President Donald Trump has long benefited from a friendly Supreme Court, stocked with a six-justice Republican majority that includes three of his own appointees. But he’s now poised to put that to the test: In attempting to fire a member of the Federal Reserve board this week, writes Ian Millhiser, he’s doing the one thing the Court explicitly said is beyond his authority.
It remains to be seen whether the justices will hold to that when they inevitably hear a challenge to the attempted firing, but as Ian explains, the Court has a very good — albeit legally incoherent — reason to draw that line.
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—Seth Maxon, politics, policy, and ideas editor
