President Donald Trump launched his second term by seeking to usurp Congress’ power and challenge a nearly century-old legal precedent that protects independent executive branch agencies and the congressionally approved officers who lead them from presidential overreach. In late January, Trump fired Gwen Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board and fired two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission commissioners. In February, he fired a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board. In March, he fired two Federal Trade Commission commissioners.
Nearly a year after that campaign began, the Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear oral arguments on whether Trump can continue his campaign against independent agencies and the laws Congress passed to protect them by exercising control over the Federal Reserve. The case centers on Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump in August tried to fire based on contrived — and apparently unfounded — mortgage fraud allegations and without due process. Cook sued and a lower court in September blocked her deportation while her case moved through the legal system. The case has now reached the Supreme Court on its emergency docket.
The world will watch as the court considers Trump’s self-given right to destroy Congress in order to assert his political will over the central bank that is so important to the global economy.
Cook’s case is about preserving the independence of the Federal Reserve, and protecting subsequent monetary policy from presidential influence and partisan policy setting. It’s also about the ways in which Trump throughout the first year of his second term has crushed the power of Congress and concentrated more and more power within the executive branch. To understand how Trump’s attempt to bypass the Fed fits into his administration’s themes of unilateral executive power requires understanding the shaky world of independent agencies created by Congress.
The core of the pre-Trump definition of independent agencies is that Congress designed them to be insulated from partisanship, and not controlled by the president.
“If, as the president insists, he is able to remove the Fed governor for seemingly any reason at any time without due process, that would effectively negate the removal protections Congress has put in place and would place the Fed under direct presidential control,” Jeremy Kress, an assistant professor of business law at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, told TPM.
Independent agencies consist of bipartisan, multi-member bodies, whose members serve overlapping, multi-year terms. The presidents appoint members and agency heads, all of whom must ultimately be confirmed by the Senate. These agencies exist within the executive branch but outside the president’s authority, primarily because Congress installed safeguards to protect board members and agency officials from frivolous presidential removal. The law stipulates that members and heads of independent agencies may be removed only “for cause.”
In 1935, a different group of Supreme Court justices upheld this principle, ruling in a case known as… Humphrey outlet That Congress has constitutional authority to restrict the president’s ability to remove members and leaders of independent agencies.
But today the Roberts Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has repeatedly moved to ignore or overturn Congress’s constitutional control over the president, instead leaning ever more toward embracing the concept of unitary executive power, where the president controls the entire executive branch.
“The big global picture here is that this Supreme Court has been very determined and has worked to consolidate executive power at the expense of Congress,” Sarah Bender, a political science professor at George Washington University, told TPM.
Supreme Court justices in recent years have promoted the idea that the Fed is a private entity, protected from presidential interference in a way that other independent executive branch agencies are not, even those that handle economic policy. In 2018, then-federal appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote Opposed to a ruling protecting the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In it, he said the Fed has a “unique function…with respect to monetary policy.” Justice Samuel Alito in a separate 2024 case challenging the CFPB, CFPB v. American Community Financial Services Association, He highlighted the Fed’s self-reliant financing structure and its “unique historical background.” In a spring 2025 case challenging the removal of NLRB and MSPB officers, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution gives the president the power to remove independent agency board members on the grounds that they are likely to “exercise significant executive authority” on behalf of the president. SCOTUS then hinted at its intention to protect the Fed, describing the Fed as a “uniquely regulated semi-private entity” and highlighting the legacy of other historic US banks.
Now, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has put itself in an awkward position over the Cook case, having to choose whether to prove that the Fed is not the same type of entity as other entities that the court allowed Trump to convict, or to greenlight Trump’s attempt to impeach Cook. Allowing Cook’s dismissal would give a stamp of approval to the president’s explicit threats to effectively rule the Fed with potentially devastating consequences.
The Supreme Court is even hearing oral arguments or receiving full briefings on this emergency regulation issue, which is unusual, Bender said, and suggested the court may be skittish about the implications of its previous rulings upholding Trump’s unilateral control of executive branch agencies.
“That’s really what the struggle is here, because [in] “The legal rules that they were setting or proposing, there’s no exception for the agency just because it’s really important,” said Binder, who co-authored it. A book about congressional management of the Federal Reserve.
“The courts have pressured Congress here and said, ‘No. We will decide this issue,'” Bender said.
When the Justice Department subpoenaed the Fed, it was part of Investigating whether Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell The Trump administration lied to Congress while testifying about the cost of renovating two Federal Reserve buildings, and the Trump administration may have overstated its position. Legal and financial experts saw the investigation as a transparent attempt Powell pressed Specifically, the Fed’s leadership more broadly, to align its monetary policy with monetary policy President’s wishes. This will be top of mind for the justices in oral arguments on Wednesday, experts told TPM.
“There is no doubt that the announcement of this investigation will cloud the Lisa Cook case,” Richard Pildis, a constitutional law scholar and New York University law professor, told TPM. “I doubt that this action has helped the government’s position.”
Chris of Michigan said that if the court rules in the Cook case with a narrow ruling that does not address broader questions of the Fed’s independence, Congress could act legislatively. This is a longshot, given that it would take more than a dozen GOP senators joining the Democrats to obtain a veto-proof majority.
But at least in the case of the Powell investigation, Congress has shown signs of life. Senators from Trump’s party have pledged to block any of the president’s nominees to the Fed, including the president’s nominee to chair the board, when Powell’s term ends in May. (He can remain on the board as governor until 2028.)
“We’re seeing what Congress can do, and specifically what the president’s party in the Senate can do, given that these are the people who will make or break the president’s ability to appoint a new president,” Bender said. [and] Fill the board with people who will be more responsive to his pressure for a lower price.