Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and attorney Abbe Lowell leave the Supreme Court on January 21, 2026. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The Supreme Court’s Republican majority ordinarily believe that President Donald Trump is allowed to fire virtually anyone who works for a federal agency. Last July, for example, they permitted the Trump administration to fire nearly half of the Department of Education’s employees.

In May, however, the Court also signaled that the Federal Reserve is special. In Trump v. Wilcox (2025), the Court indicated that Trump may not fire the Fed’s leaders because that agency is a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”

It is not at all clear what this cryptic sentence means, but at Wednesday morning’s oral argument in Trump v. Cook, most of the justices signaled that they will adhere to the view that they laid out in Wilcox. Six justices — the three Democrats plus Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett — appeared very likely to reject Trump’s attempt to seize control of the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, even Justice Samuel Alito, who is ordinarily a kneejerk Republican partisan, asked some skeptical questions of Trump’s lawyer.

The Federal Reserve is supposed to make technocratic decisions about where to set interest rates. If they set those rates too high, it will be too expensive for businesses to borrow money and investment and hiring will stagnate. At the same time, if they set rates too low, the economy will take off in the short term, but will experience much more damaging inflation in the long term.

The Fed, in other words, has the power to inject cocaine into the economy — giving it a temporary high at the price of much greater economic pain down the road.

For this reason, Congress shields the Fed’s governors from presidential control, only permitting the president to fire them “for cause.” This is to prevent the president from pressuring them to lower interest rates in an election year, when the president’s party would benefit from a temporary economic high.

The Cook case, meanwhile, appears to involve Trump’s attempt to bypass this law by making up a fake reason to fire a Fed governor. And, if Trump prevails in........

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