The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump from firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, preserving the central bank’s independence for now. In a 5-4 decision Thursday split across ideological lines, the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s attempt to become the first president to remove a Federal Reserve official since it was created in 1913.Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberal justices to rein in Trump.Last August, Trump declared that he was booting Cook—the first Black woman on the Federal Reserve board—over claims she committed mortgage fraud with two primary residencies. Cook refused to step down, and sued, stating that “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so.” A lower court ruled that Cook could not be dismissed while her case proceeded. The Department of Justice then requested that the Supreme Court stay that ruling, so that Cook could be removed from her position. The Supreme Court refused. “No matter the precise definition of cause, or the scope of our review of any such determination, the President failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute,” wrote Roberts, who wrote the majority’s ruling.The case will now return to a lower court, where Cook will fight to save her job. Cook was appointed by former President Joe Biden, and her term was set to expire in 2038.In a separate decision Monday, the Supreme Court gave the president more power over independent agencies, ruling that Trump had the authority to fire Rebecca Slaughter. The ruling shifted quite a lot of power from Congress to the president, and has ushered in one of the largest changes to the federal government in decades.This story has been updated.More on the Supreme Court this term:The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s appeal of the E. Jean Carroll verdict, in which he was found guilty of sexually abusing and then defaming Carroll.This means Trump will still be required to pay Carroll $5 million. Carroll, a former writer, accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996. When she spoke out publicly against him, he posted on social media that the case was “a complete con job” and a “Hoax and a lie.” In 2022, she sued him for both sexual abuse and defamation, seeking damages, and the jury agreed with Carroll that Trump was liable. Trump’s lawyers appealed the case, arguing that the jury heard “highly inflammatory” evidence—including testimony from two other women who claimed Trump assaulted them, and the infamous Access Hollywood tape. The Supreme Court justices did not provide any explanation for why they rejected Trump’s appeal. But, they may consider another similar case. A separate jury found Trump liable for defaming Carroll in 2024, and he was ordered to pay the writer $83.3 million—Carroll’s lawyers argued that a significant settlement was the only way to get Trump to stop attacking her. Trump’s lawyers have said they plan on appealing that verdict to the Supreme Court as well.However, that case is solely focused on defamation. Carroll’s claims that Trump sexually abused her in the ’90s have been affirmed by a jury, and Trump has now run out of ways to contest them. This story has been updated.Editor’s Pick:The Supreme Court has demolished Republicans’ efforts to delegitimize mail-in ballots, upholding a Mississippi law that allows a grace period to count ballots received after Election Day.In a 5-4 decision Monday split across ideological lines, the court ruled that ballots are valid up to five days after Election Day, so long as they were postmarked before it. Justice Amy Comey Barrett and Chief Justice Roberts were the two conservatives who sided with the liberal justices, and Barrett authored the majority opinion. Eighteen states and territories, including Mississippi, currently allow for mail-in ballots to be received after Election Day. That includes big Democratic states like California, Illinois, and New York. The ruling also protects states and territories that allow a grace period for ballots returning from overseas, such as for military service members.“The Constitution’s Elections Clause empowers state legislatures to ‘prescrib[e]’ the ‘Times, Places and Manner of holding’ congressional elections. Congress may ‘override’ most of these choices,” Barrett wrote for the majority. “By ‘default,’ however, ‘responsibility for the mechanics of congressional elections’ belongs to States. As Alexander Hamilton put it, the Constitution lodges power over congressional elections in state legislatures ‘primarily’ and in Congress ‘ultimately.’” Mail-in voting is a very basic, safe tactic that Trump himself has even used, despite crusading against it as fraudulent. By upholding it, the court has protected voting rights for thousands of Americans voting at home and abroad. This story has been updated. More on what the Supreme Court has done this term:President Donald Trump and his family continue to dominate the field when it comes to corruption, with two new scandals exposed just within the last 24 hours.On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the Trump family stands to reap the financial benefits of a deal that gives the U.S. access to one of the earth’s largest reserves of tungsten, a metal needed to make fighter jets, computer chips, and missile warheads.American company Kaz Resources was awarded $1.6 billion in federal financing to mine tungsten in Kazakhstan. Just weeks after the deal was made, a firm partly owned by Trump’s sons joined up with other partners to take a 20 percent stake in a “corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project,” the Times reported.And it’s not just the Trumps—the sons of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was also involved in the deal, raised capital for one of the project’s investors, a move that is expected to net them millions of dollars.Between the Trumps and the Lutnicks, one or both families have ties to at least 14 companies that are working with the federal government on mining deals, the Times reported.And on Monday, CNBC reported that the president bought up to $5 million in shares of Axon Enterprise, a company that makes tasers, body cameras, and other policing software, just two weeks before ICE sought a $220 million contract that only a company like Axon could fill.Though the ICE notice doesn’t name Axon specifically, the company makes 90 percent of all U.S. tasers, and experts told CNBC that the weapons called for in the notice would only match Axon products. If ICE buys the roughly 17,800 tasers it seeks, it would quadruple its total tasers.According to a White House spokesperson, there are “no conflicts of interest.” The White House has said that Trump’s investments are managed by independent, third-party firms, and that his children control his assets—as if his children aren’t routinely profiting off of government deals.The amount which the Trump family has personally profited off of the presidency is unprecedented. Remember this?Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and his family were the victims of a false child protective services report, he wrote on his Substack Friday.“Many times over the years, I have been denounced, yelled at, protested, threatened, and heckled. I’ve been through political attacks in office, death threats in public life, and rocket attacks in war. But this is the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began,” Buttigieg wrote.Buttigieg said that earlier this week, a police officer and CPS worker showed up at his Traverse City, Michigan, home, where he lives with his husband, Chasten, and their twins, Joseph August and Penelope Rose. They told Buttigieg that a serious allegation had been made against him regarding his children, and that he couldn’t be alone with them until they received a forensic interview the next day, without him or any relatives present. Then they would discuss the allegations with the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor.The officer and social worker wished to see the two 4-year-olds, so Buttigieg told them to wait until Chasten would be returning with the children from summer camp. When they arrived, the kids were fascinated by the police officer’s car, and the adults agreed that the children would stay with their grandparents overnight before their interview the next day.“The twenty-four hours until they returned are among the darkest hours of my life. I tried to get my head around the idea that I had been accused of something so serious that I couldn’t be alone around my own children, and had consented to have them interviewed by strangers, without my knowing where the accusation had come from or even what it contained,” wrote Buttigieg.After the children were interviewed, they went to stay with their grandparents, Buttigieg wrote, and then the police officer and CPS worker met him at his home for an interview. The officer said that an anonymous woman had contacted CPS, saying that she had met Buttigieg years ago at a conference in Alabama, who allegedly told her that he had committed “unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.”The police officer asked if Buttigieg had been to a certain town in Alabama, to which he replied no, as well as “a couple of obvious questions.” After that, the officer said that he believed the accusation was politically motivated and that it would not be referred to a prosecutor. The CPS worker also said the allegation could not be substantiated, although her process would take longer to complete.But Buttigieg was allowed to be alone with his children again, and Chasten was told the same information from the officer and CPS worker, and the two were able to pick up their children.“For twenty-four deeply distressing hours, we had no idea what I was accused of or what was about to happen. We could not understand someone abusing the system like this in order to hurt me and my family with an absurd and easily refuted allegation of a horrific crime,” Buttigieg wrote.“We’re used to nasty, hateful, and sometimes violent things being said about us and even about our family. But this is the first time someone managed to invade our lives like this—and drag our children into it,” Buttigieg added.Buttigieg has been targeted by the right for his same-sex marriage and position within the Biden administration, facing false allegations of sexual assault in 2019 and, bizarrely, receiving mockery and criticism for taking paternity leave as a Cabinet secretary during the Biden administration. Making a false allegation and targeting a politician’s children is an egregious crime, and should be roundly condemned across the political spectrum. Let’s see if conservatives actually do the right thing.Editor’s Pick