What A Day - SCOTUS Tells Trump: Hands Off The Fed

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

On Monday, we got four more decisions from the nation’s highest court, and they were… well, confusing. For example, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump can fire federal independent agency commissioners, but he can’t fire a governor at the Federal Reserve – which is also an independent agency. We also got a surprisingly good ruling on mail-in voting, and a separate victory for privacy and the Fourth Amendment. So is there any method to the seeming madness in the Supreme Court’s decisions this term? To find out, we spoke to Kate Shaw. She’s a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-host of Crooked Media’s Strict Scrutiny.And in headlines, Trump says the U.S. will meet with Iran in Qatar on Tuesday for further negotiations, Russian President Vladimir Putin admits Russia is facing fuel shortages in its war with Ukraine, and the WHO names Europe the fastest-warming continent on the planet.Show Notes: Check out Strict Scrutiny – youtube.com/channel/UCk-Km4tcqAbhpnbrvj1pJFw Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

Trump has already been acting like he has the power that the Supreme Court declared today that he has. But I do think that this declaration by the Supreme Court will further emboldened him if it's possible even to imagine a further emboldened Donald Trump. I'm Jane Koston, and this is what today, the show that is looking forward to the end of the mind-bending stress of Supreme Court ruling season. So we can get back to the mind-bending stress of midterm election season. And then before you know it, it'll be the mind-bending stress of 2028 presidential season. presidential election season. Fun! On today's show, we head back to the Supreme Court to find out if there's a method to their madness with strict scrutiny co-host Kate Shaw. Before we get into all that, here's what we're following today, Monday, June 29th. Iran has requested a meeting this week,

so Special Envoy Whitkoff and Jared Kushner will be flying to Doha for high-level meetings this week as we continue to discuss the memorandum of understanding. On the sidelines of those high-level talks, be the technical talk. So as far as we're concerned, we're holding up our end of the ceasefire. Violence will be met with violence. White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt is back to running her mouth on Fox News. Yay, for literally no one. Trump said earlier today that a meeting with Iran is set for Tuesday in Qatar. Yes, he said in a true social post, and yes, that post was in all caps. Iran separately announced that it will send delegations to Qatar this week, though Tehran insisted it has not agreed to meet with the U.S., quote, at any level, after attacks across the

Persian Gulf over the weekend challenged negotiations to end the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted for the first time on Sunday that Russia is facing fuel shortages in its war with Ukraine. Putin told state-run media that Ukrainian attacks, quote, on our infrastructure facilities do create problems. That is obvious. Still, Russia appears on deterred. According to Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, Russia launched another deadly missile and drone strike today. He called the attacks, quote, horrific. Things are heating up. The head of the World Health Organization said Sunday that Europe is now the fastest warming continent on the planet, and it needs to do more to protect its citizens. WAHO director general

Tedros Adenome Gabriasis wrote on Twitter, quote, more than 1,300 excess deaths have been recorded since June 21st, linked to high temperatures in Europe. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service predicts a long and dangerous heat wave will blast a swath of the central and eastern U.S. this week. Already, parts of the U.S., especially Phoenix, central Texas, and much of the southwest, were experiencing temperatures around 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday. Heat may be up, but pride is down. National pride, that is. According to a new Gallup poll, American National Pride is the lowest it has been in 25 years. In 2001, just over half of respondents said they were extremely proud to be an American.

Today, only one-third said the same. Happy 250th birthday, America. And that's the news. Let's talk about the Supreme Court. Yes. Again, apparently this season finale of the most important cases of our lives is a three-parter. If you're looking for a through line

in the Supreme Court's rulings this term, good luck. Today we got four more decisions from the nation's highest court, and they were, well, confusing. For example, the court ruled that President Trump can fire federal independent agency commissioners, but he can't fire a governor

at the Federal Reserve, which is also an independent agency. So what's the difference? I don't know. We also got a surprisingly good ruling on mail-in voting and a separate victory for privacy in the Fourth Amendment. So is there any method to the seeming madness in the Supreme Court's decisions this term? To find out, I spoke to Kate Shaw. She's a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-host of Crooked Media's strict scrutiny. Kate, welcome back to Wad today. Thank you so much for having me back. So the Supreme Court, because we didn't have enough going on, dropped four rulings today. One of the biggest decisions was in Watson v. Republican National Committee. The Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi law that allows ballots postmarked by election day, which I feel like is an

important note because I think Alito didn't understand this. Postmarked by election day, but received after to be counted. What did the judges say in their opinions? Yeah, I mean, I think the setup makes clear, like, this should be a no-brainer and uncontroversial because all of the counted ballots were cast by Election Day. And even if they get there, because sometimes mail is slow a couple of days later, you would think that they, if the state chooses to count them, can still be counted. And that has been the practice in many states for some time now. And yet, this kind of far-fetched challenge saying that that state law violated a different federal law got a surprising amount of traction and only by the narrowest of margins was rejected at the

Supreme Court. So the bottom line here is that the Supreme Court turned away this challenge to the Mississippi law that allows the grace period for late arriving ballots. But it was only a five, four decision turning away that challenge. So for now at least, states that let people vote by election day and count those votes if they come in a couple of days later can continue to run their elections as they have. But in some ways, I think what the scariest thing about this case is is how close it came to succeeding and fundamentally destabilizing a big aspect of election administration just a few months out from the midterms. What was the challenge based on? Like, what was the federal law the Republican National Committee was trying to raise? Sure. Yeah. So there's a

federal law that sets the election day in federal elections, right? States can hold their elections kind of whenever they want. But for federal elections, for president or for Congress, you know, it's in these congressional elections at issue here, it's the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Federal law says that is the day of the election. That's the language in the federal statute. And these challengers said, aha, well, it's day of the election. So everything has to happen on a single day. And counting the ballots later violates that federal requirement of a single election day. Now, it was a challenge that didn't actually take aim at the fact that states do allow early voting. And on the challengers' own logic, it would seem that that too would be inconsistent

with a federal mandate for a single election day. But at least in this case, they didn't want to disrupt early voting just the late counting. And Justice Barrett actually wrote the majority opinion. She was joined by the Democratic appointees and the chief justice and basically said that federal requirement is, you know, for when you have to make a choice and make a choice by. but it doesn't preclude that the consequences of that choice being put into effect by state officials who count later if they choose. Not that they have to, but when states choose to, the federal law doesn't override that choice. Yeah. And one of the dissents came from Alito, who seemed to think that if they counted later that meant that the person voted after election day, which I was very confused and so was he. So that is a loss for Trump, one would argue.

But the Supreme Court playing a very long game of Calvin Ball, which is a reference to the Calvin and Hobbs cartoon series, where Calvin Ball is a game that you make up as you're playing it, it's great, you should Google it. Also handed Trump a win and a loss in his efforts to fire federal agency heads. They ruled that he could fire Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, but not Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. What was the justice's reasoning on why these cases were ultimately different? So you're right that, you know, sort of the invocation of kind of Calvin Ball, like Trump does win in one and losing the other as a technical matter. But I think that presidential power and the idea of the unitary executive, and obviously right now it is Trump who's the beneficiary of that vision of the presidency, won huge in today's decisions. And slaughter, which is the case that overruled this nearly century old precedent, Humphrey's executor and said the president has to be able to fire at will whenever he wants,

for any reason or no reason, the heads of even traditionally independent agencies. That is a decision that I think will fundamentally change the kind of nature of presidential power and the face of a lot of the federal government. Trump has already been acting like he has the power that the Supreme Court declared today that he has. But I do think that this declaration by the Supreme Court will further emboldened him, if it's possible even to imagine a further emboldened Donald Trump. And yet it was a mixed day because Trump did lose in the case in which he was trying to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. And the court tried to draw a distinction between presidential power over most independent agencies, complete, and presidential power over the Fed, or at least the governors on the Fed, you know, limited.

But honestly, the distinction seemed to come down less to law than to kind of politics and practical consequences. Like, I think it's pretty clear. And the court said this in basically so many words that it was nervous about wildly destabilizing the economy and global markets by upending this long-settled understanding that the Fed is independent in a way other agencies aren't. And because it didn't want to do that, it didn't. And it wasn't that worried about destabilizing consumer protection or labor or environmental kind of regulations, which is what lots of other independent agencies handle. And so it gave the president total power over those things. I'm curious in your mind, because I keep saying Calvin Ball, is there any patterns where the justices are standing up to President Trump's administration and where they're handing him wins? Because it seems like as long as it doesn't impact the economy, he can do whatever he wants, except in these other moments when he can't. Yeah, I mean, I think that one really cynical read is that the conservatives are occasionally willing to rule against Trump when, as you said, it is kind of necessary to save global markets and 401ks, et cetera.

and maybe also where ruling against Trump may anger Trump, but actually fundamentally, may help Republicans. And I think arguably in the tariffs case where the court ruled against Trump, he was very unhappy about it. But the justices may well have seen the political cost of these huge tariffs for kind of Republican electoral prospects and the Republican Party at large and sort of decided that a short-term loss for Trump was also actually a long-term win for the Republican Party. So that's one way to understand what the court did in the tariffs case. And I actually think with the absentee voting case or the kind of late counting voting rather and the Fed case today, maybe that's also an explanation.

So Trump is going to be is upset about the voting case and upset about losing in the Fed case. But, you know, kind of better for the Republican Party's electoral prospects if markets don't go haywire right now. And actually maybe Roberts and Barrett see better than Trump does that actually the valence of restricting voting access is at least more complicated than Trump and the RNC might think, right? Like they brought this challenge to late counting ballots, thinking, presumably, they would get some electoral advantage from doing that. And maybe Roberts and Barrett think that, you know, the calculus is at least more complicated in that Trump tried to really polarize, you know, vote by mail and early voting around COVID. And there was, I think, the Democrats really were

using these kind of alternative voting measures much more heavily than were Republicans. but all of that has actually shifted. I think that they may be also making a political calculation that is broader than just about what Trump wants in this moment, and that might explain some of the Trump losses. We'll get back to my conversation with Kate Chott in a moment because like the Supreme Court, we like to keep you on the edge of your seat. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe,

leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack sponsor. IQ bars are better for you. you clean plant protein bars packed with fiber and brain-boosting nutrients with zero added sugar. You no longer have to choose between healthy or delicious snacks. IQ bars, plant protein bars, are packed with high-quality ingredients to help keep you physically and mentally fit. You won't

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Kellor's birthday is coming up, and Helen Keller International is celebrating by helping more children and families around the world live healthier lives. Working in 20 countries worldwide, the organization works with local partners to improve nutrition, protect sight, and fight disease with solutions that are proven to work. Now through June 30th, gifts made an honor of Helen's 146 birthday will be matched doubling your impact. A gift of $146 can help provide essential vitamin A for 146 children. visit Helen Keller, I-N-T-L-org slash W-A-D, and help celebrate Helen's legacy with a gift today. Let's get back to my conversation with Kate Shaw. So, Kate, the lowest profile, though, not unimportant, case decided today was Chattree versus

United States, which had to do with detectives using a geoffence warrant to solve a robbery in Virginia. And I think that a lot of privacy advocates have been saying this is a big victory for them. But first, what is a geofence warrant and where did the justices come down in the ruling. So it's it's a kind of warrant that I was not familiar with either, but it basically asks a service provider, like Google in this case, to identify every user within a particular location for a particular period of time. So here it was like all of the users in this particular, you know, radius from where a robbery occurred, you know, who was there during that period just as a law enforcement technique. And because it was a pretty novel law enforcement

technique. There just like hadn't been any Supreme Court grappling with whether the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable surges and seizures, was violated by the use of this investigative technique by just the getting, without any individualized suspicion of all of the user information for, you know, everybody who is in this area. And the court there held, yeah, you actually do have a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about your cell phone's location. And there is an intrusion on that expectation of privacy when law enforcement gets this information kind of in bulk. And so, yeah, a pretty big win for the Fourth Amendment and for kind of privacy interests, although a lot of questions to be answered about how exactly to do the Fourth Amendment analysis. But the Constitution does care. You do have an interest that is protectable in this location information. That I think is the bottom line there.

And on top of those four rulings, the justices with no opinion, no dissent, no details, said they would not hear Trump's push to toss the $5 million verdict against him in E. Gene Carroll's sexual abuse case. Is this the end of the road for that case? Does he have any other avenues to contest it besides screaming about it on the internet? I mean, the one thing you do have to sometimes give to his legal team is if not winning arguments, they do, they have a degree of sort of malevolent ingenuity. So I cannot rule out that there is some other avenue that they may try to devise. But I think that almost certainly that is the end of the road for this particular effort. There is that separate case in which there was the $80 plus million. judgment against Trump and his lawyers have said that they are also going to seek Supreme Court review of that case. I think that the chances are equally unlikely of the Supreme Court taking

any interest. But in some ways, it's like the kind of audaciousness of the ask. So Trump will ask the Supreme Court to review a case that there's no plausible reason the Supreme Court could have for reviewing. And then it's sort of, you know, big news and the court is ruling against Trump when it denies these efforts. But there was never a plausible case for Supreme Court intervention And I think that's true about the $80 million verdict, too. But I think that it's just another example of kind of the sort of audaciousness and Overton window moving kind of redounding to Trump's benefit. Because I do think that if we're going to kind of list the things that Trump lost in the Supreme Court this term, I mean, I guess this does count. But there was just really no legal claim there.

So I'm almost resistant to even kind of including it on the list. And the list is going to get longer in multiple directions because, the justices are running kind of late this term. Kate, I don't know if you knew this, which you probably did, because you did all the teaching and the law school. Did you know that there isn't really a day where the Supreme Court has to like turn it everything? They could just keep going. It's it's kind of a whatever. So which big cases are we still waiting on? Yeah, it is unlike normally if you have like a take home exam, you just have to turn it in by five o'clock on the next day or whatever. Like no, they just go for as long as they want. And the only thing constraining them is their desire to, you know, go on these. you know, European junkets, or yachts. You know, your mileage may vary. However you choose to enjoy your vacation, you are, if you're a Supreme Court just as eager to get on with it. And so they'll just, when they're ready, they will give us the last opinion and they'll go.

But yeah, there are two cases involving trans student athletes and efforts to keep them from playing sports, a case involving campaign finance regulations, and then the kind of maybe biggest case of the term, the case involving the constitutionality of the president's effort to end birthright citizenship. Those four cases, unless they decide to ask for re-argument, which is, I guess, always a possibility. But most likely those four cases will be decided tomorrow, which will be the last day of the term. And I guess, you know, we'll have a better sense then of just what the ledger looks like in terms of Trump wins and losses. He's likely to lose birthright citizenship based on the tenor of the argument. But you can't rule anything out with the Supreme Court.

So we're going to have to wait and see. I'm so excited for all of their yachting. Kate, as always, thank you for joining me. Thanks, Jane. Good to be with you. That was my conversation with Kate Shaw, co-host of Crooked Media's strict scrutiny. Before we go, nothing says I'm not political quite like spending the last two decades remaking American politics. On the latest episode of This Fucking Guy, Hysteria host, Aaron Ryan, dives deep into the past of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts. The man who brought us the Citizens United ruling, guided the Voting Rights Act, and has spent his career moving our country towards oligarchy.

all the while claiming he's above politics. Check out this fucking guy on YouTube now or anywhere you listen to podcasts. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Enjoy a late-night fireworks display on the National Mall and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading,

and not just about how D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Monday that Fourth of July fireworks on the National Mall won't begin until 11 p.m. Because Trump wants to do a rally, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston, and as everyone always says, fireworks are best when they're super late at night,

and your dogs can really hit Escape Felicity, anxiety. What a Day is a production of Cricket Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily Four, Erica Morrison, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Haley Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor. We had helped today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.