Wanna turn now to somebody who's been to a Washington dinner party or two and is

probably in tune to the conversation that Matthew brought up at the start of that interview.

That's Greg Stohr. He covers the supreme court for us here, at Bloomberg News. Greg, let

me go right there if if I could. How much is this something that folks in

Washington, lawyers and others, are are talking about? How do you think of that in light

of the way that the president reacts to the decisions that we saw in the last

few weeks of the court's term?

So good morning to you both. Thanks for exaggerating my my social life, David.

Not at all. Not at all.

You know, it has been a topic, a big topic throughout this Trump term. We have

seen both the president and other administration officials talking about the possibility of ignoring the courts.

Now for the most part, that has happened with the lower courts so far. There has

not been a case of outright defiance of the Supreme Court. And in fact, with all

these decisions of the this term, most of which went Trump's way, some of which went

against him, we haven't seen any outright defiance. And so I suppose, you know, in this

very difficult time for this nation with so much division, perhaps we we can say that's

a good sign that we didn't see outright defiance.

President Trump does really have an affinity for Andrew Jackson, but, you're right so far. I

do wanna ask you about these two cases we were talking to in the lead up

to these decisions, and that is the slaughter case and the Cook case. Because when we

were speaking earlier, you said that they would probably have to be issued together because they

were similar, but it looks like based on oral arguments, and this is where it ended

up, the court would go one way with one and one way with the other. So

why can you talk to us about whether you think this the court in their arguments

successfully skirted that, complication and managed to lay out justifications for why? In one case, they

expanded presidential power and said the president can fire the head of the FTC. In another

case said, well, not quite yet on Lisa Cook, and here's why.

Yeah. Well, the the biggest thing is probably just that the court said the Fed is

different. And to put a little more on that, the Fed is different because of its

role in setting monetary policy and the the history and the tradition of the institution. Now

the court kind of skirted some questions like, well, what about the functions of the Fed

that are a lot like other executive branch agencies, the regulation of banks, for example? But

the court did did, you know, draw a line that says the Fed is not an

institution where the president can fire people for any reason. Now having said that, when we

got into the issue of, okay, Donald Trump says he has a reason for firing Lisa

Cook, the the alleged mortgage fraud that she denies, the court essentially said, okay. We're gonna

protect the Fed to some degree for the time being. There's a lot of tough questions

in here. There's questions about what kind of process she is entitled to before the president

does that, and there's definitely a lot of questions about what is enough to constitute cause.

That is enough reasons the president could fire her. Not at all clear which way it

will come out ultimately in this case.

You've heard a new piece kind of looking at the takeaways from from this last term,

and there's a line that stood out to me. That's president Trump has built the supreme

court supermajority, but it was the Reagan revolution that prevailed during the just completed term. Talk

a bit about what we learned, you would, Greg, about this court, about the decisions it

made during this term and how it's likely to rule going forward. What did we learn

about the court as an institution over the course of this last term?

Well, first of all, it was a really, really big term in terms of shifting the

law. So you look at things like the Voting Rights Act decision. You look like you

look at that decision we were just talking about, letting the president fire the heads of

independent agencies and sort of, undercutting the legal basis for the modern administrative state. And most

of those things are long standing conservative priorities. They were priorities that when people were in

the Reagan administration as John Roberts and Sam Alito were, they were working on those ideas.

They were developing them. And so this is kind of the culmination of a legal movement

on those issues that has built up over decades. The places where the president lost tended

to be things that were more his priorities, not things that conservatives have hoped for for

decades and decades. So you look at birthright citizenship, which came up very, very recently, the

restrictions he tried to impose there. And certainly, you look at tariffs, which has not been

a conservative priority. And and the supreme court shot down the notion that this law that

doesn't mention tariffs but talks about emergency powers could let the president impose hundreds of billions

of dollars of tariffs. So it it you know, all told, yes, Donald Trump won a

significant win this this term, but they were not on those things that were sort of

Trump specific, MAGA specific.

I'm glad you brought up birthright citizenship because I did wanna talk about that. It was

a six three decision that upheld birthright citizenship, but there was a concurring opinion by one

of the conservative justices. Explain to us what it did. It it kind of said, yes.

I agree with this decision, but for a different reason. And if you did it this

way and like, it was almost like a head fake. If you went through congress, this

might be a different opinion. And now all of a sudden, the president has said, hey.

Maybe he will work through congress on this. Explain to us what the argument was there

and if you think we're gonna have to revisit this again next term.

Yeah. So that was an opinion by justice Brett Kavanaugh, and you're exactly right. He agreed

with the result, but not the reasoning. So the the key language in the constitution that

the court, interpreted was the fourteenth amendment, which says if you're born in The US and

subject to the jurisdiction thereof, you are a citizen. And there are a couple federal statutes

that have the exact same language. And so what justice Kavanaugh said in his concurrence was,

I disagree with the majority about what the constitution means. But because congress passed those statutes

at a time when everybody understood that language to mean that that anybody born in The

US was a citizen, I'm going to to say that by statute, the president cannot impose

these restrictions. And thus, all Congress needs to do is change that statute, and the president

would have that authority. Now the problem for justice Kavanaugh is it's not clear, not at

all clear, he's got five votes on the court to do that. The majority pretty clearly

said we see it as a constitutional right, a constitutional value that any if you're born

here with a few very small exceptions, you are an American citizen.

Greg, let's look ahead if we could. So at the end of the term, we learned

what the court's gonna be considering next, and I'm sure you heard Lisa a few moments

ago talking about the New York Times reporting the administration wants to relax some firearms restrictions.

A couple of cases here stand to deal with that issue as well, Vermont versus Cook

County and Grant versus Higgins. There are municipalities, places around the country that have certain restrictions

on assault weapons, and I gather that's what the court's gonna be weighing here. What insight

can you give us into sort of the the crux of the those cases and and

sort of what the the court's gonna be, looking into here in the next term?

Sure. Yeah. The the court has, in recent years imposed, much tougher rules governing, restrictions on

on guns. So they've made it made it much harder for a state or local government

to say, we we are, you know, doing this in the name of gun safety. The

lower courts have generally said that states and local governments can ban so called assault weapons,

that, those aren't protected under the second amendment. The court, has has really sort of hemmed

and haunt about taking up this issue. Three justices previously said three, conservative justices, Gorsuch, Thomas,

and Alito have said, we want to take this up. Justice Kavanaugh has said, I think

I wanna take it up, but not just yet. And by the way, I'm really skeptical

of these restrictions. And so probably those four provided the four votes to to take up

the issue, and what that means is, when the the court hears arguments in the fall,

chief justice Roberts and justice Barrett are likely to be the two votes, and it is

gonna be a hugely important case, a hugely a very closely watched case because, of course,

of the, impact that you know, both because of how widespread semiautomatic so called assault weapons

are and because of the way they have been used in many, many mass shootings.

Greg, before we let you go, only got about a minute left. I do wanna ask

you. There was some drama about the possible potential retirement of Samuel Alito. What happened there?

It turned out to be not true, but do you think it was just possibly too

early? Are you expecting some sort of retirement this fall, particularly if Republicans lose control of

the senate?

So, yes, there was a there was a erroneous report that the court had announced that

justice Alito was retiring. The court had not done so. No indication, if it seems very

clear, he's not retiring right now. He's not retiring, in the next few days. A lot

of people have have started talking about, well, what is possible. Would justice Alito retire then?

He can't totally rule it out. We're all gonna be watching it very closely. It would

be, from the court standpoint, hugely different from any other retirement, at least in the modern

era. Justices don't retire because of an election. They retire at the end of a term.

Yes. They think about who is in the White House and who might replace them. But

for justice Alito to retire or any other justice to retire just because of the outcome

of the midterms, it would be a very new thing. Having said that, if Democrats take

the senate, you know, it's it's entirely possible to be a it'll be a long time

before, know, a conservative replacement could be confirmed.