Even as the Supreme Court has granted Donald Trump expanded presidential powers, it has tried to warn him: Don’t mess with the Fed.

But the president has forged ahead with his effort to strong-arm the government’s independent rate-setting agency, the Federal Reserve Board, into cutting interest rates. As he doggedly pursues that fleeting economic sugar high, Trump has endured a series of legal losses that promises to continue until he gets the point and gives up the senseless browbeating. Along the way, he’ll undermine his own ability to install his preferred rate-makers at the agency.

Last year, the Supreme Court granted the president unprecedented unilateral power to fire (for any reason or none at all) the heads of obscure executive-branch agencies like the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board. But the justices cautioned against presidential encroachment on the Fed. The fired agency heads argued that if the Court allowed the president to remove them, then the Fed could be next. “We disagree,” the six-justice conservative majority wrote. “The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”

The Court usually refuses to offer gratuitous guidance about how it might rule in future cases. But here, the conservative justices left little doubt that, while they would allow the president to run roughshod over most regulatory agencies, they would draw a protective line around the Fed.

Trump didn’t notice or didn’t care. First, he went after Fed governor Lisa Cook. Bill Pulte, an unapologetic sycophant who runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice alleging that Cook had committed mortgage fraud. Pulte’s record isn’t great; he had previously prodded the DoJ to bring mortgage-fraud charges against New York attorney general Letitia James — a case that has now been rejected by........

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