Introduction
Introduction Statistics Contact Development Disclaimer Help
.-') _ .-') _
( OO ) ) ( OO ) )
.-----. ,--./ ,--,' ,--./ ,--,'
' .--./ | \ | |\ | \ | |\
| |('-. | \| | )| \| | )
/_) |OO )| . |/ | . |/
|| |`-'| | |\ | | |\ |
(_' '--'\ | | \ | | | \ |
`-----' `--' `--' `--' `--'
lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Trump’s firing of Fed’s Lisa Cook tests Supreme Court’s limits on
presidential power
By John Fritze, CNN
Updated:
12:50 PM EDT, Tue August 26, 2025
Source: CNN
President Donald Trump’s decision late Monday to dismiss escalated
his yearlong effort to consolidate executive power and could open a new
high-stakes legal battle at the Supreme Court.
The 6-3 conservative court has repeatedly the leadership at independent
agencies, but it has in the past drawn a line around the Fed. In May,
the court called the Federal Reserve a “uniquely structured” agency
with a long history of insulation from political interference from the
White House that shouldn’t be changed.
“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the
president,” the court at the time, “he may remove without cause
executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to
narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents.”
The president has blamed the Fed’s leadership for years for moving
too slowly, in his view, to lower interest rates.
Trump fired Cook with a letter he posted Monday night on social media,
accusing her of committing mortgage fraud. The Justice Department has
said it plans to investigate those allegations first raised by Federal
Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte and prosecutor Ed Martin
also . Cook has not been charged with any wrongdoing and has vowed to
fight her dismissal.
The dispute appears designed to give federal courts new legal questions
to tackle, said Jennifer Nou, a law professor at the University of
Chicago: What counts as “cause,” who decides and what process is
required to remove someone from the Fed?
“Given the pretextual basis, what is clear is that Trump has violated
a strong norm against firing Federal Reserve board members,” Nou
said. “If the court can’t restore that norm, perhaps the markets
will.”
Supreme Court has given Trump leeway for firings
Since retaking power in January, Trump has managed – with Supreme
Court approval – to fire leaders at independent agencies who were
seated by President Joe Biden. He has done so despite federal laws that
bar presidents from dismissing those officials without cause, such as
malfeasance.
In July, the Supreme Court three members of the Consumer Product Safety
Commission – over dissents from the court’s liberal justices.
Months earlier, the court ruled that Trump didn’t have to reinstate
officials from that enforce worker protections.
But the court specifically distinguished the Federal Reserve, even
though the language of the law protecting Fed governors is similar to
those in place for other agencies.
In its decision in May, the court rejected an argument raised by the
labor officials that if Trump got his way in their case, the Fed
leadership would be the next to fall.
“We disagree,” the court said, echoing an argument Trump’s
attorneys had raised throughout the case. “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.”
In a sharp dissent in that decision, liberal Justice Elena Kagan balked
at the idea of a “bespoke Federal Reserve exception” to the
court’s decisions allowing Trump to fire agency leaders.
Instead, she wrote, the court should have sided against Trump based on
a decades-old Supreme Court precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. US,
that allowed Congress to require presidents to show cause – such as
malfeasance – before dismissing board members overseeing independent
agencies.
“If the idea is to reassure the markets, a simpler – and more
judicial – approach would have been to deny the President’s
application for a stay on the continued authority of Humphrey’s,”
Kagan wrote.
The president’s letter steers around the Supreme Court’s earlier
cases by asserting he is firing Cook because of the mortgage fraud
allegations – in other words, for cause.
The law, Trump , “provides that you may be removed, at my discretion,
for cause.” The president wrote that he had “determined that there
is sufficient cause to remove you from your position.”
“The firing of Lisa Cook ‘for cause’ may be pretextual but is not
obviously illegal,” Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at Harvard
University who regularly writes on administrative law issues, . “The
big question is how the markets react.”
For her part, Cook is arguing that Trump’s reliance on the
allegations is a pretext to do what he has always wanted to do: Punish
the Fed for not lowering interest rates.
“President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause
exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so,” in a
statement her attorneys shared with CNN on Monday. “I will not
resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American
economy as I have been doing since 2022.”
<- back to index
You are viewing proxied material from codevoid.de. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.