Listen live via C-SPAN:
Background:
After Trump DOJ allies levied contrived and potentially baseless mortgage fraud allegations against Cook, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted Cook’s petition to keep her on the Fed until her case challenging her removal concludes in court. An appeals court upheld the ruling. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court hoping to overturn that lower court stay, and the case reached the Court on its emergency docket.
Meanwhile, Cook has remained at the Fed and has continued participating in monetary policy setting.
Fed chair Jerome Powell is expected to attend today's oral arguments.
Here’s Who You’ll Hear From Today
- For the Trump administration: Solicitor General John Sauer
- For Lisa Cook: Paul Clement (former SG and AG under George W. Bush)
- Sauer goes first, then Clement, then Sauer again for rebuttal
The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments this morning on whether President Donald Trump can lawfully remove Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook while a criminal investigation against Cook, brought by Trump’s retribution-seeking Department of Justice, is pending in court.
The case is about whether the administration provided Cook with adequate due process before attempting to fire her, and whether a claim of personal mortgage fraud, which Cook has denied, is even grounds for a Fed governor’s dismissal. Observers can also expect to hear arguments about the global financial importance of an independent central bank.
The Supreme Court has allowed Trump to run roughshod over other independent executive branch agencies, but appears to want to protect the Fed as a uniquely independent body.
Follow along below.
Jerome going to attend the arguments…
Trump is going to be pissed… hahaha
Edit… Cat added
Mr. Powell, sitting there, reminding the Supreme Six that they too can have a backbone.
Bold of you to presume that all, or even a majority, of those you refer to want to stand up to this administration. Perhaps this instance will prove a step too far, but even a decision which preserves Fed independence would be a fig leaf over the lengthy history of regressive decisions built one a foundation of perceived grievance.
Given the current majority’s history of decisions, this may prove to be the first time that their only standards being double-standards proves to be of any benefit.
My bet is, special carve out for independence of the Fed because those positions are largely held by folks friendly to Big Money, thus Federalist Society would want those folks in there and not easily fired by any future populist Democratic president. (Other independent agencies left controlled by the executive)
Probably 7-2 (Alito and Thomas will always vote wrong)
Maybe 6-3 and Gorsuch writes his own dissent differing from the crazy in Thomas/Alito’s dissent.
“Could they do it consistent with their own apparent understanding of the scope of executive power and how the Constitution should be understood? No,” Peter Shane, a leading scholar in U.S. constitutional and administrative law, told TPM last winter. “But if the Court is willing to make up stuff about immunity, what else could it make it up? That’s what’s so destabilizing about the Roberts court — it just makes shit up.”
Oh boy, our question for the moment is what shit will the citizens receive from SCOTUS. The foul shit of a Fed governed by a whimsical, partly insane executive or the crazy shit of total nonsensical legal reasoning without underpinnings except what is in the minds of the increasingly crazy fascist 6.
The thing about crazy, it can go anywhere.