The Daily Fuckup

The Supreme Court on June 29 denied the government’s emergency request to put a lower-court injunction on hold in Trump v. Cook, leaving Lisa Cook in office while the case continues. The justices did not finally decide whether President Donald Trump can lawfully remove the Federal Reserve governor. They decided only the stay application, which meant the injunction blocking her removal stayed in place for now.

In the Court’s syllabus, the justices said the government had not shown it was likely to prevail on its stay arguments. They also said the application was being decided on the narrow ground that Cook had not been given the procedural protections the Court said she was entitled to under the statute. The order therefore addressed the emergency posture of the case, not the merits of the underlying removal fight.

Cook’s term on the Board of Governors runs until 2038. The case began after Trump purported to fire her in August 2025 over mortgage-fraud allegations, and she sued to block the removal. A district court issued a preliminary injunction, and the appeals court declined to pause it before the matter reached the Supreme Court on the government’s stay request.

The ruling keeps the status quo intact while the litigation continues. It does not settle the broader question of how far a president can go in removing a Federal Reserve governor, and it does not erase the statutory protections Congress wrote around those positions. For now, though, the government did not get the immediate relief it sought, and Cook remains on the job pending further proceedings.