Despite some high-profile setbacks, President Trump had a largely successful year at the Supreme Court, a former Justice Department civil litigation expert said, pointing to major victories for the White House on executive power and immigration enforcement.
Abhishek Kambli, former deputy associate attorney general at the Justice Department and current partner at Holtzman Vogel, said the triumphs included the justices erasing a 91-year-old precedent to give the president wide-ranging authority to oust employees over policy differences, even at so-called independent agencies.
That’s particularly helpful to a president whose reality TV catchphrase used to be “You’re fired!” And it will be big for future presidents too.
“Anyone who has been involved in the conservative legal movement knows that for almost 100 years, that has been something conservatives have tried to get overturned,” Mr. Kambli said told The Washington Times’ “Court Watch” podcast.
The court’s action came on a case involving Mr. Trump’s firing of a Democratic appointee to the Federal Trade Commission.
In 1935, the Supreme Court rejected a similar attempt by President Franklin Roosevelt, but the court last month overturned that decision.
The outcome had been expected, and even telegraphed, given earlier rulings chipping away at limits on presidential firing power.
“It is very meaningful for what it means for executive power and the fact that the presidency ultimately belongs to the president and that even Congress can’t interfere with the president’s core removal authorities in order for him to do his job,” Mr. Kambli said.
Still, the high court didn’t grant unlimited firing power.
In a separate ruling, it refused to revive Mr. Trump’s firing of a Democratic appointee to the Federal Reserve Board. In that case, the president tried to fire Lisa Cook for cause, citing questions about mortgage applications.
The justices said he owed her a chance to contest the allegations.
“Even though that didn’t go the Trump administration’s way, that doesn’t mean it will have much effect beyond the Fed,” Mr. Kambli said.
Mr. Trump also saw the justices rule against his position in a case on states that count mailed-in ballots received after Election Day. The court said federal law doesn’t bar the practice.
But the court delivered several other election and campaign wins, granting political parties more freedom to coordinate with their candidates and limiting the ability of racial or ethnic minorities to demand special carve-out seats in legislatures, including Congress.
In that case, Mr. Kambli said, the court adopted the Trump administration’s position suggesting a narrowed test to determine if a legislative district map is combating real racial discrimination.
“That is a very consequential case because a lot of redistricting for decades will change forever on that, and that affects the balance of political power for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Kambli said.
Mr. Trump’s most personal loss came with the court rejecting his executive order trying to rewrite the rules for birthright citizenship. The justices, in a complex decision, ruled that the Constitution guarantees citizenship to nearly every child born on U.S. soil, including those to illegal immigrant or temporary visitor parents.
But the court did find that the law likely gives a president sweeping powers to end Temporary Protected Status, a form of deportation amnesty, for hundreds of thousands of people the Biden administration tried to shield.
And in another decision, the justices gave the administration more leeway to control the border, rejecting immigrant rights advocates’ claims that the asylum law covered even people in Mexico who had never reached U.S. soil.
“They have been uniformly winning on the immigration side, which is the president’s top priority,” Mr. Kambli said.
And although Mr. Trump lost his first bid to implement tariffs under an emergency statute, Mr. Kambli said the administration has found a workaround, now using another section of the law to pass on Mr. Trump’s tariff policy.
“The losses aren’t really that big,” he said. “They are always good about trying to find other legal authorities to do it.”
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