On Monday, the Supreme Court issued two back-to-back blockbuster rulings on presidential power with seemingly contradictory findings. On paper, the two rulings look like a mixed bag for President Donald Trump — one win for his administration, and one loss.

But in reality, both serve his priorities, and the chief priority of the court: protecting and expanding the power of corporations.

In the case of Trump v. Slaughter, the court sided with Trump to overturn 90 years of precedent, and rule presidents have an unfettered power to fire agency officials for any reason whatsoever that cannot be restricted by for-cause removal protections enacted by Congress.

“We hold that such protection from removal is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in that case.

But then, at the same time, in Trump v. Cook, Roberts said not so fast ― this unquestionable executive power does not apply to the Federal Reserve. Here, Trump had attempted to fire Federal Reserve Board Gov. Lisa Cook for cause over made-up claims of mortgage fraud.

“The protection from removal enjoyed by Governors of the Federal Reserve is consistent with the Constitution,” Roberts wrote in that opinion.

It’s a strange circle to square — but Roberts gave it his best try.

“Our prior cases do not necessarily implicate the constitutionality of such arrangements,” Roberts wrote in Slaughter about the for-cause protection carveout for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. “Our opinion today should not be read to do so either.”

To make it all fit together, the two decisions invent a distinction rooted in a highly dubious historical tradition of central bank independence in order to differentiate the Federal Reserve from other executive branch agencies. The Federal Reserve is viewed as a successor to the First and Second Banks of the United States ― both created and folded in the early 19th century ― even though these earlier iterations did not engage in monetary regulation nor were they a part of the executive branch.

Instead, for Roberts, “What matters is that the Federal Reserve remains ‘consistent with the principles that underpin’ the First and Second Banks—namely, that monetary policy should not be subject to political interference.”

The entirety of Roberts’ differentiation of the Federal Reserve hangs on this analogy. It is well-established that the Federal Reserve, as the second independent executive branch regulatory agency created following the Interstate Commerce Commission, was created in much the same manner and for the same justification as any other executive branch agency. Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission, whose protections the court struck down just a few minutes earlier, was created just one year after the Federal Reserve and provided its members with the very same for-cause removal protections first enacted for the central bank governors.

So what gives?

In a concurrence in Cook, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the only conservative to join Roberts in the majority in both cases, provided a more material, policy-oriented explanation as he called for the court to conclusively state that the Federal Reserve could maintain its for-cause removal protections.

If the court did not do this now, it would “create significant uncertainty” and “expose the Federal Reserve to political influences and jeopardize the efficacy of U. S. monetary policy,” Kavanaugh wrote. Since the Federal Reserve “maintains critical responsibility for the stability and success of the U. S. and world economies,” this could lead to “turmoil in the U. S. and world economies.”

“I would not go down that road,” Kavanaugh wrote.

The stability of the financial system, buttressed by the Federal Reserve’s monetary powers, is what’s at stake. Or to put it another way: messing with the Federal Reserve is to mess with capital.

“The court’s position that the Federal Reserve is special and has special protections but other agencies that engage in regulatory functions, like the Federal Trade Commission, are subject to partisan whims of this president – when put together underscores that, for this court, capital has a special status,” said Graham Steele, a former Treasury Department regulator under President Joe Biden and expert on financial institutions.

It’s the kind of decision that has become common for the Roberts Court. As the court finds ways to achieve its desired result, decisions that create contradictions like those in Slaughter and Cook look less like the court’s claimed fidelity to originalism, and more like a conservative version of living constitutionalism.

In protecting the Federal Reserve’s for-cause removal protections, the court protects banks, investors, corporations and capital flows. In not protecting the Federal Trade Commission’s protections, and other agencies like it, the court protects the exact same groups.

Just look at what the Federal Trade Commission can do. As the chief antitrust and consumer protection regulator, it can sue to break up monopolies, investigate and fine large corporations, and enforce consumer protections. Before Trump came into office, the agency was investigating companies like Amazon and Meta, as well as many others. It is not an agency that capital looks kindly upon.

And Trump has used his claims of unitary control over such agencies to his own benefit. Amazon contributed $1 million to his inauguration, paid $28 million to first lady Melania Trump to make a documentary about her and contributed to Trump’s White House ballroom construction project. The FTC, meanwhile, settled one investigation into Amazon that was set to go to a jury trial in a manner beneficial for the company. Countless stories of such pay-to-play scandals abound in the second Trump administration.

“What this decision will do is let what has been a powerful corporate watchdog become a little lapdog for the president’s golfing buddies,” said Alvaro Bedoya, a former FTC commissioner fired alongside Rebecca Slaughter by Trump in 2025. “Just how telling it is that this Supreme Court thinks that the bankers on Wall Street need their independent, above-the-fray regulator while the rest of us get stuck with the loyalists.”

That is how the circle is squared for the court’s seeming contradiction.

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