In a trio of cases, two currently pending before the Supreme Court and one that is likely to land on the justices’ doorstep as soon as Tuesday, President Donald Trump claims new powers that, if he prevails, would give him near-total control over all US fiscal and monetary policy.
The first is the ongoing litigation over Trump’s tariffs. The Court plans to hear two challenges to the tariffs, known as Trump v. V.O.S. Selections and Learning Resources v. Trump, in November.
At least 10 federal judges have concluded that Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed many of the ever-shifting import taxes that have defined his second term in office. And the amount of money at stake here is massive — Trump’s lawyers estimate that the tariffs “will reduce federal deficits by $4 trillion in the coming years.” Yale’s Budget Lab estimates that they will raise $2.4 trillion if they remain in effect for 2026-35.
Trump, in other words, claims the power to levy trillions of dollars worth of new taxes without seeking new legislation from Congress.
The second case is Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, which is currently pending on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the Court often decides without explanation. AIDS Vaccine involves “impoundment,” a president’s refusal to spend money that he is required to spend under a federal appropriations law.
Until very recently, there was widespread consensus that impoundment is illegal. In a 1969 Justice Department memo, future Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that “it is in our view extremely difficult to formulate a constitutional theory to justify a refusal by the President to comply with a congressional directive to spend.” And even some members of the current Court’s Republican majority have expressed skepticism about impoundment in the past.
Yet, in an ominous sign that this Court may allow Trump to impound funds anyway, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a brief order last week permitting Trump to temporarily impound foreign aid funds while the Court considers the AIDS Vaccine case.
The final case is Trump v. Cook, which is likely to reach the Supreme Court as soon as Tuesday. Cook involves Trump’s attempt to fire a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, in violation of a federal statute which only allows Fed governors to be fired “for cause.” Late on Monday, a federal appeals court denied Trump this power — although it did so over the dissent of a judge who previously worked in Trump’s White House.
The Fed wields tremendous power over the US economy, including the power to temporarily stimulate the economy at the expense of much greater economic turmoil down the road. For this reason, Congress insulated the Fed’s leaders from presidential control to prevent presidents from injecting cocaine into the economy at politically advantageous moments. If Trump gains the power to fire Fed governors, however, that insulation will end.
Trump, in other words, seeks total control over US monetary policy. He seeks the power to cancel federal grants or even eliminate entire federal programs at will. And he claims the power to raise trillions of dollars in new taxes by his mere decree.
Pretty much the only fiscal power Trump hasn’t claimed yet is the power to actually appropriate federal money – that is, the power to spend however he chooses. The Constitution provides that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law,” meaning that it is unconstitutional for Trump to spend federal money unless that spending is allowed by an Act of Congress.
Realistically, however, if the Supreme Court gives Trump the other powers he is seeking, it would be child’s play for him to get around the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause. The mechanism that prevents federal officials from illegally spending money is the Antideficiency Act, which makes it a crime for federal employees to spend money in excess of the amount appropriated by Congress.
But Trump can pardon anyone who violates this criminal law. And the Republican justices already held, in Trump v. United States (2024), that Trump is immune from prosecution if he uses his official powers to commit crimes.
If Trump gets what he wants from the Supreme Court, in other words, he could wind up with dictatorial authority over US fiscal and monetary policy — fully empowered to tax and spend without any meaningful checks from the other branches of government. And there is a real risk that this Court, which has a Republican supermajority that has shown extraordinary deference to the leader of their political party, will give Trump what he wants.
Trump claims the power to raise trillions in new taxes — Trump v. V.O.S. Selections
The power to tax is potentially the most frightful power that any government possesses. It is essentially the power to take the fruits of people’s labor and to spend that money on programs of the government’s own choosing.
Which isn’t to say that taxation is wrong. Taxes fund essential humanitarian services, such as Medicare or Medicaid. But they can also fund armies of conquest. Or a secret police directed at a nation’s own citizens.
Historically, the United States has prevented its taxing power from becoming a tool of tyranny by vesting this power in an elected Congress. The Constitution provides that “Congress,” and not the president, “shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes.” As mentioned above, it also requires Congress to determine how this money will be spent — although Congress does often enact broad appropriation bills and leave the details of how to spend that money to the Executive.
In V.O.S. Selections, however, Trump claims the power to raise trillions of dollars worth of new taxes without first seeking Congress’s permission to do so.
In fairness, Trump’s lawyers do argue that he has levied these taxes pursuant to an existing federal law — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), which permits the president to “regulate…transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest.” Notably, however, IEEPA only permits the president to use this power “to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat.”
But multiple federal judges have now ruled that this law does not permit the massive tariffs imposed by Trump. One argument is that the power to “regulate” imports does not include the power to tax them. Other judges have pointed out that Trump has not actually identified an “unusual or extraordinary threat” that can justify the taxes.
Additionally, during the Obama and Biden administrations, the Republican justices invented something called the “major questions doctrine,” which is supposed to prevent the executive from enacting new policies of “vast ‘economic and political significance.’” The legal basis for this brand-new doctrine is dubious, and the Court has only actually ever applied it to one president: President Joe Biden.
But courts are supposed to apply the same rules to Republican presidents that they apply to Democrats. And it should go without saying that the president’s decision to raise trillions of dollars worth of new taxes is a matter of vast economic and political significance.
Still, given this Court’s sycophantic treatment of Trump, it is far from clear that the Republican justices will apply the same rules to him that they applied to Biden.
Trump claims the power to unilaterally repeal federal spending laws — State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition
AIDS Vaccine involves a long-simmering dispute over whether Trump can cancel about $4 billion in foreign aid funding that he is required to spend under federal law. There is no serious case that he has the power to do this under the Constitution. As Rehnquist wrote in his 1969 memo, it is “extremely difficult” to even come up with an argument for this position.
Nevertheless, Trump claims to have discovered a loophole that will permit him to impound these funds regardless. The law at issue in AIDS Vaccine requires the government to commit to spending the $4 billion by September 30. A separate law, known as the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), permits Trump to ask Congress to repeal his legal obligation to spend the money, and gives Congress 45 days to decide whether to agree to do so.
So Trump waited until less than 45 days remained before the September 30 deadline and submitted his request to Congress. His lawyers argue that his obligation to spend the money is suspended while Congress considers his request. And then the spending obligation will expire on September 30, and Trump will no longer be legally required to spend the money.
It gets worse. Trump claims that, under the ICA, only the Comptroller General of the United States, who is not a party to the AIDS Vaccine suit, is allowed to sue over illegal impoundments. But this argument is obviously wrong. The ICA states explicitly that “nothing contained in this Act…shall be construed as…affecting in any way the claims or defenses of any party to litigation concerning any impoundment.”
There are also serious procedural problems with Trump’s case. Among other things, the ICA requires Trump to transmit his request that Congress repeal his obligation to spend funds “to the House of Representatives and the Senate on the same day.” But, according to the AIDS Vaccine plaintiffs’ brief, Trump transmitted his request to the House on August 28, but didn’t send it to the Senate until September 8.
If that’s right, it could nullify Trump’s entire argument. Even if Trump is correct that he can delay the obligation to spend funds by 45 days by submitting a request to Congress, he didn’t properly submit a request to Congress. And thus the obligation is not delayed.
Trump’s arguments for impoundment, in other words, are quite weak. If this Supreme Court does accept them, that’s a worrisome sign that they will not prevent him from making future illegal impoundments of federal funds.
Presidential control of the Federal Reserve — Trump v. Cook
Finally, there’s Trump’s attempt to fire Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. By law, Fed governors serve 14-year terms, and can only be removed by the president “for cause.”
Trump claims that he is allowed to fire Cook because she allegedly committed mortgage fraud by declaring two separate properties as her principal residence. But this allegation appears to be false. Reuters reports that Cook declared one of those properties as a “vacation home,” and the lender was aware it was not her primary home.
If you want to know the legal details of this case, I’ll refer you to an explainer I recently published about it here. The short of it is that the Republican justices have been expanding the president’s power to fire federal officials who are protected from political firings by law, but they indicated in a May decision that Federal Reserve’s leaders remain protected.
In any event, if Trump gains the power to remove Fed leaders who do not comply with his wishes, the consequences could be catastrophic. Prior to his 1972 reelection bid, President Richard Nixon successfully pressured Fed chair Arthur Burns to lower interest rates. The economy briefly took off, and Nixon won in a historic landslide. But Burns’s capitulation is often blamed for years of “stagflation,” slow economic growth and high inflation, during the 1970s.
It’s not hard to imagine how Trump could use the power to boost the economy at politically advantageous moments if he were given the power to do so.
Even more significantly, if the Supreme Court were to give Trump full control over the Fed, after it reaffirmed the Fed’s independence as recently as last May, that would eviscerate the Court’s own credibility. And it would suggest that the Court’s Republican majority will not impose any limits whatsoever on a president of their own party.
