Latest news with #presidentialpower
New York Times
30-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Trump's Tariffs and the Courts
Just how much power does the president have? That was the question in front of the federal courts that ruled against President Trump's tariffs in the last couple days. The judges weren't deciding whether the tariffs are good for the country but whether the president has the power to impose them all by himself. Maybe that sounds like a technical question. It's not. It's not an exaggeration to say that this question defines America. The framers rebelled against Britain because they felt that the king had too much power and that they didn't have enough say in the politics that shaped their lives. They wrote the Constitution to avoid crowning another monarch. Through that lens, a little-known trade court in New York blocked most of Trump's tariffs, including those that remained from 'Liberation Day.' Yesterday, an appeals court agreed to preserve the tariffs while it considers the case. The markets rose — cautiously — on the news. America's trading partners also reacted skeptically because the rulings could lead to more chaos as legal battles play out. Today, I want to focus on the question that the courts face. Checks and balances At face value, the Constitution seems clear on this topic. It says Congress, not the president, has the power to 'lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.' And tariffs are taxes. But Congress can delegate some powers to the president. It has passed several laws that allow the president to levy tariffs in case of emergency — say, if another country undermines a U.S. industry that's important to national security. Trump used one of these laws, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, to impose his 'reciprocal' tariffs on other countries. (Madeleine Ngo, who covers economic policy, explained the law.) Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
29-05-2025
- General
- Washington Post
Supreme Court walks a tightrope as it confronts Trump's power moves
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is navigating a fraught path, legal analysts say, trying to avert a direct confrontation between the Trump administration and a Supreme Court that has steadily expanded presidential power — but not without limits. The stakes are as high as any time in Roberts's 20-year tenure. He is committed to protecting the independence of the courts to 'check the excesses of Congress or the executive,' as he said recently, amid attacks by President Donald Trump and his allies on federal judges, including the justices.
New York Times
28-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Pardons Become the Latest Trump Flex
Before he left office in 1953, President Harry Truman handed out a number of pardons to politically connected convicts — and, perhaps to avoid blowback, he did so entirely in secret. In 2001, Bill Clinton waited until the final day of his presidency to issue a pardon he knew would go off like a political bomb: to Marc Rich, the oil trader and fugitive indicted in a sprawling tax evasion case, whose former wife had made donations to the Clinton presidential library and the Democratic Party. And around Christmas in 2008, President George W. Bush rescinded a pardon he had granted to a Brooklyn developer, Isaac Toussie, after The New York Post reported that Toussie's father had donated $28,500 to the Republican National Committee and another $2,300 to Senator John McCain. 'This is a good decision,' a Justice Department lawyer told the White House aide who went to retrieve Toussie's pardon grant before it could be delivered to him, according to my colleague Peter Baker's book on the Bush presidency, 'Days of Fire.' 'Because I don't know if anybody could survive this.' The power of the pardon is so absolute that the only way to punish a president for how he uses it is to impeach him or to vote him out. Most presidents have wanted to avoid those things. So they've granted pardons carefully, even furtively, often saving what might prove scandalous until the very last days of their terms. 'The pardon power for a president is virtually unlimited,' said Alberto Gonzales, who served under Bush as White House counsel and then as the attorney general. 'In almost every case at the federal level, the question is not a concern over the authority to grant clemency, but whether clemency is appropriate given history, the circumstances of the offender and the politics.' This week, though, President Trump has shown he has no intention of allowing such an unchecked executive power to go unexploited over as trifling a concern as the ordinary rules of politics. Rules that say, among other things, that doling out favors to donors and allies might carry an odor of impropriety. Today, Trump pardoned former Representative Michael Grimm, a Republican from New York who pleaded guilty in 2014 to felony tax evasion. Grimm has been a vigorous and public Trump supporter. My colleague Ken Vogel reported Tuesday that the president had pardoned Paul Walczak, a convicted tax cheat, after Walczak's mother raised millions of dollars for Trump's presidential campaigns and those of other Republicans. The same day, the White House announced pardons for two reality-television stars, Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of evading taxes and defrauding banks of more than $30 million, after their daughter depicted them as persecuted conservatives in a speech at last summer's Republican National Convention. And this week, the president's new pardon attorney, Ed Martin, told The Wall Street Journal that he had personally fast-tracked a pardon for Scott Jenkins, a Virginia sheriff convicted of bribery who has been an outspoken supporter of Trump's immigration agenda. This is scarcely the first time Trump has defied political gravity. But it still represents something new. Trump knows that his first-term pardons of political allies like Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn didn't cost him much if any political support. Since that first term, he has pressed so hard and for so long to demonize and undo the work of the Biden administration's Justice Department — claiming that it was weaponized against him and his supporters — that he may have conditioned much of the public to believe him if he says that the recipient of a pardon was indeed a fellow victim. He appears to be counting on his having changed the weather, hoping that the old rules won't apply to him in this term, either. Are Trump's approval ratings rising? My colleague Ruth Igielnik, a Times polling editor, looks at a key number that helps explain the political moment. Today, she has a temperature-check on how voters feel about President Trump. Donald Trump came into office in January with the lowest approval rating of any modern president — except for his own at the start of his first term. Over the first 100 days of his second term, Trump's approval rating steadily declined, similar to what Barack Obama and Bill Clinton faced in their first months as president. The difference is Trump's lower starting point: Unlike his predecessors, he quickly found himself underwater, with more Americans disapproving of his job performance than approving of it. But since the beginning of May, Trump's job approval has stopped dropping. It might even be improving ever so slightly — although the few high-quality polls we have seen recently show little change. One possible explanation: Trump may have already lost all of the tentative or hesitant support he once enjoyed among independents, and he can't drop much more because of his rock-solid Republican support. In our last New York Times/Siena College poll, conducted in late April, 86 percent of Republicans approved of Trump's job performance, while 92 percent of Democrats disapproved of it. So Trump is not losing many Republicans, and Democrats disliked him from the start. But among independents, just 29 percent approved of his performance. For a finer-grain look at his bleeding among independents, consider two polls by Quinnipiac University: In January, more independents viewed Trump unfavorably than favorably by a difference of five percentage points. In April, Trump was underwater with independents by a margin of 22 percentage points. What Iowa tells us about Trump's America Over the weekend, my colleague Shane Goldmacher published a report showing just how much President Trump has realigned the American political landscape. He found that 1,433 counties were 'triple-trending' Republican — that is, they shifted toward Trump in each of the last three presidential elections — while only 57 counties trended Democratic in that way. I asked him to tell us about one state that tells the story. President Obama won Iowa in 2012, but the state has since completely fallen off the battleground map. And while Iowa is too white to truly show the racial changes in the political coalitions of the two parties, it shows vividly how Trump has made inroads with the working class, while Democrats are inching up only in the richest and most educated enclaves. All told, 69 of the state's 99 counties were 'triple-trending' toward Trump — and by wide margins, with none shifting by fewer than 15 percentage points and nearly two dozen shifting by 40 or more. Not a single county in Iowa trended steadily toward Democrats between 2012 and 2024. Two Iowa counties did vote more Democratic in 2024 than they had 2012, however. But the demographics of those pockets were as revealing as the Trump bump across the rest of the state. One was the state's wealthiest county, Dallas, a suburb of Des Moines. It's the only Iowa county with a median household income above $100,000. The other was the most educated county in the state, Johnson, home to the University of Iowa. Democrats point to a handful of close House races in recent years to insist that they still have hope in Iowa, though notably Republicans currently hold every congressional seat in the state. If Democrats are ever going to make the state competitive again, it will require improving in a lot more counties than two. Not a taco fan, it would seem My colleague Shawn McCreesh sends this dispatch from the White House beat. President Trump learned a new acronym today. He was holding one of his marathon question-and-answer sessions with journalists in the Oval Office when one reporter asked him about a new term of art being used on Wall Street. Taco. It stands for 'Trump Always Chickens Out.' Coined by a columnist for The Financial Times, it captures the belief — held by an increasing number of traders and analysts — that Trump never really follows through with his tariff threats in the end, and implies a warning to buy or sell accordingly. Evidently, this was the first time Trump had heard the term, which immediately sent him into a state of high dudgeon. 'Oh, isn't that nice,' he started to say. 'I chicken out? I've never heard that.' He offered a defense of his trade maneuvering. But he seemed as annoyed by the question as by the term itself. 'Don't ever say what you said,' he said to the reporter who had said what she had said. 'That's a nasty question. To me, that's the nastiest question.' It had seemed like sort of an inconsequential question compared with others he was getting on Wednesday. There were lots of big, scary, thorny, inconvenient questions, about Russia and Iran and Gaza and nuclear weapons, and about how Elon Musk dared take a swipe at Trump on CBS. But this was the one that clearly unnerved him. And there was a pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain kind of quality to the exchange: What will it mean if Wall Street and the world stop believing in the power of the tariff wizard? Taco is both a serious matter — Trump has, indeed, retreated from many of his trade threats — and what sounds like a joke. Made at his expense. And that clearly made an impression. Just before the press was ushered out, Trump alluded to the new term all on his own. 'They'll say, 'Oh, he was chicken, he was chicken!'' he said while riffing about continuing negotiations with China. 'That's so unbelievable,' he said, sounding perhaps a little bruised. 'Usually, I'm the opposite. They say, 'You're too tough.''
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Here's how the Supreme Court could weaken American exceptionalism in financial markets
The top court's vote to allow President Donald Trump to remove the leaders of two independent federal agencies has repercussions for financial markets, according a note from Jefferies. While justices gave the Federal Reserve more protection, the Supreme Court's stance in favor of more presidential power could make U.S. assets less attractive, analysts said. U.S. supremacy in financial markets is already at risk as President Donald Trump wages his trade war, and Wall Street is warning the Supreme Court could threaten it further. The top court's vote on Thursday to allow President Donald Trump to remove the leaders of two independent federal agencies has repercussions for financial markets, according a note from Jefferies. While justices gave the Federal Reserve some protection, the Supreme Court's stance in favor of more executive power could make the U.S. less attractive, analysts said. 'The Court's order suggests they'll likely support expanded presidential power in upcoming decisions, giving credence & support to the Unitary Executive Theory,' the note said. 'We believe expanded Presidential power is bearish for risk assets & will further erode the concept of American exceptionalism in markets.' The Unitary Executive Theory argues that the president has sole authority within the executive branch. That means that not only does the White House have the ability to fire agency heads, it can also impound money allocated by Congress. The issue reached the Supreme Court after Gwynne Wilcox, who was ousted from the National Labor Relations Board in January, and Cathy Harris, who was booted from the Merit Systems Protection Board in February, sued the Trump administration. Both agencies are considered independent, meaning members serve until their terms are up and can only be removed for issues such as misconduct or breach of duty. While the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to reinstate Wilcox and Harris, the Supreme Court's vote on Thursday blocked the move, granting a stay that will allow Trump's firings to stand while the case works its way through lower courts again. For now, Trump can fire officials without cause, breaking with 90 years of historical precedent. 'We believe that the most important, structural changes in how the US Government functions will be decided by the US Supreme Court on questions related to executive power and executive authority,' the Jefferies analysts said. In addition to the removal of leaders of independent agencies, interpreting presidential powers more broadly also has implications for imposing tariffs, firing federal workers, and deregulating the economy outside traditional mechanisms, the note pointed out. 'We believe that Thursday's Supreme Court order portends expanded executive power, in line with the Unitary Executive Theory, which will lead to investors putting a higher risk premium on US assets going forward, due to increased policy variability,' Jefferies warned. Not long ago, the U.S. economy and financial markets looked unstoppable, but Wall Street has dimmed its view on so-called American exceptionalism since Trump began pressing his tariff agenda. The 'Liberation Day' shock accelerated that bearish sentiment, and mounting worries about deficits have given foreign investors even more reasons to turn away from U.S. markets. Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz, said U.S. exceptionalism has been 'put on pause,' though it's too early to say if the damage is irreversible. For George Saravelos, head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, the dollar's decline after a 20-year Treasury bond auction drew tepid demand this past week was a red flag. 'To us this is a clear signal of a foreign buyer's strike on US assets and the associated US fiscal risks we have been warning for some time,' he wrote in a note. 'At the core of the problem is that foreign investors are simply no longer willing to finance US twin deficits at current level of prices.' This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Supreme Court declines to reinstate independent agency board members fired by President Donald Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court's conservative majority on Thursday said President Donald Trump likely has the authority to fire independent agency board members, endorsing a robust view of presidential power. But the court suggested that it could block an attempt to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who Trump has complained has not cut interest rates aggressively. The court's action essentially extended an order Chief Justice John Roberts issued in April that had the effect of removing two board members who Trump fired from agencies that deal with labor issues, including one with a key role for federal workers as Trump aims to drastically downsize the workforce. The firings have left both agencies without enough board members to take final actions on issues before them, as Trump has not sought to appoint replacements. The decision Thursday keeps on hold an appellate ruling that had temporarily reinstated Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection Board. While not a final ruling, the court said in an unsigned order that the Constitution appears to give the president the authority to fire the board members "without cause.' The court's three liberal justices dissented. "Not since the 1950s (or even before) has a President, without a legitimate reason, tried to remove an officer from a classic independent agency,' Justice Elena Kagan wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The court refused to reinstate Harris and Wilcox while their cases play out in the courts over warnings from their lawyers that their action would signal that Trump is free to fire members of every independent agency, including the Federal Reserve Board. 'That way lies chaos,' lawyer Neal Katyal wrote in a high court filing on behalf of Harris. Defending Trump at the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that firing Fed governors was a 'distinct question' that is not presented in this case. Trump has mused about firing Powell and his remark in April that the central bank leader's 'termination cannot come fast enough' caused a stock market selloff. Trump then said he had no plans to fire Powell. The conservative justices appeared to agree, noting that the Federal Reserve 'is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity.' The immediate issue confronting the court was whether the board members, both initially appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, can stay in their jobs while the larger fight continues over what to do with a 90-year-old Supreme Court decision known as Humphrey's Executor. In that case from 1935, the court unanimously held that presidents cannot fire independent board members without cause. Kagan wrote that her colleagues were telegraphing what would happen. "The impatience to get on with things—to now hand the President the most unitary, meaning also the most subservient, administration since Herbert Hoover (and maybe ever)—must reveal how that eventual decision will go,' she wrote. The New Deal era case led to the creation of many agencies and bolstered others that were run by bipartisan boards that relied on expertise and were, to a degree, independent of presidential control, Kagan wrote. But the ruling has long rankled conservative legal theorists, who argue it wrongly curtails the president's power. Roberts was part of the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court that already has narrowed its reach in a 2020 decision. In its emergency appeal, the administration had suggested the justices should take up and decide the broader issue of presidential power. But the court ignored Sauer's suggestion of a hearing in May, with a decision by early summer, preferring to let the case proceed on its normal path. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 7-4 to return Wilcox and Harris to their jobs while their cases play out. The action of the full appeals court reversed a judgment from a three-judge panel that had allowed the firings to go forward. The NLRB resolves hundreds of unfair labor practice cases every year. Wilcox was the first Black woman to serve on the NLRB in its 90-year history. She first joined the board in 2021, and the Senate confirmed her in September 2023 to serve a second term, expected to last five years. The other board in the case reviews disputes from federal workers and could be a significant stumbling block as the administration seeks to carry out its workforce cuts. The board members' reinstatement 'causes grave and irreparable harm to the President and to our Constitution's system of separated powers,' Sauer wrote. Harris and Wilcox are removable 'at will' by the president, he wrote. In the lower courts, Wilcox's attorneys said Trump could not fire her without notice, a hearing or identifying any 'neglect of duty or malfeasance in office' on her part. Perhaps foreshadowing the coming confrontation, the lawyers argued that the administration's 'only path to victory' was to persuade the Supreme Court to 'adopt a more expansive view of presidential power.' ___ Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report. Mark Sherman, The Associated Press
