencies that Congress designed to be independent because its leaders are no longer protected from termination by the White House. All right. But then we saw what seemed like a very different ruling in this 5-4 vote. The justice has halted, at least for now, President Trump's efforts to fire Lisa Cook, the first black woman on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. Why was this case different? So Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberals in the Cook case to create a carve out from the new rule that was announced in Slaughter that said the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors is independent, and that independence has been sanctioned by history.

2:35The majority, in Chief Justice Roberts' opinion, said that there is a special arrangement here that has lasted throughout the American experiment that has ensured a central bank that has some independence from the president, and that has done our country well. And so in light of this sort of unique history, The court was unwilling to allow the president to remove a member of the Federal Reserve at will. He has to have a good reason. And the majority said that Trump has not yet proved his reasons for firing Lisa Cook. He claims she committed mortgage fraud, but she hasn't had an opportunity to rebut those claims.

3:11And until that happens and he proves his case, she will remain on the board of governors. But has the court effectively left the door open? So that's a very good question. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence saying this does not conclusively resolve this dispute. So there is a chance that the lower courts could give Lisa Cook an opportunity to provide rebuttal and she could not provide sufficient evidence that she is innocent. And Trump could say again, hey, I really do have a right to fire her. My reading is that still the majority is disinclined to let that happen. What we see in Robert's opinion and also in Kavanaugh's concurrence is deep concern that allowing the president to take control of the Federal Reserve will create turmoil and disaster in the U.S.

3:55market and international markets, and that the safer course of action is to continue this history of allowing central bank independence. So my view is that, you know, assuming there's not slam dunk evidence against Lisa Cook, and I really don't think there is, the court is going to ensure that she does stay on the Fed throughout her term. Well, as you say, the court said that this is really goes to the independence of the Federal Reserve as this nation's central bank, which is supposed to set interest rates without political interference. We know that throughout his term, this time, President Trump has been pressuring the last Federal Reserve chairman and this current one to change interest rates, although they haven't given into that pressure.

4:37We are going to hear from a former Federal Reserve official elsewhere in the show. But I want to ask you the larger question, which is how significant are these decisions for the power of the president? Trump has pushed so hard for this unitary executive theory, and it seems like there have been a number of Supreme Court decisions that have lined up in his favor in this regard. Yeah, this is hugely significant. And the carve out for the Federal Reserve does limit Trump's power in one important way. But that's just one of dozens of independent agencies. And all of the rest, as far as we can tell, are now subject to direct presidential control, meaning that the president can fire its leaders just because he doesn't like their policy decisions.

5:17That is, to be very clear, not the system that Congress set up. Congress created these agencies as bipartisan or nonpartisan with the goal of implementing and executing federal law without bias. Congress wanted a real buffer between the White House's partisan preferences and the pure execution of the law. And that buffer is now gone. In so many areas, we will see greater presidential control, including the Postal Service, where the president is already pressuring the mail delivery carriers to not provide ballots to individuals who aren't on a special list he's created. In the union realm, where the president is taking control of the National Labor Relations Board to be harsher toward organized labor.

6:00So many areas of this country that are regulated by federal agencies, now they're really regulated by the president in reality. And so even though the loss in the Federal Reserve case is going to sting. For the most part, Trump should be very, very happy today because he has pretty much enshrined the unitary executive theory into law. And he is our nation's very first unitary executive. All right. Well, we will we will be coming back to you for other conversations about the rulings that still remain. Mark Joseph Stern covers politics, courts and the law for Slate, and he co-hosts the podcast Amicus.

6:35Thank you so much for joining us, Mark. Thanks so much. Always a pleasure.

6:43Coming up next, Scott and a former Fed vice chair weigh in on today's Supreme Court news. And we've seen a nice increase in the number of you listening on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you're a new listener, welcome. We'd love you to hit that subscribe or follow button to make sure you never miss an episode. Go on. It only takes a second. Thank you.

7:15You may recall that President Trump announced the firing of Lisa Cook at a time when he was pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates. That firing is on hold, at least for now. Let's hear a reaction from Alan Blinder. He was vice chair of the Fed in the mid-90s, and now he's an economics professor at Princeton. If we started living in a society where the president of the United States, never mind his name, any president of the United States, could just fire at will anybody on the Federal Reserve that disagreed with him. That's the end of independent monetary policy. That's the end of independent bank regulation and supervision and a variety of other things that have served us well.

8:00And importantly, that history shows when you take that independence away from the central bank of a country, you're living on thin ice. It may not crack, but it may crack under poor leadership by the political authorities instead of the technocrats that run the central bank. So, you know, for the some key officials at the Federal Reserve today who make economic calls on interest rates that can that do anger politicians in the short term for them. Is this an important signal? It's extremely important because, as you just pointed out, they not infrequently do do things that anger politicians. and the politicians, for the most part, swallow it because they realize the Fed is independent.

8:54Donald Trump was not satisfied with that. He tried to fire Lisa Cook. As you know, he tried to fire Jerome Powell before that. Yes. Alan Blinder, you've been in the room in, say, election years when a Fed decision can speed up or slow down the economy. The politics of the moment in that room, is it mentioned out loud for Fed policymakers, or is it something everyone in the room is clearly aware of? Well, everybody knows what elections are. Yeah. And individual members of the Federal Open Market Committee have their own individual political preferences and a vote like any other citizen. But it is definitely not mentioned in the room.

9:42when anything even close to politics gets mentioned in the room, it's as if somebody slurped their soup and spilled it on their lap. You know, everybody sort of looks around and says, where did that come from? Because that had no business in this room. Awkward. Outside the room, you know, these are all private citizens. They can do what they want. But inside the FOMC room, no. Yeah. President Biden is the one who appointed Lisa Cook. But today's ruling points out that Fed governors, quote, do not serve at the president's pleasure, end quote, even though they are chosen by a president. What's the distinction?

10:23Why does that matter here? Well, the distinction exactly goes to this point of independence. The president gets to choose, by the way, with confirmation by the Senate. People forget this. There were a couple of close to nominees and one actual nominee, I believe, in Trump's first term that were basically rejected by the Senate. The senators told him this person was not going to get through. But leave that aside. For the most part, the nominees of the president get confirmed by the Senate. But once they're confirmed, they're independent agents and they don't have to answer to the White House for their decisions.

11:02And generally they don't and they shouldn't. And briefly, Professor, the Fed now has a new chair, Kevin Warsh, chosen by President Trump, confirmed by the Senate. He oversaw his first Fed interest rate meeting recently. Your assessment of him on the job so far? I think so far, so good. I'm a little, the tests are yet to come. I mentioned twice already, President Trump, and you just mentioned. Kevin Warsh has been a hawkish in the vernacular, observer of the Fed and member of the Fed board when he was a member years back. and the statement from the first Walsh meeting and his press conference also had a hawkish tilt to them.

11:59I was a little bit surprised, only a little, it was the first meeting that President Trump didn't take to the hustings, which I guess means a true social, and expressed his displeasure. Whether he did anything directly to Kevin Walsh, I wouldn't know. Alan Blinder, economics professor at Princeton. Thank you, sir. You're very welcome.

12:30The Supreme Court also issued a major decision on mail-in ballots. The ruling upholds a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count ballots that are postmarked by Election Day, but received up to five days after it. The decision is a blow to President Trump, who has been trying to restrict mail-in ballots ahead of the midterm elections. Voting rights advocates see this as a victory. Coming up, Scott investigates. What's going on with a long-awaited bridge to Canada?

13:13U.S.-Canada relations are at a low point, and a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario may be a fitting metaphor, because it's fully built and not open to traffic. The Gordie Howe Bridge is a wide, modern alternative to a current small bridge nearly 100 years old. It's jointly owned by Canada and Michigan, and the ribbon-cutting was supposed to happened two weeks ago. Rick Pluta covers politics for Michigan Public Radio Network. It's a much bigger bridge than the existing ambassador bridge. And that's a big point of this is that the ambassador, there are traffic backups that the custom plaza is not state of the art.

13:55And so that contributes to the traffic backups. I mean, sometimes they go back not just to the end of the bridge, but into the surrounding neighborhoods. So it's a huge issue. And when the Gordie Howe was approved, I mean, this has been a decades-long fight. And so when the Gordie Howe was finally approved and the very unique funding mechanism where Canada agreed to pay for it and then be paid back via the tolls was considered sort of a creative solution to a political problem. And it was done. Like you said, it was about to be opened up. The ceremony had been scheduled. And at the very last minute, due in large part to a tweet from President Trump, it was suddenly canceled to deal with some last minute issues.

14:47And this river crossing, I mean, it is one of the most important river crossings in North America. Is that fair to say? Oh, it's fair and it's accurate to say. This bridge has been backed by business interests on both sides of the border because the stakes for them are so high. Millions and millions and millions of dollars of agricultural products, of manufacturing components are stuck in traffic on one side of the bridge to make their way across. And they were just really planning a big celebration in order to point out that this thing has been years, decades really in the making. You mentioned the president tweeting or on X saying that this was going to be paused.

15:40What do we know about why the opening has been delayed? we don't know a lot which is part of the problem except for the fact that uh donald trump has said that this is not a very good deal that canada has agreed to pay for it and then be repaid by tolls at which point the tolls will be split between the state of michigan the united states and and canada and so it seems like if there's going to be a deal it's going to be somewhere you know, inside those numbers. There has been reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere about political involvement or a political donation, I guess, from the owner of this older ambassador bridge, who has donated, I understand, to many Republican lawmakers in Michigan.

16:31What do we know about that owner and his involvement? It's the Maroon family. And again, And this is unusual that there is a critical piece of infrastructure like this that is privately owned, and it's owned by the Maroon family. There was a$1 million donation that was made to a Trump-affiliated political fund that roughly corresponds with this decision. Although, I mean, as you pointed out, the Maroon family are prolific donors to the president and to Republicans. There's a lot of speculation that that relationship played a big part in this decision. And, I mean, the Maroon family is going to lose money once the Detroit International Bridge Crossing opens.

17:24It's going to divert traffic from their bridge, and that's a fact. Yeah. Michigan, as we speak, has two big statewide primaries underway for governor and for U.S. Senate. Has this bridge question become a big issue in either of those races? I don't know how big an issue it's become, but it's certainly been an issue that the presumptive Republican nominee, former Congressman Mike Rogers, that's for the U.S. Senate seat, has said that he thinks that the president did the right thing, that this deal isn't a great deal. He hasn't articulated how, though, and that's kind of the big mystery in all of this, that if this is a bad deal, what's so bad about the deal where the Canadian government puts up all the upfront money and only insists on being paid back for that investment versus what the U.S.

18:23and the Michigan side of the border is missing out on? We've been talking to Rick Pluta, Senior Capital Correspondent for the Michigan Public Radio Network. Rick, thanks as always. Oh, thank you so much. Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Jill Ryan and Lynn Menegon. Today's editors were Todd Munt, Miguel Rodriguez, Michael Scotto, and Kat Welch. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin. Here and Now's executive producer is Alan Price.

19:04Thanks for listening. Back with you tomorrow.

19:23Thank you.