Published 5:31 PM EDT, Mon June 29, 2026

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf with Kate Carroll and Dejania Oliver, CNN

Trump gets more power from the Supreme Court, but hits some limits elsewhere

On the one hand, President Donald Trump is consolidating power with help from the Supreme Court.

The conservative supermajority, in a 6-3 decision, overturned decades of precedent to give him new power to fire, at will, even people at agencies — in this case the Federal Trade Commission — that Congress had intentionally tried to shield from politics.

On the other hand, Trump keeps running into the limits of his power.

In a 5-4 decision, the high court seemed to carve out an exception for the Federal Reserve, blocking, at least for the moment, Trump’s effort to fire Lisa Cook, a Fed governor he doesn’t like. Trump said Tuesday he will move forward in trying to fire Cook.

She might ultimately get the boot, but the Supreme Court decision makes clear there are a few things even conservative Supreme Court justices think should be walled off from Trump’s otherwise vast power to do as he pleases.

“I would not risk destabilizing the United States economy just so that we can further mull over an issue that, in various permutations we’ve been thinking about for many years,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in a concurring opinion.

Trump also must now pay $5 million to woman juries said he defamed. In a more personal setback for Trump, justices declined to take up an appeal from President Donald Trump over a $5 million judgment and verdict that he sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, a decision that means the president will now have to pay the magazine columnist.

Limits on president’s power still include tariffs. CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald notes that when Trump threatened last week to put a 100% tariff on every import from Europe — something that might have turned markets early in his term — it barely got any notice. That’s because back in February the court ruled Trump could not use emergency authority to impose tariffs at will.

And on elections, Trump is also facing setbacks. He desperately wants to change the rules for the coming election. But the court refused to agree that mail-in ballots received after Election Day cannot be counted.

More importantly, despite months of strong-arm tactics, his calls to pass an election security law continue to fail.

Part of the reason Republicans in the Senate can’t ram through the elections bill, which Trump calls the SAVE America Act, is that the Senate parliamentarian — a woman Trump has no power to fire — won’t agree to add the election legislation into a bill that is supposed to be about budget reconciliation.

On issues large and small, Trump is running into the courts. When he took a tour of things he’d like to change in and around DC over the weekend, he was met with evidence — at least for now — of the limits of his power.

The Kennedy Center saga, for instance, shows both what happens when a president packs commissions with supporters — they can sideline laws to put his name on things — but also the limits of that strategy: a judge ordered the name removed. Similarly, Trump wants to turn a beloved-by-locals inexpensive public golf course in DC into a championship-level links. But a lawsuit has paused his plans, for now. He toured the existing course Sunday and viewed blueprints.

Both things can be true. The Supreme Court did give Trump new power Monday. At the same time, he’s running out of time to use it. And despite his efforts to stack commissions and put supporters across the government, institutional guardrails still exist.

Here’s how Trump described his new power in a post on Truth Social:

Today’s Historic Slaughter Decision by the Supreme Court is the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years. Such a Monumental Ruling at such an important time! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Justice Sonya Sotomayor — for the second time in two weeks reading an ominous dissent from the bench — predicted chaos as a result of the new prcedent.

CNN’s Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid added the important nuance to Trump’s boast:

Reid: This is a big day. It’s clear President Trump has lost a few battles here this term at the Supreme Court, but he is winning the war to expand executive power. These opinions about who Trump can and cannot fire, these will be some of the defining opinions of the Roberts Court. Because here, the question hanging over the entire early second Trump term has been: Exactly who can he fire? Are there any limits on his power? And here today, we get an answer…

The latest

Supreme Court. Catch up on all of the term’s consequential cases.

► More to come… Court set to rule on two major cases tomorrow: Birthright citizenship and participation bans on transgender athletes.

► Mail ballots. Justices uphold state laws that count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. Roberts and Barrett side with liberals in unexpected Trump rebuff.

► Dragnet. Police must obtain warrant for “geofence” sweep of everyone’s cell phone data in an area.

► E. Jean Carroll. Court declines to take up Trump’s appeal over 2022 defamation and battery case. Trump must pay columnist $5 million.

Fed independence. Fear of market meltdown may have impacted Supreme Court decision on Fed case. CNN’s Manu Raju and panel explains. Click to watch:

Continue/Read Original Article: https://www.cnn.com/newsletters/what-matters-06-29-26-095018