Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced SHRPA on today's quest for knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Mark Genowith, President of the new Civil Liberties Alliance that
joins us today. As we ask the questions, the very
important questions, what are the legal what are the constitutional
limits of executive branch power, particularly the president's power to fire?
That question was once again before the US Supreme Court.
Thank you, sir for joining us. I appreciate your time
and I appreciate you being here with us on the
Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Great to be with you, looking forward to our conversation.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you what this is tested over and
over again, it seems over the last year, or at least,
the question is put forward to the US Supreme Court.
Just heard oral argument in Trump the Cook, the case
over whether President Trump can remove Federal Reserve Board Governor
Lisa Cook from office. The New Civil Liberties Alliance filed
in a Meekas brief in that case, urging the justices
to let President Trump remove Cook, and NCLA experts tuned
in and have I think an interesting point of view
on this. I talked to one of your colleagues earlier
this week, but why do you want this poor lady,
this poor governor of the Federal Reserve fired.
Speaker 3: Well, it's not so much that I want her fired,
but that apparently President Trump would like to have her fired,
and that he has the constitutional authority to have that happen.
So what we have tried to tell the Supreme Court,
and I think some of this came out in the
oral argument, some of it didn't this week, but we
tried to say, look, Congress set a particular standard for
removal here, it's a four removal standard, but they didn't
put a lot of specification behind that. They have in
other statutes involving other agencies, but not so much with
the Federal Reserve. President Trump identified a putative four cause
reason for Governor Cook's termination, namely that he believes that
she lied on a mortgage application, and so he fired
her and that really is where the story should end.
But in this case, we had a federal district judge
who heard miss Cook's complaint and enjoined her removal from
the Board of governor. So another off ramp that we
need to keep in mind is that the court could
just decide that district judges don't have the power to
enjoin the president from firing someone, and then they wouldn't
even have to necessarily reach the set of substantive constitutional
questions that were largely talking about today.
Speaker 1: It's interesting you say that, because I have a question,
and I think a lot of folks are asking this question.
Whatever happened to the idea of to serve at the
will of the president. It would seem to me this
would be the case therein. But the Federal Reserve Board
has long been seen in its one hundred and twelve
years as a quasi private entity. Doesn't at the will, however,
still apply in this case.
Speaker 3: So that's the constitutional question that in a sense, the
President didn't trigger because he went along with the statutory
structure here and under the statute he had to specify
a cause, and he did so and fired her for
that cause, and so he has not challenged and for
purposes of this case, the Solicitor General affirmed to the
Supreme Court that the President is not challenging the constitutionality
of that four cause removal standard. But you raise a
good point, because if the Supreme Court were to decide, no,
you didn't do something right here, you didn't actually satisfy
the four cause standard, then that might actually prompt the
President to challenge the constitutionality of the four cause standard.
And I don't know the extent to which the Justices
are keeping that dynamic in mind, but this particular case
won't tee that up because he did follow the four
cause standard, or at least claims to. And so the
question they're really looking at is did he follow the
statute or not. They're not so much looking at that
question whether the four cause removal standard is constitutional. But
to your larger point, most of the principal officers that
report to the president do serve at will. If you
think of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury,
anybody in the cabinet, those folks all serve at the
pleasure of the president. The President's chief of staff, the
White House Counsel, any of those people in the president's
immediate orbit at the White House, those folks all serve
at will. Really the only exception in that immediate circle
around the president is the vice president, who is separately elected,
of course, and so the president can't fire can't fire
the vice president. But everybody else pretty much serves at
the pleasure of the president. So what is different about
these independent agencies is that Congress has purported to put
tenure removal protections around the governors at the Federal Reserve
Board or the commissioners at so called independent agencies like
the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Communications Commission or
the Consumer Product Safety Commission, where I used to work.
Speaker 1: Is this in broader sense too? Is this a good
test for the Supreme Court? I think about last summer
when the Court issued a ruling an order, if you will,
and said, addressed the district courts who have been issuing
nationwide restraining orders basically stopping the executive branch, stopping the
president from doing this or that. And there are a
lot of different areas where these judges have entered into
that to try to issue these nationwide orders. And the
Court said, no, no, you in the main do not
have that authority stop doing that. Well, that's exactly what
we have in this case. No matter where this all goes,
could the Supreme Court say, well, you've made these kinds
of arguments, this is where this case stands. But also
we want to remind you folks, and hopefully there is
something that they can do to enforce it. But if
you're at the district court level, you cannot act in
a national capacity in this case or in so many others.
Speaker 3: So I think this case is a little bit different
in that particular regard because it really only involves the
one person who is suing only Governor Cook, so the
decision wouldn't have the sort of nationwide scope that you
have seen from other district court rulings. The way that
it's similar, though, is that I do think that the
district judge here was exceeding his or her traditional authority.
That is there there's a long standing precedent and understanding
that district court judges cannot enjoin the president himself, and
so you know, so that's one restriction, but there's also
a long standing understanding that that these that the remedy
that folks might have if they are improperly fired is
not a remedy to enjoin them from being fired or
or a reinstating them to office. District judges historically have
not thought that they had that power to enjoin or
reinstate someone to office. Rather, the remedy someone would have
is pursuing back pay. So if you were appointed for
a term of years, for example, and you were improperly terminated, well,
then you would have a right to the salary that
you would have earned for that period of time. That's
typically seen as the appropriate remedy. And one of the
reasons for that is because office holders have not been
thought in the main to have a property right in
holding office. So you might have an interest in the salary,
but you don't necessarily have a property interest in holding
the office itself. Now, I think that's sometimes looked at
differently for Article three judges who are lifetime appointees, but
for these folks who are appointed for lesser terms, again, historically,
they haven't been thought to have a property interest in
their office. So that is something that the Supreme Court
is looking at in this case. Does Miss Cook have
a property right interest in her office? And one of
the reasons the Court is looking at that is because
she's claiming she does, and she's claiming that that gives
her a constitutional right to do process.
Speaker 2: So you can't be.
Speaker 3: Deprived under the Fifth Amendment of due process or excuse me,
of property without due process of law. So she's saying
she's been deprived of property i e. Her office, without
due process of law. And so that, notwithstanding what the
statute says governing the Federal Reserve, that she has a
constitutional right to notice and a hearing before being dismissed.
And so that was something that the justices were struggling
with at the oral argument as well.
Speaker 1: But doesn't that tell you all you need to know
about the administrative state? Another administrative state, administrative stator is
claiming that they have property rights in their job, their
government job. And while it's a maybe a quasi private entity,
it very much is in terms of its regulatory power
tied into the executive branch. But what about that again,
you have this claim that this governor of the Reserve
Board has a right to the property of her job.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So if folks talk about these independent agencies, and I
think they mean at least two different things when they
talk about that independence. One of them is that these
are freestanding agencies, right, So something like the Consumer Product
Safety Commission is an independent agency because it's not part
of the Department of Commerce or some other department. It's
an independent agency in that sense. But sometimes people are
saying that they are independent in the sense of being
independent from the president. And that's where we run into
some difficulty. And that's where NCLA is concerned about how
these agencies have been set up, because all of the
executive power is with the president. And there's three textual
reasons for that we can talk about briefly in the Constitution.
The first is that the vesting clause of Article two,
that's the clause governing the executive branch, gives all of
the executive power, gives the executive power to a president
of the United States. So that language suggests that the
executive power that the Constitution gives all of it is
given to the president, and so any executive power that
anyone else is exercising is derivative of the president, and
so they're not exercising the powers that come with some
separate office they hold, or some separate executive power they have.
They only have executive power through the president under the Constitution.
The second textual clause of note is the take care clause,
under which the president has a duty to take care
that the laws are faithfully executed. And the thought is
that he can't really take care that the laws are
faithfully executed if he can't remove the people who he
thinks are being faithless or who are not doing what
he thinks needs to be done in order to execute
the law. And that's his duty under the Constitution. So
he needs to be able to control those I like
to call them stubborn subordinates. Needs to be able to
control those folks. The third textual provision that folks point
to is the Appointment's clause itself. And you might say, well,
the Appointment's clause constrains the president in his appointments. So,
for example, in appointing a Federal Reserve Board of Governors member,
the Senate has to approve that the President doesn't just
have unilateral appointment authority. Very true, but the clause and
the Constitution is completely silent about the removal power. And
the idea that many scholars have taken from that is
it's sort of the dog that didn't bark, right. There
are restrictions on the appointment's power. The removal power isn't
mentioned at all. Therefore there aren't any restrictions on the
removal power. So if you put those three textual arguments together,
the president is on pretty strong ground in claiming that
he has the constitutional authority to remove someone, at least
someone who's exercising executive power, as Federal Reserve Board governors
definitely do.
Speaker 1: That's very interesting. Point number two, really I think should
be part of this case, but maybe it isn't in
the narrow tailoring of it. But what happens if you
have someone obnoxious to the agenda of the president? What
if you have someone who is obnoxious to the goals
that the president has set out and is working openly
against the administration. The president has no power, even in
this situation to remove someone like that. And I think,
you know, there is a good body of evidence to
show that Lisa Cook does not share the president's views
on monetary policy as well as a number of different issues.
What does that do to a duly elected, duly elected
president in that case.
Speaker 3: It's a concern, isn't it from a self government standpoint?
Because the president is elected and so to have democratic
accountability we have that over the president. If he makes
appointments that we don't like, then there's at least the opportunity,
maybe not for a lame duck president, but certainly to
penalize his party in Congress during the midterms and so forth.
So there are democratic accountability channels. If you have someone,
whether it's someone at the Federal Reserve or someone at
one of these other independent agencies who's behaving in a
way that's obnoxious to the president, as you put it,
and the president doesn't have control over that person, can't
remove them from office, then where is the self government
in that? Where is the democratic accountability in that? There
really isn't any. And mister Clement, who spoke on behalf
of miss Cook in the oral argument, suggested that, well,
there's always impeachment as a remedy. But I thought this
listener general had a good response to that, which is, well.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute.
Speaker 3: The Constitution specifies impeachment for the removal of federal judges,
but it doesn't talk about that for these other officeholders.
And so you would be restricting the president to something
that the Constitution appears to reserve for people who are
holding lifetime office or who have been elected like the
president or vice president. It's not to say that you
couldn't impeach one of these folks. You could if the
president didn't want to remove someone, for example, and the
House we're willing to impeach them. In two thirds of
the Senate were willing to remove them, that can happen
without the president's assent. But by and large, if you're asking,
if you're trying to say the president can only remove
someone from impeachment, well, what does he do if either
the House or the Senate is in control of the
other party and wants this obnoxious person in office? Well
that now he has no way of removing them, And
that doesn't it doesn't really seem consistent with him exercising
his duty to take care.
Speaker 2: That the law is faithfully executed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt about that. You mentioned an interesting name
to me. I want to get to that in just
a moment.
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Speaker 1: Mark Jenowith is president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
He joins us on this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Is it Paul Clement who was arguing for Lisa Cook
for the Supreme Court?
Speaker 3: Yes, it was, and uh, you know, love love Paul.
He Uh, we worked with him. He was the council
for Loper Bright in the Loper Bright case and we
had the Relentless case and in the pair of cases
that overturned Chevron deference. Very good attorney. Well, I'm sure
we'll work with him. Well, actually we are working with
him on something else right now. Uh, but in this
particular case we were we were on opposite sides of
the issue.
Speaker 1: It is interesting to me because he he was the
former solicitor general for the President Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: Correct, oh, not Biden for for George.
Speaker 1: Excuse for George W. Bush. Yes, I apologize for that. Uh,
and but it's it's interesting to me that uh Clement
was also recently I think he still is on the
legal team representing the judge in Milwaukee County, Hannah Dugan.
Speaker 2: UH.
Speaker 1: If you recall, Hannah Dugan was indicted effectively for aiding
and abetting or interfering at the very least with the
federal law enforcement agents in Ice in UH, you know,
basically allowing a an a legal immigrant near her court
or in her court to escape ICE custody. And the
argument that that legal team had was, well, the judge
is immune from from any anything that that involves her court,
and that includes interfering in the you know, the federal
law enforcement officials duties. Well, again, she was indicted, and
a federal jury in December convicted her of that particular charge,
arguing that she did not have the authority uh to
claim those sorts of things, submit that there certainly was
cause to remove her from the bench. There certainly was
cause to indict her. But it's interesting that that that
you have Paul Clement making these these claims that cause
has to be there has to be a process for
this involving the case with Lisa Cook.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's just a function of Paul as
an excellent, highly paid advocate who you know, I'm sure
has been hired in both.
Speaker 2: Cases to to do what he does so well.
Speaker 3: And I don't, you know, unlike a public interest group
like in c l A, we probably can't ask lawyers
in private practice to always be on the same side of,
you know, some some set of set of issues. I
haven't followed that particular case very you know, very closely,
but but I.
Speaker 2: Do think that.
Speaker 3: Though I think he did a fine job at the
oral argument, I think some of the post argument commentary
has suggested that the Court might be leaning his way
in the Cook. In the Cook case, I hope that
proves not to be true, both because I think that
it might prompt the President to challenge the constitutionality of
the fore cause standard, and because I think if the
Court were to say, look, the fore cost standard requires
or limits you to firing someone for reasons of say inefficiency,
neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office, which is a standard,
by the way, that other agencies have, but that's not
the standard that applies to Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
If they were to say if they were to import
that here and imply that, I would be concerned, both
because I think that would essentially be the Supreme Court
legislating from the bench and creating a standard that wasn't
created by Congress, and because I think that would tie
the President's hands too much in terms of his ability
to remove someone like Lisa Cook. I mean, we're talking
about the independence of the Fed being important, and I
know a lot of folks think about the interest rates
setting function that they have the sort of the open
market function that the Federal Reserve has, And that's true,
and maybe arguably we want to enter into some sort
of Ulysses contract that sort of prevents Congress and the
President from playing with interest rates in a way that
might lead to inflation. But even if we were to
agree on that point, and obviously not everyone does, it's
still the case that the Federal Reserve has a bunch
of regulatory responsibilities like regulating credit card companies, regulating banks,
and it writes ordinary regulations just like other agencies do,
and at least in that part of what it does,
the President certainly needs to be in a position to
oversee that regulation and discipline folks, including up to removal
of folks who aren't in line with the priorities and
policies of his administration.
Speaker 2: And again, if he doesn't.
Speaker 3: Have that ability, then we then we've gotten rid of
self government, and I don't think that's where we want
to be.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great point. If you want to
divorce those two things, the federal regulation from the monetary policy,
and what the Board is set up to do and
what the Reserve is set up to do is to
do a lot of things, then Congress has the responsibility
of taking those two things and separating them and putting
someone under the executive branch. And then I know there
are other questions involving that, but you raise a good point.
Justice Amy Cony. Barrett cited issues as you mentioned, with
public confidence. Should the president be cleared to fire a
sitting governor without fully explaining or justifying the reasons. I
think he has explained and I think he has justified
the reasons, which you'll get into in just a moment,
But this is what Barrett said. We have Amikas Brieves
from economist who tell us that if Cook is fired
then it can trigger a recession. How should we think
about the public interest in a case like this, I'll
ask you that same question, but I'll also already point
to a follow up question, and that is, is that
the business of the court to consider?
Speaker 3: Well, I think this listener general's response to that question,
if I remember correctly, was to point out that when
President Trump first fired Lisa Cook back in August, I
believe it was that the market went up for three
straight days after that. So, just from a yeah, empirical standpoint,
this listener General was suggesting, maybe markets aren't so concerned
about the President being able to remove one of the
fifteen members of the Federal Reserve Board.
Speaker 2: After all, it's not the case that.
Speaker 3: Removing one Federal Reserve Board governor is going to tip
the scales on what we're doing with interest rate setting.
You know, if he were, for example, threatening to fire
ten of them and replace them all with his acolytes
or something like that, maybe the concern that she stated
would would be more on point. But I'm not so
sure that removing just one governor from a multi from
a very large, multi member board is going to have
that impact as to whether the Court should take such
prudential concerns into account. You could argue that they shouldn't,
but the reality is that they will and that they do.
And so I think as an advocate one has to
be prepared to counter those prudential concerns. And for me,
the solicitor Solicitor General John Sower did a pretty good
job of that. He pointed out that plenty of people
would be concerned if she stayed or continues to stay,
on the Board of Governors. Why should we have someone
on there setting our interest rates who lied in a
mortgage application in order to secure a more favorable interest
rate for herself. That does seem to set up the possibility.
Speaker 2: Of a rule for thee but not for me.
Speaker 3: Kind of situation that, frankly, is exactly the kind of
attitude that got President Trump elected by the masses to
begin with. So you can understand why he might take
a particular viewpoint toward that. And as a colleague of
mind pointed out today, the case that Letitia James brought
against President Trump up in New York.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was similar to this.
Speaker 3: They said, well, you had missed you had information that
was in accurate in your application. His response was, well,
I the bank was never misled. The bank did its
own due diligence. The bank had a full understanding of this,
and in his case, the bank even testified to that
effect that they were not misled. And and so, you know,
none nonetheless, now that case is on appeal, But nonetheless,
he had a five hundred million dollar judgment or something
like that against him in the at least in the
trial court. And I know that the Court of Appeals
had a sort of a strange mixed response to that,
but but but largely favorable to him.
Speaker 2: And you know, he.
Speaker 3: May look at the situation with Lisa Cook and think, well, gosh,
that looks a lot like what was considered inappropriate by
you know, by this other in this other instance where
where I was involved. If if you know, if I'm
going to get slapped down for that, why shouldn't she
get slapped down for that? And I don't know that
that's what his thought process was. He hasn't said that.
I haven't, you know, I don't. And to be able
to read the president's mind.
Speaker 1: I think there's some of that there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's you know, it's not crazy to think that
that he might be particularly sensitive to this kind of
this kind of violation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt about it. There's a lot of that
for thee not for me going around, including with Letitia James,
serious allegations against her. Whether that'll be revisited or not,
it remains to be seen. But Lisa Cook is charged
with some very serious things and it's not let's put
it in perspective too, she's charged with fraud, a financial fraud.
She is not working in well to think of any
number of positions where that isn't a primary concern.
Speaker 2: National Park Service.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly unless you're dealing with an auditor or you know,
an accountant or something like that. But yeah, someone in
the National Park Service does not have the same kind
of causal issues on that front. This clearly is a
matter of cause. Although the argument is she hasn't had
her time in court or a hearing to explain herself.
And I guess that's the question, and that's the question
the Supreme Court is dealing with. Is that a necessary requirement?
And what do you think about that?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Does she get a notice and a hearing is another
way of asking that question in and the statute doesn't
say that. The statute says that the President can fire
her fore cause it does not require notice and a hearing.
Speaker 2: Now there's an.
Speaker 3: Argument over whether the traditional restriction of four cause sort
of brings with it. They talk in the oral argument
about the old soil of that sort of that sort
of of provision bringing, you know, coming along with it
the idea of notice in comment. But certainly the text
of the statute not notice in common notice in hearing.
The statute doesn't doesn't buy its text require notice in hearing.
And so unless the constitution requires notice in hearing because
she has a property interest in the office, and due
process requires her to have a due process which would
usually be thought to include a hearing before being deprived
of the office, I don't know that she has a
lot of ground to stand on now. That said that,
justices were not impressed with the idea that a truth
social post was sufficient notice to her. They seemed to
prefer something more formal than that. Whether the whether they're
just behind the times and a social media post is
sufficient notice, you know, I think is a close question.
Speaker 2: I think it would be better.
Speaker 3: To send us some sort of a formal letter to someone.
And then the question is did she have an adequate
opportunity unity to respond to those charges within the five
I think it was five days between the truth social
post and his his ordering that that she be fired. Uh,
And in what way would she respond to that? Would
she would she posts something on social media herself. At
no point was she apparently called to the White House
for a face to face meeting. And you know, I
joke with someone on my Unwritten Law podcast that you
you could you could see a situation kind of a
celebrity apprentice table where where President Trump brought someone in
and gave them, uh, some period of time to defend
themselves from the from the charges, and then said, Okay,
well you're fired. That's not good enough for me. Chief
Justice Roberts in the oral argument, asked the question, well,
sort of, what's the point of requiring that because it's
not as she's not contesting the fact of what she did.
She's contesting whether she did it with fraudulent intent. She's
saying it was a you know, it was sort of
a paperwork air. It was something that an oversight, not
something that she did deliberately. But she's not contesting that
for example, the document is forged or that's not her signature,
or she never bought that property or or she didn't
check that box that that indicated that it was a
primary residence. So there's not really a lot of facts
to be sorted through. And then you know, she might
have some legal arguments about how relevant those facts should
be to the question of her removal. But who's the
decision maker there, and isn't it ultimately the president if
you have a four cause removal standard. Some folks are
trying to say, well, this was pre office conduct, and
anything that's preoffice conduct is not a reason that you
can be removed. Justice Alito had some fun without it
the oral argument. He sort of trotted out a bunch
of high patheticals of different things that might be preoffice
conduct that you really want to take the position that
someone can't be fired for, you know, this parade of horribles,
and I think you get to the point pretty quickly
where you realize, eh, we can't say that you could
never be removed for preoffice conduct. I think what some
folks have said, and I think this is somewhat compelling,
is look, if this is something that was disclosed to
the Senate, and the President knew it when he appointed you,
and the Senate knew it when they confirmed you, then
maybe an subsequent president can't reltigate those facts and fire
you for that pre office conduct. But the idea that
there's no preoffice conduct for which you can be removed
from office, I think that's a bridge too far, and
I don't think the Supreme Court's going to say that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe cause too can include incompetence. And I
think if you are caught making such grievous mistakes on
your mortgage forms as someone who wants to be a
governor on the board of Reserve, and I think one
could ask some questions are you capable of doing the job?
And this shows you're not? And there is cause right there.
All of that said, I think Trump probably should have
just sent his truth social post via facts to her
and then that would have accounted for a formal document.
Final question for I really appreciate your perspective, your expertise.
Speaker 3: Can you can I just jump into say, yeah, yeah,
say one thing, which is you're exactly right about that
point and on negligence, and that is in fact, what
the argument of this Solicitor general was. He wasn't saying
she committed fraud. He said, look this, even if this
is gross negligence. That's enough for the president.
Speaker 2: To fire her. And that's what we are assuming occurred here,
and that's why he wants to remove her.
Speaker 1: Every headline I read from you know, the usual suspects
in corporate media is something to the effort fact that
justice is reluctant to side with Chump Trump. Justices won't
be ciding with Trump. Looks like Lisa Cook, her goose
isn't cooked. Whatever whatever it is they believe. At least,
the stories push the idea that there's no way that
this court is going to even this narrow Tarler tailoring
is going to allow the president to fire this this
governor of the Federal Reserve. What do you think ultimately
will happen here?
Speaker 3: Well, it's certainly true that the tenor of the oral
argument was very different than the tenor of the oral
argument in last month's trumpvi's Slaughter case about whether he
can fire Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission. I
think most of the commentary was the other way. After
that oral argument, it really sounded like the court was
going to let the president fire her. And interestingly, the
standard there isn't isn't just cause it is a sort
of an inefficiency, neglect of duty, and malfeasance kind of
kind of standard there. But they seemed comfortable with letting
him fire Slaughter. As I say, the tenor was very
different with Cook. The Federal Reserve is different apparently in
the eyes of many of the justices, perhaps all of
the justices, and so you didn't get the same sense
that they were ready to go along with the president
firing her without without saying anything else. But I also
heard a real desire to do something more limited in
this case that might involve not reaching the substantive constitutional
question either because they take that off ramp and say, look,
the district judge here issued to stay.
Speaker 2: That's not allowed.
Speaker 3: You can't you know, you can't join the president. You
can't stop this kind of of firing. You know, in progress,
the remedy is only ex post. They might say something
like that, or they might say something like, look, there
wasn't enough You know, we're not saying the president can't
fire her. We're just saying there wasn't enough notice and
hearing here. This is what we think the notice needs
to look like. This is what we think the hearing
needs to look like. If the president wants to go
back to square one and provide notice and provide a hearing,
and then we will have a different question in front
of us. I don't know that they'll do that, because
I think it would be a little bit pointless. At
least the Chief Justice seemed to indicate that. But that
would be another way that would maybe buy them some
time or let them not reach the substance of it,
or they might just say, look, we're going to let
this particular firing happen. But we're doing that because we
think that the four cause was followed here. And what
we're saying is that this is justiciable. The question of
whether four cause was followed or not isn't something that
we're just going to say is beyond the kin of
the judiciary. We actually think people can bring these cases
if you know, if if the four cause provision hasn't
been honored, and and sort of throwing down a gauntlet,
if you will, for future cases, sort of telling the administration, look,
we're not just going to let you come up with
pretextual reasons for for firing someone for cause, but we
are going to let you do this one. And so
that might be another way that it would that it
would come out. You know, I I'll be very surprised
if if the Slaughter case comes out not allowing the
firing there. But I'll be a little bit surprised in
the cookcase if they don't let him fire Cook too.
I just I heard something closer to a desire for
a limited outcome for now among the justices.
Speaker 2: And I don't know that.
Speaker 3: It was hard to hard to find five votes for
any one outcome, but it certainly didn't sound like they
were overly eager to to settle the constitutional quite in
a case where the president seemed to be following the
statute or certainly claimed to be following his statutory authority.
Speaker 1: Very interesting. I say this every year. I've said this
the last several years. This is an unprecedented year for
the Supreme Court. It seems like every year is unprecedented,
very fascinating stuff. We'll be keeping an eye on this,
I know you folks at the New Civil Liberties Alliance
will be. For sure.
Speaker 2: We love these cases.
Speaker 3: I like to say that we've we've been making Administrative
Law Fund since twenty seventeen, and folks are welcome to
go to our website at NCLA Legal dot Org and
learn more about our brief in this case and the
other cases that we've been working on, sometimes for the administration,
sometimes against the administration.
Speaker 1: Now you have a T shirt or a bumper sticker
that says.
Speaker 2: That not yet, but we need one, don't we?
Speaker 1: I think so that would be great. Thanks to my
guest today, Mark Jenowith, president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance,
listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm
Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll be
back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom
and anxious for the frame