Trump Scared of SCOTUS Ruling Devises New Plan

0:00Michael Popok:I'm back and I wanted to jump into this Jay Powell Federal Reserve story, Donald Trump's pressure campaign to try to get rid of Jay Powell before his term expires as the chairman of the Federal Reserve on May in 2026. First of all, there's a giant brick wall at the end of the road that most reporting completely ignores. It's that the United States Supreme Court, who for all intents and purposes is in Donald Trump's back pocket, even they in May of this year said that he's not going to be able to fire Jay Powell without cause. I'll read to you from the actual quote. It's from a case involving Gwen Wilcox, who used to be the head of the National Labor Relations Board, but no longer.

0:43Michael Popok:They went out of their way, the majority, the six to three MAGA majority, to put a ring fence around Jay Powell. Even the credit rating agencies like Moody's who rate the credit. It's like the credit score for America. It determines how much we have to spend more, what the interest rate's going to be for our borrowing. Even they said if Jay Powell is knocked off by Donald Trump, it will lead to a downgrade of our credit rating. so Donald Trump knowing that now he's thrown around the f-word because he knows even though he's doing things like I've got a resignation letter demand for his resignation letter in my back pocket and he's hit the button on all his his uh MAGA social media influencers and peddlers to like every day every hour you can you can say it you can you can tell it's the theme of the day to attack Jay Powell, to make him leave.

1:42So right on cue, here's what we've been watching. Now remember, brick wall, Gwen Wilcox case, Supreme Court, just from this May. I'm going to read it to you from, I'm going to read from it in a minute. But that's going to stop Donald Trump, even Donald Trump, from firing Jay Powell. Doesn't mean he's not going to stop his pressure campaign to make him quit. A terrible impact on the economy for voters, for people that care about kitchen table, pocketbook, and wallet issues. You don't want Jay Powell to leave. That's why they're left with, he overspent maybe on the reconstruction of the Federal Reserve Building.

2:21That's why we should get rid of Jay Powell. Are you insane? But here is the drumbeat that Donald Trump has been running. He brings a bunch of MAGA Republican legislators. into the White House to talk about crypto. But while he's there, he's like, I have a letter that's been drafted for his resignation. Do you think I should do it? Do you think I should do it? Now, apparently the person that's really drumming this drum to get rid of him is William Pulte. Pulte Homes, big construction contractor, building single family homes throughout the Southeast. Well, he's now the head of Freddie May and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, You know, a lending quasi public private lending institutions for mortgages.

3:08He hates J-PAL. He hates interest rates ever being high. So he's been pumping them on his social media saying there's fraud in the development or the renovation of the Federal Reserve building. Now, right on cue, then you get the legislators together in the Oval Office and you get one of them who's doing like real time reporting. like it's like an in-game bet for one of these sports books. You've got Anna Luna from Florida. When she's not busy telling Donald Trump that he should be releasing all the Epstein files, she's there saying, oh, I'm in the meeting now. Jay Powell, Jerome Powell's definitely being canned as Federal Reserve Chairman.

3:48Now this letter gets drafted. Donald Trump denies it, by the way, when he gets hit by the media with it. Did you have a letter calling for his resignation, demanding his resignation? No, I don't have a letter. Yeah. Well, apparently the letter's out there. Pulte released it. Pulte drafted it for Donald Trump's signature. Trump showed it to everybody in the room. Then he's got who should be the ones trying to tether this administration to planet Earth. A couple of guys that used to work on Wall Street. One of them, Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary that used to run until he sold it off to his sons, a company called Cantor Fitzgerald and another one, Scott Bessette, who's your Treasury Secretary.

4:26they're campaigning. Scott Bessent's like, well, if Jay Powell is steps down or is fired or is removed by the 26th of May as the chairman, even though he's his governorship, because this is a board of governors, even though his governorship goes two more years, it would be very awkward for him to stay after he was removed as chairman. I don't think he should do that. So you got Scott 50%, who's on the short list by Donald Trump to be the Fed chair, campaigning now to get rid of the Fed chair. There's a couple of other guys, all white men, that Donald Trump wants to put there instead. And all Donald Trump cares about is to have low, low, low interest rates, cheap, cheap, cheap money to bail out his failed, failed, failed economic policy.

5:11That's it. There's a reason he doesn't call it, and no one in the administration calls it Trumponomics, like Reaganomics. You know why they don't call it Trumponomics? Because it sucks, because it's failing, because the tariff scheme brought in just$50 billion after we just got rid of$3 trillion worth of tax revenue. $50 billion of these lame brain tariffs is not going to fill, it's not going to close the gap. Like, yeah, we got an extra million dollars out of Vietnam. Okay, great. What about corporate tax revenue? What about high net worth tax revenue? How are we going to pay the social safety net, which is Donald Trump, of course, is busy destroying?

5:51So right on cue, he's got the Laura Loomers of the world, you know, loony loony loomers out there with her. So why he listens to her. She has no body of work. She's accomplished nothing in her life other than she's got a big mouth and she puts it into the keyboard. But she loves I mean, she literally says, I love Donald Trump and Donald Trump loves her. So they're mooning over each other. And he uses her as a, you know, like Tokyo Rose to like come up with all this propaganda and go after his enemies or create new enemies. So she goes after Pamela Jo Blondie. That's what she calls her because she wants her out of there.

6:30And then, you know, Bondi just fired James Comey's, I felt sorry for James Comey's prosecutor's daughter, Maureen. You know, she's just working her ass off, bipartisan, in New York as a prosecutor. She wins some, she loses some. She wins the Jazean Maxwell. She loses the Diddy trial, at least the big rocketeering count, and she gets fired. But no, Laura Looney Loomer, oh no, the son has to be fired too. Why? Why can't they have independent jobs independent from your hatred of James Comey? But that's for another day. So Laura Loomer's going after Jay Powell. And he got all this going on.

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9:14Michael Popok:And thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. But now let's talk about the brick wall. Yeah, time. So in the Supreme Supreme Court case. Here's the Supreme Court, just so we know what we're talking about. And this I reported on at the time. This is Trump versus Wilcox. It was only a three page opinion because it was one of those emergency applications, you know, where they make a decision, where they act like they didn't really make a decision, but they made a decision that helped Trump, letting him firing people. And the big issue there was what kind of agency is it? They're all created by Congress.

9:48But if Congress also puts in a for cause termination requirement before you can get rid of a board, does that impair the executive branch's authority?

10:00Michael Popok:Once you've created an executive branch agency, can you tie the executive, the president's hands to make him to to limit his ability to fire at will by Congress? In other words, you can you can give birth to the agency as an executive agency. But can you control it after you've given birth, so to speak, and given it to Donald Trump? I mean, giving birth to something that results in handing it off to Donald Trump, I know, is a disastrous metaphor. But go along with me for a minute. But once it's handed off to Donald Trump, can you as Congress limit what he can do with that agency in terms of hiring and firing?

10:37And in the Wilcox case, the Supreme Court said that in certain types of agencies, you can't limit the president's ability to fire only for costs.

10:48Michael Popok:So he can fire whoever he wants, even the ones that were created for nonpartisan purposes that weren't supposed to be political. They allow this political process to infect it. except with one or two limited exceptions. And one of them in particular was the Federal Reserve. So here was the Supreme Court, led by John Roberts, basically putting a ring fence to protect J-PAL. Here's what they wrote. Finally, respondents Wilcox and Kathy Harris, she was the head of the Merit Systems Protection Board, a similar agency where she got fired as well, contend that arguments in this case necessarily implicate the constitutionality of for-cause removal protections for members of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors or other members of the Federal Open Market Committee.

11:35Michael Popok:That's what Jay Powell heads. So in other words, they're saying, hey, if you let it happen to us, they're next. Here's what the Supreme Court said, the MAGA majority. We disagree. The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the first and second banks of the United States, citing to a case from 2002, which we call Celia Ward. So what's the point there? The point there is they're unique, the Federal Reserve. It goes back to our historical tradition of the first couple of banks that were around, like Alexander Hamilton times.

12:14Michael Popok:And we can't and the president would not be able to fire somebody except for cost. That's why you see Trump starting to use the F word. Fraud. He committed fraud. His fraud. There's fraud in the building and the redevelopment of the Federal Reserve Building. Now, that redevelopment's been going on for three or four years. And yes, it's over budget by a lot. It's over budget by like$700 million. However, the Federal Reserve has made you, according to Jay Powell, who wrote a letter back to Donald Trump and to Russ Vaught and said, hey, listen, I'm not the builder. I'm not the developer. These were the core issues that needed to be accomplished by the redevelopment, the restructuring, the renovation, including major structural issues that needed to be shored up.

12:58Michael Popok:I can tell you from my own kind of the smaller development world, shoring up structural deficiencies is very, very expensive. And so he sent the letter back. Trump has sent Russ Vought. Remember that name. Russ Vought is not only your current Office of Management and Budget head, basically running the nation's checkbook. He's also effectively the head of Doge. He's been the head of Doge even when Elon Musk was here. And he is the architect. He is the creator. It is his fevered imagination from which Project 2025 came. He was a leader in the Heritage Foundation. He was in the shadow government for Donald Trump while they were out of power for a couple of years.

13:43Michael Popok:And he was always going to go back to that Office of Management and Budget. And they used that position in a way with a giant sword to slash, lose$3 trillion. The entire budget bill that was created came out of the fevered mind of Russ Vought. So they sicked Russ Vought on Jay Powell. Again, he doesn't have to leave. He knows he's not going to get fired. This fraud thing is not going to lead to him being fired for cause, although they're trying to drum it up now or trying to embarrass him. And if I'm Jay Powell, for the good of the country and to avoid Trumponomics, stay in your chair. The nation needs you as a counterweight against Trump.

14:21Michael Popok:But all we're watching are people folding from the MAGA Congress to even federal judges to a certain extent, and certainly the United States Supreme Court. Somebody stand up for Americans and our economy. And that's got to be Jay Powell. And even if you leave on May 2026, which you're going to leave on May 2026, stay on the Board of Governors for two more years until 2028 to let that seat be filled by the next president of the United States, which I'm sure with our help here is going to be a Democrat. So until my next report, this is Michael Popak on Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. Come over to Legal AF, the YouTube channel as well.

15:05Michael Popok:Follow me there. And until my next contribution, I'll be seeing you. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes where legal AF on Substack.

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