The Supreme Court will allow Lisa Cook to remain on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors despite President Donald Trump’s attempt to oust her.

In a brief one-page order Wednesday, the court said Cook could keep her position pending oral arguments early next year, denying Trump’s application to stay an appeals court decision keeping Cook in place.

“The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is deferred pending oral argument in January 2026,” the order stated.

Trump attempted to fire Cook in August over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte—who’s made similar accusations against a number of the president’s enemies. But the move was initially blocked by a federal judge, who said the claim had nothing to do with Cook’s actual job.

Last month, an appeals court said that Cook was likely to succeed in her statutory claim that she’d been fired without “cause,” as well as her procedural claim that she did not receive her due process prior to her removal. But federal attorney John Sauer argued that she was not entitled to due process, and that Trump has sweeping discretion to fire whomever he wanted as long as he claimed it was related to their job.

This latest Supreme Court decision is a notably different outcome from similar challenges to Trump’s firings. Last month, Justice Elena Kagan slammed the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for approving Trump’s emergency request to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. The conservative justices also had previously allowed Trump to oust Gwynne Wilcox at the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris at the Merit Systems Protection Board—whose terms weren’t due to expire until 2029—as well as three Democratic appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In December, the Supreme Court is expected to reexamine the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the court rejected Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s attempt to fire a conservative commissioner appointed by President Herbert Hoover overseeing his New Deal policies. Depending on how the court rules, Trump could be granted sweeping discretion to fire members of independent agencies, like Cook, and Justice Clarence Thomas has already hinted that past precedents may be turned on their heads.

Last week, an amicus brief was filed arguing that removing Cook would “threaten [the] independence and erode public confidence in the Fed,” stressing the historical importance of the agency’s freedom from political considerations. The brief was signed by every living former Federal Reserve chair, and several other economic policy experts that spanned political boundaries.

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump used his merchandise to mock Democratic leaders during a meeting while pretending he was working to avert a government shutdown.

The president shared multiple photographs on Truth Social Wednesday of his meeting the day before with House House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to Truth Social, showing two bright red “Trump 2028” hats sitting on the Resolute Desk.

Speaking to CNN’s Abby Phillip Tuesday night, Jeffries said the president hadn’t tried to hand out his merch, suggesting that they “just randomly appeared in the middle of the meeting.”

“It was the strangest thing ever,” Jeffries said. “And I just looked at the hat, looked at JD Vance who was seated to my left, and said, ‘Don’t you got a problem with this?’ And he said, ‘No comment.’ And that was the end of it.”

It’s possible Trump thought he could win the Democrats over with free hats. In an effort to pass his behemoth budget bill in August, Trump had invited Republican holdouts to meet with him personally in the Oval Office, and they left with signed merchandise, photos with the president, and a new attitude.

But this time, it doesn’t seem that Trump was using his merchandise as part of a charm offensive. More likely, he wanted the meeting to serve as an unwitting photo op to create visuals highlighting the futility of negotiating with a president and a party intent on being in power for the next five years. The Democrats left with nothing to show for it.

Vance also mocked the Democrats over the hats’ presence, saying Wednesday morning on Fox & Friends he thought the hats “made the … minority leader in both the House and Senate very uncomfortable.”

For his part, Vance has expressed no displeasure with Trump’s threats to defy the Twenty-Second Amendment, curb-stomping his own potential run. The president’s fundraising efforts have kicked 5 percent of donations to the vice president’s PAC, so maybe Trump’s number two is not too bothered by hat sales.

It would be a mistake to think that Trump ever took the prompt of working with Democrats seriously. The 79-year-old had already shared an AI video falsely depicting Schumer criticizing the Democrats’ “woke trans bullshit” next to a silent Jeffries in a superimposed Mexican sombrero with a curled mustache. Trump posted a

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