by Jordan Rubin | Jan 21, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Back in May, the Supreme Court went out of its way to make clear that it wants to protect the Federal Reserve’s independence, at least to a greater degree than it has been protecting other federal agencies. While green-lighting President Donald Trump’s power to fire labor board members without cause, the high court’s majority said it wasn’t ruling on protections for the central bank’s Board of Governors, even though the Fed wasn’t at issue in the labor appeal.
In a blunt dissent for the court’s Democratic appointees, Justice Elena Kagan homed in on what she called the majority’s “out of the blue” Fed carve-out, suggesting that the Republican appointees were attempting to “reassure the markets.”
And that was before this month’s revelation that the Trump Justice Department was investigating Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, over what Powell called pretextual reasons that he said were really about the Fed setting interest rates differently than Trump wants.
It’s against that backdrop that the justices will hear oral arguments Wednesday in Trump v. Cook, over the president’s bid to remove Lisa Cook from the Fed’s Board of Governors. While Powell isn’t directly at issue in the appeal, it’s hard to see how his investigation will help an administration that was already fighting a relatively uphill battle on this issue with the justices. Powell reportedly will attend the hearing.
Another sign that the administration could have a harder time here is that when the court agreed to review the Cook case, it let her stay in her role pending the outcome of the litigation. That doesn’t mean she will necessarily win in the end, but it’s worth noting that the court hasn’t extended even that temporary lifeline to
by Jordan Rubin | Jan 20, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
A year ago, Donald Trump launched one of his most subversive attacks on the Constitution when he signed an executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship.
“Blatantly unconstitutional” is what one of the several judges who halted the order called it. That Reagan-appointed judge, John Coughenour, said that in his decades on the bench he couldn’t recall another case “where the question presented is as clear as this one.” He called citizenship by birth an “unequivocal” right that’s “one of the precious principles that makes the United States the great nation that it is” — one that a president can’t change with an executive order.
Thus, Trump’s order, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” in fact does the opposite and does so illegally.
Indeed, the Supreme Court might be poised to strike down the order by the summer.
The justices decided a birthright citizenship-related appeal last term. But that was about an issue that was more procedural — over the scope of injunctions blocking the order, not about the order’s legality. Notably in that appeal, called Trump v. CASA, the administration urged the court to only rule on the procedural aspect, not on the underlying legality. The court’s Republican-appointed majority obliged in June over dissent from the court’s Democratic appointees, who called out the gambit.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that it was “obvious” why the government wasn’t asking the court to fully lift the lower-court blocks on the order. “To get such relief, the Government would have to show that the Order is likely constitutional, an impossible task in light of the Constitution’s text, history, this Court’s precedents, federal law, and Executive Branch practice,” Sotomayor wrote.
“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no
by Jordan Rubin | Jan 17, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. Supreme Court justices were back on the bench holding hearings this week, most prominently in the appeal over bans on transgender women and girls in sports. They also issued three rulings, including one that could open “the floodgates” to election lawsuits, according to the dissent. But despite another day of anticipation, the tariffs ruling wasn’t in the latest batch of opinions.
While Donald Trump’s administration argued in the name of defending women in sports, litigation over his civil liability for sexual abuse unfolded behind the scenes. He’s trying to reverse the $5 million in damages awarded by a New York City jury that found he abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll. Her lawyers filed their opposition brief to the justices on Wednesday, urging the high court to stay out of it.
To understand the arguments Trump and Carroll are making, here’s a quick refresher on how the justices decide which cases to take up. They receive thousands of petitions annually and have been granting review in fewer than 60 cases a term. Generally speaking, they’re looking for legal issues that raise important questions and have divided the country’s lower courts — creating “circuit splits” — and thus can benefit from a nationwide resolution.
That’s why Trump’s petition argued that his appeal presents an “important question of federal law” that implicates circuit splits. The gist of his claim is that the trial judge wrongly admitted evidence against him, including the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. He argues that the approval of the tape’s admission by the 2nd Circuit conflicted with the way that other federal appeals courts handle evidentiary issues.
Carroll unsurprisingly contests Trump’s framing of the
by Jordan Rubin | Jan 16, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
“Can the next president reverse Trump’s pardons? Can Trump pardon anyone for actions not yet committed?” — JM
Hi JM,
The answer to both questions is no.
Presidents can’t reverse their predecessors’ pardons. There isn’t an exception for Donald Trump’s pardons, however corrupt they’ve been. That also means Trump can’t void Joe Biden’s pardons, despite his claim to the contrary.
Nor can presidents pardon future crimes.
The clemency power is broad. It allows for pardoning people of any and all federal crimes, including people who haven’t even been charged. But it’s still a backward-looking power. As the Supreme Court said in an 1866 case called Ex parte Garland, the president can forgive an offense “at any time after its commission” — keyword: “after.”
Or, as one scholar put it: “The president can tell a thief not to worry about being convicted for the crime he has committed yesterday because he has pardoned him. But a pardon today cannot forgive a crime the thief commits tomorrow.”
Please submit “Ask Jordan” questions through this form for a chance to have your question featured in a future edition of the Deadline: Legal Newsletter.
The post Ask Jordan: Can a future president reverse Trump’s pardons? appeared first on MS NOW.
by Jordan Rubin | Jan 15, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
When the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority approved Texas’ congressional map last month, it did so on the grounds that the GOP-backed effort was motivated by politics, not improper racial considerations.
In an unsigned order, the majority observed that, ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, “Texas adopted the first new map, then California responded with its own map for the stated purpose of counteracting what Texas had done.” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion that “the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”
Against that backdrop, it would seem that the high court is similarly poised to green-light California’s map, approved by voters under a measure called Proposition 50, which is likely to flip five congressional seats from Republicans to Democrats in the Democratic-led state.
The California litigation moved a step closer to a Supreme Court resolution Wednesday, when a divided three-judge panel declined to block the map, teeing up a Republican appeal to the justices. Notably, both the two-judge majority (both Democratic appointees) and the dissenting judge (a Trump appointee) cited the Supreme Court’s Texas ruling as backing their respective sides.
The majority opinion authored by Judge Josephine Staton quoted from Alito’s concurrence in the Texas case, writing: “Having carefully reviewed and weighed the relevant evidence, we find that the evidence presented reflects that Proposition 50 was exactly what it was billed as: a political gerrymander designed to flip five Republican-held seats to the Democrats. In other words, the ‘impetus for the adoption’ of the Proposition 50 Map was ‘partisan advantage pure and simple.’”
In his dissent, Judge Kenneth Lee wrote that he wanted to address
by Jordan Rubin | Jan 14, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday over state bans on transgender athletes in women’s and girls’ sports. The court’s forthcoming rulings in the two argued cases from Idaho and West Virginia could affect similar laws in 25 other states as well.
The court sounded likely to side with the states, though the scope of the rulings, expected by July, remains to be seen.
While we await those crucial decisions on state bans, it’s worth considering another epic question that hummed in the background of the hearings: Can the remaining states allow transgender women and girls to compete on their chosen teams?
The court isn’t expected to answer that broader question in these cases. But multiple justices brought it up Tuesday, led by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
In the Idaho case, Little v. Hecox, the Trump-appointed justice asked the state’s lawyer, Alan Hurst, if the other states that let transgender women and girls play on their chosen teams are violating the Constitution’s equal protection clause, or whether it’s up to each state to decide. Hurst said he hadn’t “yet been persuaded by a constitutional theory that would let us use the Equal Protection Clause to impose our policy on other states in this matter.”
Yet a lawyer for the Trump administration who argued in both cases, Hashim Mooppan, noted that the federal government has been “actively litigating” against states that allow transgender sports participation — though not under equal protection but rather under federal law called Title IX that bans sex discrimination.
During the hearing in the West Virginia case, which involves Title IX, Kavanaugh raised his forward-looking concern to that state’s lawyer, Michael Williams. The lawyer said that “under equal protection, I think we agree with our
