Lisa Cook Is Not Yet Evicted from the Federal Reserve Board
It was such a huge mistake in 2021 not to expand the Supreme Court. The lawless Republican justices had already said who they were: lawless partisan hypocrites. And yet Manchin and company would not listen. That may have been one of the key failures that future historians will say ended American democracy as we had known it…
Unexplained lawlessness at the Supreme Court continues. The ruling principle is now: Trump wins rapidly when he cares enough to double-down on the issue, except in the case of the Federal Reserve, where he does not win rapidly, but we will not say anything more than that:
One word of caution to those viewing this as a big win for Cook: This will be the fifth argument #SCOTUS has heard on an application since 1971; in each of the previous four (all since 2022), the applicant *won.* Letting Cook keep her job for now won’t stop the Court from ruling against her later. To be clear, this is a much better sign for Cook than we’ve seen in any of the *other* removal cases. But the notion that letting her stay on the Board for now necessarily defeats the government’s irreparable harm argument is belied by the Court’s behavior in, e.g., the birthright citizenship cases…. This isn’t a grant of relief. So far, this is following the same path as the birthright citizenship cases. And we know how those ended…
How is this different from any of the other removal cases. It isn’t. A Supreme Court that was an umpire—that called balls and strikes—would say: in all removal cases Trump’s dismissals are properly enjoined, because Humphrey’s Executor is good law right now, and whatever you think of the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s power to rule and make and unmake law from the bench, that making and unmaking has not yet happened, and so does not cast a shadow backward in time to the present.
Yet that principle controls only in Lisa Cook’s case. In every other one, the controlling principle is: Trump cares to double-down, so he wins rapidly—and lower courts had better quickly get a clue that that is the program. Legitimate judicial reasons why Lisa Cook’s case is different? None.
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