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The Situation Room

Now, Supreme Court Releasing Opinions; Supreme Court Lets States Receive Mail Ballots After Election Day; Supreme Court Allows Lisa Cook to Remain at Fed in Loss for Trump. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired June 29, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[10:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news right now, the Supreme Court is releasing opinions. We're waiting for some possible key rulings on several big cases, birthright citizenship, transgender sports bans, and President Trump's power to fire federal officials.

Plus, from escalation to diplomatic meeting, President Trump now says U.S. and Iranian negotiators will be meeting tomorrow even though Iran says no talks are scheduled. All of this just days after the two nations traded attacks.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And urgent rescues, incredible video of a mother and her 18-day-old baby pulled from the rubble as rescuers desperately search for survivors of the devastating Venezuela earthquakes.

And later, deadly flooding disaster, heavy rain washing away roads and bridges in Kentucky, and communities are underwater.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

At any moment, we could get major decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court. The court will soon go on summer recess, so rulings on some major cases could come down at any time, and they include challenges to what's called birthright citizenship, mail-in ballots, transgender sports bans, and President Trump's authority to fire federal officials.

BROWN: Our panelists here in the situation room, we have CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig, CNN Legal Analyst Elliot Williams, and Cully Stimson, the acting director for the Institute for Constitutional Government at the Heritage Foundation.

Elie, first to you. So, we're waiting on some big decisions, and we're now getting to the end of the term. So, it is likely we're going to get something we care about. What are you looking for today?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, so we already have one decision that I think we can report now, it just popped up relating to mail-in ballots.

BROWN: Okay.

HONIG: Now, this is a dispute that came out of Mississippi. Mississippi is one of about 30 states that had state level laws saying that if a ballot is postmarked by Election Day, it can then be counted if it arrives X number of days after Election Day. In Mississippi's case, it was five days. The Supreme Court has just handed down the first ruling of the day where they are saying that those ballots cannot be counted if they arrive after Election Day.

BROWN: Wow.

HONIG: So all of those state laws that allow states to count ballots if they arrive however many days after Election Day, the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, those state laws are now invalid and struck down. And so now mail-in ballots, in order to be counted across the country, must arrive by Election Day.

BROWN: That's big implications for elections, right?

Let's go to Paula Reid, who's reading through this opinion. Paula?

We're not hearing Paula.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Oh, they can't hear? All right. You can go back.

BROWN: There we go. Now you can go, Paula. We can hear you.

REID: All right. Well, this is good, because I'm really excited about this case. This is one of the ones I've really been watching very closely. In addition to the cases about President Trump, this is significant because depending on which way they went, this could have potentially had an impact on other forms of voting.

So, it's really surprising actually that Mississippi prevailed here, and they are saying that even if mail-in ballots arrive after Election Day, they can still be counted because roughly a dozen other states have similar laws. And if the Supreme Court were to overturn the Mississippi law, that was something that could have ripple effects, again, not just for mail-in ballots, but also for in-person voting. That's why we've been watching this one especially closely because it could have potentially had a pretty big impact.

But here, they're upholding this Mississippi law, so this is a significant win for the State of Mississippi and some flexibility in terms of voting.

So, I'm going to listen in because we're still waiting for two or three more opinions.

BROWN: Eli, I want to just go back to you.

HONIG: Okay. I got that one wrong. Okay.

BROWN: Okay.

HONIG: So, it comes out the other way. These state laws that allow votes to be counted if they arrive at, mail-in ballots, after Election Day, they can be counted.

[10:05:01]

I had it backwards. I didn't read it carefully enough. Now I see.

And it's an interesting collection of justices that make this ruling. You have Chief Justice Roberts along with Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson in the majority, Amy Coney Barrett, Chief Justice Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. So, you have a cross-ideological majority.

So, to be clear, state laws that say that mail-in ballots can be counted by states if they arrive X number of days after Election Day, they can be counted. Mississippi has a five-day rule. Other states have shorter or longer periods.

So, that is a big win for proponents of mail-in balloting. It's a setback for the administration, which wanted to cut off mail-in balloting. So this means that late-arriving ballots, if the state law allows, they can be counted.

BROWN: What is your read on this?

CULLY STIMSON, ACTING DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Well, Congress can change the law and clarify what they mean by it, and I think this is yet another example of the court coming down with a ruling and saying, Look, our job is not to resolve these disputes. Congress, if you want to decide what in the United States means for asylum purposes, if -- you know, the language of the statute matters. So, temporary means temporary and temporary protective status.

And here, what Amy Coney Barrett says is that, quote, Election Day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt so they do not -- where is it -- prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked after Election Day, yet received afterward.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. What's interesting about it is that they focus on the Mississippi law here, and specifically the opinion says up to five days thereafter. Notice that they don't make an open-ended pronouncement as to how long after Election Day ballots can still be received. What -- and this is picking up on your point, what the court seems to have done is said, okay, we are addressing the state law of Mississippi here. There could be future challenges where someone says a week after or two weeks or a month or however long after Election Day, and they've left that question open here.

And then, you know, just to pick up on the point, the strange bedfellows that were created in the majority here with Justice Barrett writing for the majority with the three liberal justices and the chief justice, it's an interesting breakdown. I will also note the dissents also did not fully agree with each other. There's a split between. BLITZER: Was it a 5-4 decision?

WILLIAMS: It was a 5-4 decision but with a few different dissents only joined to certain parts of each other's dissenting opinions. And so --

BLITZER: So, this basically affects about 30 states out there that do allow ballots to be counted.

WILLIAMS: Well, that's an open-ended question though.

BROWN: But because this is five days, right? So, I think that's an important distinction. There are multiple states that allow a grace period after the election, but this is making the distinction for the five --

BLITZER: About 30 states do allow a grace period.

WILLIAMS: Yes. And I'm curious as to, in terms of how they left it, what about other states that might have a longer grace period or whatever else?

Now, certainly the court has opened the door here to some period after Election Day, that first Tuesday or the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Some period is okay, and I think it's, as with every other thing election related, it's just going to depend on the details of any individual state hereafter.

BLITZER: And this grace period, Elie, was designed to help military personnel who were voting by mail, and overseas voters maybe taking a little bit longer to get that vote in.

HONIG: Yes, and some of these state level statutes were adopted because of COVID, right? And as mail-in voting grew, various states adopted these laws to make it easier for people to get their votes in and for election officials to count them. So, yes, this is a big win, generally speaking, for proponents of mail-in balloting. It does uphold those state laws.

What the other side was arguing here was that Election Day in November, that's it. Everything has to stop on Election Day. Votes received after get thrown in the garbage. Now, that is the losing argument. And so now states, if they so wish, can extend the period we know at least up to five days. There's perhaps an open question as to whether they can extend it longer.

WILLIAMS: I would just say quickly, the wildest thing, and this is getting back to the strange bedfellows point, this all came out of Mississippi, probably the reddest of red states in America that was aggressively defending this. Some -- picking up on the point that Elie and Wolf made a second ago, some of this is about m- service members voting and their ability to vote thereafter. But Mississippi --

BLITZER: And have their votes counted.

WILLIAMS: And have their votes counted. And Mississippi was the big proponent of this here, just owing to the fact that there are 50 different state laws, plus territories, but different state laws governing their votes. They all differ in some ways and have different voting laws.

BLITZER: Cully, I just want to get your point. This represents a major setback, a defeat for Trump, right? He wants to eliminate mail- in voting.

STIMSON: I think it represents a defeat for anyone who thought that Election Day meant Election Day and your ballots had to be postmarked and have received by that day. And so if you remember the argument during the Supreme Court, Alito was saying, we have days on our calendar for lots of things, Christmas Day, Easter Day, this day, that day. Election Day should mean the election is consummated and finished. And so I'm not surprised to see his dissent where he says in today's decision, today's decision, quote, creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections and our system of self-government, unquote.

[10:10:05]

And so I think the other collateral point here is this will energize people to pass the Save America Act. This will be used by some to say, look, this is all the more reason you need to pass the Save America Act. I don't think that's going to work because the Senate filibuster is not going to allow it to happen probably, but it could. But this is a surprising lineup.

But we've seen surprising lineups before. Like we saw last week, we saw Gorsuch and Jackson in dissent in the Monsanto case, right, whether FIFRA preempts state law to allow tort claims.

BROWN: But on the Save America Act, that, that is about showing citizenship, right? And I know Heritage Foundation, where you work, they did a study on this and it showed less than 100 non-citizens voted illegally in elections over the last couple of decades. How does this -- how do mail-in ballots in this case being allowed to arrive after Election Day in these specific states relate to that?

STIMSON: Well, to be clear, Pam, our election fraud database is a mere sampling of proven election convictions, and in that sampling, there's 100 illegal aliens. But I think, in general, I think this is going to be used by those who want to get the Save America Act across the finish line just as a general push to get it done. They're not going to draw the distinction between the fact that these are two totally different issues.

BROWN: All right. I want to bring in David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

Given the findings here from the high court in this opinion, David, do you expect more states to adopt laws that would extend that deadline for mail-in ballots?

DAVID BECKER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND FOUNDER, CENTER FOR ELECTION INNOVATION AND RESEARCH: I don't expect more states to adopt laws that would extend the deadline. Look, this -- we've been doing mail voting in this country for well over 150 years. We know how to do it. We've been -- we've had states that accepted legally cast mail ballots that were cast by the voters on or before Election Day, but delivered by the Postal Service after Election Day. We've been doing that for decades, and Congress has known about it, and Congress could have changed it at any time and chose not to.

And Justice Barrett basically raised that point. She also made the point really importantly that a vote is cast, Election Day occurs when the ballot is completed. If a person puts a ballot in a mailbox a week before the election and the Postal Service takes its time with its budget woes and other issues that it has, and it doesn't arrive until the Wednesday after election, there are states that have said, we've got issues with that, and we're going to go ahead and accept and count that, and the states have that right under the elections clause of the Constitution.

But I don't think states are going to be trying to extend that out by any means. I think we right now have 14 states and D.C. that allow for ballots to be delivered by the Postal Service after Election Day by some small number of days, as long as they were legally cast.

And really importantly here, something that often gets lost, is our military and overseas voters rely upon the Postal Service to return their mail, their ballots. And 30 states and D.C. allow for those ballots to come in after Election Day. I think the court was going to have a really hard time differentiating between those ballots and ballots cast by Americans here in the United States. And so this resolves that issue.

It clearly says that those 30 states and D.C. that allow military ballots to come in after Election Day, and the 14 states that allow them currently to come in from any voter after Election Day, that's okay under the Federal Constitution.

BROWN: All right. I just want to re-summarize this that it would be Mississippi and 13 other states, plus the District of Columbia, which have these grace periods for mail-in ballots. Now, this specifies five days. It varies state to state.

WILLIAMS: Right.

BROWN: An additional 15 states have more forgiving deadlines for ballots for military and overseas voters that could also be impacted here. And so we're waiting to get a better sense of which states could be impacted, right?

WILLIAMS: Right. Yes, you know, it's something, you know, we talked about last week when talking about the Supreme Court is it's as important to see what future legal questions the court leaves open as much as it is to decide to look at what they decided today. How do we address those states that just -- that do allow some sort of grace period, but is either, but is longer or manifests differently than Mississippi's? And I think that still is an open-ended question.

Now, it's tricky just as a practical matter. We do have an election coming up this year, and what will it mean for those ballots? And it's an open -- they haven't fully resolved that.

BLITZER: Presidential election.

WILLIAMS: Presidential -- well, the presidential election in two years, but, certainly, you know, there might be primaries later on in the year.

BLITZER: Right.

HONIG: The lineup of justices here is noteworthy and interesting, right? Because we've seen plenty of cases decided along the six conservatives on one side, three liberals on the other. Here, we see a cross-ideological majority. That's the three liberal justices, Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett. And we've seen that a couple of times in the course of this term. For example, the tariffs were overturned because you had three conservatives joining with the three liberals.

[10:15:00]

So, there is a middle group. They're conservatives. But, really, the group that's in play here that's going to swing these major cases is, to an extent, Gorsuch, but, really, Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh. And if you get two of them over with the three liberals, you're going to have a majority. And that's why this case came out the way it did.

BLITZER: And just to be precise, Elie, if you're a service member s- let's say you're serving in Germany or in Japan or Korea, South Korea, or wherever, you fill out your form before Election Day, you mail it, but it takes a week or two weeks or three weeks to actually reach the ballot, it still will be counted?

HONIG: So, my advice to anyone in that position is, first of all, make sure your ballot is postmarked by Election Day. Second of all, know the law of the specific state you're voting in, because some states do not give any grace period after Election Day. Others, Mississippi gives five, others give as few as one. Other states, I believe, give as many as 20 days.

Now, it's not entirely clear that far, going beyond the five days in Mississippi is legal, but, yes, make sure you get postmarked by Election Day, and know what your state where you're voting, what the rules are there.

BROWN: So, certainly big implications. And just going back to the politics of all of this, I mean, we've seen how President Trump has seized on this in, for example, California, which allows for ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received after, to be counted in a certain window. President Trump recently seized on that to claim that there was something, you know, nefarious going on, voter fraud, without evidence.

WILLIAMS: Yes. You know, the fact that something is politically viable or politically popular does not necessarily make it legal or does not necessarily make it comport with what the Supreme Court is going to view on any given -- going to decide on any given day. And there are many people who believe in widespread fraud across the country, that it exists and so on, and that the Supreme Court ought to act in accordance with that. Well, they did not. You know, they analyzed the law here, and that just runs counter to what President Trump had said.

We also have another opinion right now.

BROWN: Okay.

STIMSON: We have both.

WILLIAMS: The Slaughter and Cook, both decisions tied to the firing of different types of agency heads, one being the Federal Trade Commission, one being the Federal Reserve. They are -- it's a 6-3 vote, Sotomayor dissenting, joined by Kagan and Jackson. So, we're going through it right now.

It's -- you know, based on how the oral argument went, certainly in the Slaughter decision, that's Rebecca Slaughter, who was a Federal Trade Commissioner who was terminated by President Trump, saying that her, under the rationale that her staying on the board was inconsistent with the administration's priorities and that the president had the authority to fire her, that led to a legal fight here. And so the question is, you know, was she able to be terminated?

BROWN: Yes, go ahead.

HONIG: The question here is the law says, basically longstanding law, that the president can remove the heads of these quasi-independent federal agencies. Let's put the Fed aside. That's going to be the other ruling that just came down.

BROWN: Yes.

HONIG: First, we're dealing with all the other agencies, including the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. The law says the president can only remove those people for cause, meaning if they've done something bad or performed poorly on the job. President Trump and this administration view his executive power differently. Their position is that he's the president, he's the head of the executive branch, he can remove the head of the FTC for any reason he wants, and that's the issue.

BLITZER: Paula Reid is just outside the Supreme Court, our chief legal correspondent. Paula, you were inside. There's another major decision we just got, is that right?

REID: Yes, we got two, actually. We have good news and bad news for President Trump when it comes to which federal officials he can fire. We have two similarly situated cases that are a little bit different, so let me walk you through them.

The first case was a question of whether President Trump could fire Federal Reserve Official Lisa Cook. Now, this is arguably one of the biggest questions of the term, and arguably the Roberts Court, because it really asked the question of the extent of President Trump's executive power and the independence the Federal Reserve has from the White House.

Here, a really interesting group of justices, Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kavanaugh, and the liberal justices all ruled that President Trump cannot fire Lisa Cook.

Now, we have to look closely at that decision, though, to see if there is any wiggle room for her to fire, her to be fired through emergency or other means.

Now, in a similar case, but a little bit different, there were questions about whether Trump could fire a woman named Rebecca Slaughter. She was a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. She was fired by President Trump. She set off another battle about whether President Trump had the authority to do this. The difference here is that this is an agency within the executive branch, and here in a 6-3 split, President Trump did win. They are saying she can be fired.

So, again, a split decision which is very much expected after arguments on who President Trump can and cannot fire.

BROWN: Now, what is your reaction to this, Cully?

STIMSON: Well, I think the big news out of both of these cases is that Humphrey's Executor was overturned, okay?

BROWN: That's a 90-year precedent, right?

STIMSON: Yes, a 90-year precedent.

[10:20:00]

And this supports the theory that the president alone is the head of the executive branch, the sort of unitary executive theory.

And so just like, Scalia said in Morrison v. Olson in his dissent that there's no such thing as an independent counsel, there's no one independent of the DOJ and executive branch, there's nobody independent of the president here, so the president has the authority to fire them. These for-cause provisions are just unconstitutional.

Then the second case, right, the interesting lineup, again, we have --

WILLIAMS: Yes. Well, you mean on, on the Federal Reserve case?

STIMSON: Yes, the Federal Reserve case, you have --

WILLIAMS: Chief Justice, Justice Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Jackson, which is the strangest bedfellows.

BROWN: Right, yes.

WILLIAMS: You know, I think part of the difference here, and we were chatting about this a little bit before the program, this idea, and this came up at the oral argument, is the Federal Reserve different? Is the Federal Reserve just independent in a way that a lot of these other agencies, the Federal Trade Commission, which was Rebecca Slaughter, Merit System Protection Board, Consumer Product Safety Commission, are not. Those are regarded as entities that do carry some what's called executive functions. They perform in a way just sort of acting almost as an arm of the executive branch.

Now, the Federal Reserve has always been seen as different. This came up at oral argument quite a bit, this idea the Federal Reserve is funded independently and funded largely based on securities that it owns, and not funded by Congress, and ought to be treated in a different way.

The other just sort of political backdrop to all this is that the Federal Reserve, its independence is seen as critical to global markets, and the justices, I would think, had to know that, that being seen as allowing a president to -- you know, to giving aggressive authority to the president to fire Federal Reserve commissioners would seen as a bad thing.

STIMSON: But there's an interesting --

BLITZER: She was a member of this, of the Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

BLITZER: Does this now mean she goes back to the Federal Reserve?

WILLIAMS: Well, that's something we have to look into, because it may be just temporarily while the litigation plays out.

STIMSON: Well, she's still in office. She's been in office.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

STIMSON: And they remand this back down to the lower court to let the litigation proceed. So, it's not as if this case is over. This case has -- back to see whether -- when she gets her due process, whether the alleged wrong actually happened, and then if it has happened, then we'll see this again at some other stage.

HONIG: And two important rulings here for executive power. Let's separate them out. First of all, with respect to all of the quasi- independent agencies other than the Fed, the president can now remove those people for any reason he wants. That is a fundamental change in decades-long law, which --

BROWN: And an expansion of presidential power.

HONIG: Expansion of presidential power. It used to be, for a long time, the president could only remove the heads of the FTC, the NLRB, all these multi-letter boards, only for cause. Donald Trump comes in with this aggressive theory of presidential power, says, no, I'm the head of the executive branch, I can remove them for any reason I want, and the Supreme Court now says, you are correct.

Now, the separate part of that, let's go over to the Fed, there's a different standard for the Fed because the Fed is constitutionally and structurally different. What the Supreme Court has said here is, you cannot remove this governor, Lisa Cook, until she gets some sort of process. She was given -- the entirety of the process Lisa Cook was given was a Truth Social posts by Donald Trump, basically. And now the Supreme Court is saying she's entitled to some process to determine whether there's cause, whether she's done anything wrong to require her removal.

So, to boil it down, the president has free rein to remove people in all of the federal agencies other than the Fed. For the Fed, the bar is a bit higher.

WILLIAMS: Yes, and we just didn't talk about the specifics of Lisa Cook's case. She was accused of misunderstanding or just, you know, sort of citing two different properties a vacation rental and another home as her primary residence, right? Those -- that's regarded as the question of is it just sloppiness on the part of someone and knowing which house they actually own, you know, as the proper house, or is it an actual act of fraud or misconduct or whatever else, you know?

BLITZER: She was accused of mortgage fraud.

WILLIAMS: She was accused of mortgage fraud, in effect, yes.

BROWN: And Bill Pulte, who is now acting director of National Intelligence, was behind this, right?

WILLIAMS: Right, exactly. So, you know, it's a house in Michigan and a condo in Atlanta.

So, the question was this the kind of gross negligence that ought to be extended to whether she should stay in her employment?

Now, the Trump administration or President Trump says, of course, that is. That ties directly to her role as a Fed commissioner.

The argument against that was that this notion of for-cause ought to tie to the specifics of someone's employment. What Cully was talking about, sending it back down for more proceedings, is to figure out questions like that. What was the basis of her termination? Was it proper? And is bringing in these questions of someone's personal -- whether it's errors, oversights, or misconduct, does that go to cause on the job as a Federal Reserve commissioner?

[10:25:02]

BROWN: I want to go to Paula Reid, because, as we were mentioning, there's some strange bedfellows with the justices and the majority and minority, and you're pulling out some quotes here. Tell us more, particularly in the Lisa Cook case, Paula.

REID: Yes, Pamela. I just want to underscore the significance of this case. This could be one of the defining opinions of the Roberts Court because at a high level, the question here is, what limit is there, right, to executive power when it comes to being able to fire federal officials? A massive question with enormous significance, especially during the Trump administration. And here, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the Cook case about the Federal Reserve official, Lisa Cook. He wrote, under our precedents, Cook was entitled to notice and some opportunity to respond prior to her termination. That comes down to the words Congress chose first in 1913 and then again in 1935.

He goes on to say, of course, that is not to say that a Federal Reserve governor is entitled to an audience with the president or a full-blown judicial trial.

Now, no one has suggested that, but it is really significant, this opinion, the Cook opinion paired with Slaughter, because it shows us that, yes, there are some narrow limitations particularly around the Federal Reserve in terms of who the president can and cannot fire this way. But, really, the power is extremely expansive, and that's one thing that we've seen consistently with this court. When the president has tested the limits of executive power, he has not always, but often prevailed.

So, an incredibly significant opinion today, one of the big ones we've been watching for.

BLITZER: Yes, very major decision indeed.

Paula, stand by. David Goldman is joining us right now. Give us your sense of the economic, the business-related impact potentially from this Lisa Cook decision.

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: Well, the Federal Reserve is supposed to be independent of all government. It is set up by Congress, not by the president, and, certainly, this has been the defining trait of the Federal Reserve for its over 100-year history.

And so the reason why that's so important, Wolf, is because it needs to act sometimes in ways that politicians don't like, including raising interest rates, which raise borrowing costs for Americans. Politicians -- no politician wants that. In fact, that has been the source of many feuds between President Trump and former Fed Chair Jerome Powell. It's why Jerome Powell is no longer the Fed chair and President Trump hired Kevin Warsh to become the Fed chair, because he wants rates to be lowered.

But the thing is, if the president can, for any reason, just come in and fire a Fed, not just a chair, but someone who sits on the decision-making committee, that opens up a position for the president potentially to stack the Fed with like-minded people and then those interest rate decisions might go the president's way.

So, this decision for the economy is going to be a welcome one where the Fed will continue to make decisions independent of the president's demands there.

Remember, these are long held roles here. These aren't just, you know, four-year terms. Some of these are over a decade long. Not quite judges, but they're almost at that level. And the reason is because of the Federal Reserve's independence to make decisions based on economic data and not on politics.

BROWN: So, a clear distinction here between the Federal Reserve and other agencies that operate under the executive branch.

And I just want to go back to the Slaughter case. So, the Lisa Cook case is a loss for Trump, but in a win in this Lisa Slaughter case. It showed that -- in the Slaughter case, I should say, it showed that Trump can fire basically anyone in the executive -- under the executive branch without cause.

Cully, help us better understand the significance of overturning the 90-year precedent, why that was in place in the first place in terms of creating some independence from these agencies, and why the fact that is now overturned expands presidential power in a way we haven't seen.

STIMSON: Yes. So, I think a conservative would say you're not expanding presidential power, you're returning the power to the executive that was granted to them in the first place under the Constitution, that the president is in charge of the executive branch, period. He has the executive power, and you either fall in one of three branches. You fall in the legislative branch, you fall in the executive branch, or you fall in the judicial branch. And so I would say most conservatives, me included, would say this is returning the power back to where it is. You can't have some of this sort of free- floating fourth branch of government out there.

Now, I think the Fed is different theory is playing out in real-time here because everyone has assumed that the Fed is different. And I think, you know, I'm not surprised to see that markets are reacting positively because the real question to your point earlier is, you know, is misconduct, if it happened, that took place before you assumed office.