The Supreme Court has expanded Trump’s power. He’s seeking much more.
The president’s firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and other cases could serve as major tests of how far the high court is willing to go.
September 1, 2025, 8 min
(Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court has already expanded President Donald Trump’s authority in a string of emergency rulings, but in his firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and other issues probably headed to the court, he’s signaling that he continues to seek broader powers for the executive branch.
The cases could serve as major tests of how much further the nation’s high court is willing to go to bless the president’s assertion of executive authority. They differ from previous showdowns because of the sheer magnitude of the authority Trump is seeking to wield and because he wants greater control over powers the Constitution ascribes to another branch of government.
In addition to Cook’s case, which could make its way to the high court after she sued last week, a blockbuster case over Trump’s tariffs is expected to arrive at the Supreme Court soon after an appeals court struck them down. The Trump administration’s pushto withhold tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid appropriated by Congress could also end up in the court.
Peter Shane, a law professor at New York University, called Trump’s assertions “breathtaking.”
“Other presidents have tried to use their authority aggressively, but usually it’s been done through aggressive interpretations of statutory law and in a pretty targeted way,” Shane said.
Each of the presidential powers being contested by Trump, he said, “is a challenge to what I think heretofore would have been regarded as a core power of Congress.”
The high court has already signaled openness to broad presidential authority to replace some heads of independent agencies.
The justices handed Trump a major victory in May when they allowed him to remove the leaders of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board while legal challenges play out over their firings. Trump gave no reasons for the dismissals.
The court’s conservative majority ruled that the Constitution vests all executive power in the president, so Trump could fire the agency heads “without cause” even though Congress set up the agencies to be insulated from political interference.
Continue/Read Original Article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/01/trump-presidential-power-supreme-court-tariffs-federal-reserve/
Discover more from DrWeb's Domain
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
