Few things could more fundamentally disrupt and weaken American capital markets—and, by extension, the American economy—than giving a president direct control over the Fed’s monetary levers. Imagine if Trump could set interest rates like he sets tariff rates. …
… All of this represents a fundamental shift in how the Supreme Court operates. The court could have allowed the CPSC and NLRB officials to stay in office to preserve the status quo during litigation, heard their cases on an accelerated briefing schedule, and overturned Humphrey’s Executor while ruling against them on the merits. The court’s critics could have disagreed with the court’s ultimate reasoning, but they could have found no fault in how it operated to get there. Instead, the conservative justices simply did what they wanted to do because they could.
the SCOTUS Six are Handmaids of Tyranny
“The Supreme Court has Hit Rock Bottom,”
New Republic, 2025.05.25, Matt Ford
The SCOTUSix decision on Wednesday, 2025.05.03, got very little coverage. That's too bad, because it was profoundly important, only partly because of the ruling itself – which peremptorily gave the SCOTUSix's Don Lord Trump a victory over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. More importantly, it was yet another step closer by the Six to bestowing on DictaDon its highly biased and ultimately foolish imprimatur to fire Fed Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell.
The article is long for an analysis of this type, and worth reading in its entirety. What struck me as irresistibly excerptible, however, were parts of the last 6 paragraphs, which sum up why it's a big deal for the SCOTUSix to make its secret ruling the way it did, and what it might mean for future decisions. Another horrifying giant step toward tyranny by this far right court. As Ford writes:
What a dizzying sensation that will be for any American raised in our civic faith. Covering the court for the last six months feels less like covering a court of law steeped in the Anglo-American legal tradition and more like covering the Soviet Union’s politburo or Iran’s Guardian Council from afar. The Supreme Court’s most impactful work this year has not been to decide actual cases and controversies on the merits, or to fairly balance the equities on shadow-docket questions, but to enforce a certain ideological vision upon the American constitutional order as quickly, as bluntly, and as hackishly as it can.
I do not write lightly that the central theme coming from the Supreme Court as of late is that Trump’s own vision for the country supersedes the laws that Congress has actually written—to provide for-cause removal protections, to create a Department of Education, to provide anti-torture protections for prospective deportees, and so on. As Humphrey’s Executor’s fate shows, that vision might even outrank the decisions of the high court itself when the justices agree with it. That raises an unsettling question: If the justices don’t respect their own precedents or procedures, why should anyone else?