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    Why Is This Supreme Court Handing Trump More and More Power?

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    Since taking his second oath of office, President Trump has been on a firing spree. In violation of numerous laws or longstanding presidential practice (or both), he has ordered the removal of many high-level officials who normally retain their positions regardless of who is in the Oval Office.Some of these high-level officials have successfully challenged their removal in the lower courts. But on Thursday, in a case involving members of the National Labor Relations and Merit Systems Protection Boards, the Supreme Court quietly blessed some or all of these firings. In doing so, the court effectively allowed the president to neutralize some of the last remaining sites of independent expertise and authority inside the executive branch.The court sought to cast its intervention as temporary, procedural and grounded in considerations of stability, with the unsigned order noting concerns about the “disruptive effect of the repeated removal and reinstatement of officers during the pendency of this litigation.”In truth, the decision was radical. Whatever one thinks about the underlying question of presidential authority, the court should not have disposed of the case this way. It effectively overruled an important and nearly century-old precedent central to the structure of the federal government without full briefing or argument. And it did so in a thinly reasoned, unsigned, two-page order handing the president underspecified but considerable new authority.Over the last four months, the legal world — and the country — has been plunged into chaos, and the Supreme Court bears a heavy dose of responsibility. Many of it decisions involving the presidency — including last year’s on presidential immunity — have enabled the president to declare himself above the law. The court’s latest order both enables the consolidation of additional power in the presidency and risks assimilating a “move fast and break things” ethos into constitutional law.No modern president has ever come close to the large-scale personnel purges that we have seen under Mr. Trump, and for good reason: Many of the officials in question are protected by law from being fired at will by the president. Mr. Trump maintains that laws limiting the president’s ability to fire high-level officials are unconstitutional. In making that argument, he is drawing on a series of recent Supreme Court opinions emphasizing the importance of presidential control over subordinate officials and invalidating removal limitations at agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Is Being Evaluated for a ‘Small Nodule’ in His Prostate

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      It is common for a man of Mr. Biden’s age to experience prostate issues. His spokesman declined to elaborate on any details about his care.Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. spent last Friday at a hospital in Philadelphia after a “small nodule” was discovered on his prostate that required “further evaluation,” according to a spokesman.It is common for a man of Mr. Biden’s age — he is 82 — to experience prostate issues, and his spokesman declined to elaborate on any additional details about his care.Mr. Biden left office as the oldest serving president in American history. He was dogged throughout his presidency by concerns about his age and his health, which ultimately led him to abandon his re-election campaign.In February 2024, when Mr. Biden was still president, his longtime doctor declared him “fit to serve” after he underwent a routine physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.Mr. Biden has kept a relatively low profile since leaving office in January, but he sat for two interviews last week after Mr. Trump’s first 100 days in office. The day before Mr. Biden was at the hospital in Philadelphia, he and the former first lady, Jill Biden, were in Manhattan for a joint interview on “The View.” Mr. Biden defended his record as president and his mental acuity.“They are wrong,” Mr. Biden said of reports that he had declined in his final year in office. “There’s nothing to sustain that.” More

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      Trump’s Tariff Pause Is Less Than Meets the Eye

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      Presidents who make big changes in government policy usually lay their plans with care. They game out what might happen next. They sweat the little things. Richard Nixon did not just decide one morning to fly to China. Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts were the better part of a decade in the making. The details of Barack Obama’s expansion of health insurance emerged from countless public debates.President Trump prefers to shoot before aiming. Declaring that he intends to reboot America’s relations with the rest of the world, he has imposed tariffs on imports with abandon, demonstrating a disregard for the details or the collateral damage. His careless conduct of the public’s business has roiled stock and bond markets, threatened to cause a recession and damaged America’s global standing. The president’s decision-making has been so erratic that at one point this week, the administration’s top trade official was interrupted in the middle of testimony before Congress because the president had just changed the policy the official was defending.The original version of Mr. Trump’s plan, which he paused on Wednesday, imposed tariffs on foreign nations at rates that bore no apparent connection to America’s national interests. The highest tariff rate, 50 percent, applied to Lesotho, a tiny and impoverished nation in southern Africa.The latest version isn’t much better. Mr. Trump is imposing a 10 percent tariff on imports from most nations, along with higher rates on imports from America’s three largest trading partners: Canada, Mexico and China. The average tax on imports will rise to the highest level in more than a century, raising the prices on many consumer goods. The 145 percent maximum rate on Chinese imports is intended to isolate that nation economically, but the simultaneous tariffs on everyone else will undermine that goal. And while the stated purpose of all the tariffs is to expand American manufacturing, putting them in place immediately doesn’t give companies time to build factories. It will cause pain without any benefit.We want to emphasize that Mr. Trump has a point about the pain caused by free trade. The decades in which the United States threw open its doors to imports from other countries left many Americans without jobs and decimated the nation’s industrial heartland. Washington’s naïveté about China’s rise, accomplished partly through its own trade barriers and theft of intellectual property, is particularly regrettable.A revival of American manufacturing is a worthy goal. It would not heal past wounds, but it could provide a basis for future generations of Americans to build lives and to rebuild communities that are more prosperous and more secure.The price of cheap goods from ChinaDecrease in manufacturing employment caused by increased trade with China, 2000-19. More

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      Justice Dept. Takes Broad View of Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons

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      The department has increasingly taken the position that criminal behavior discovered during an investigation stemming from a suspect’s role in the Capitol attack is in fact related to Jan. 6.Four years ago, when F.B.I. agents searched the Florida home of Jeremy Brown, a former Special Forces soldier, in connection with his role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they found several illegal items: an unregistered assault rifle, two live fragmentation grenades and a classified “trip report” that Mr. Brown wrote while he was in the Army.Mr. Brown was ultimately tried in Tampa on charges of illegally possessing the weapons and the classified material. And after he was convicted, he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison — even before his Jan. 6 indictment had a chance to go in front of a jury.On Tuesday, however, federal prosecutors abruptly declared that because the second case was related to Jan. 6, it was covered by the sprawling clemency proclamation that President Trump issued on his first day in office to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack.And if a judge eventually agrees with that assessment, it could mean that Mr. Brown — whose Jan. 6 charges were already wiped out by the presidential pardon — will get to go free on his other case as well.The Justice Department’s position with regard to Mr. Brown is not the first time it has said in recent days that separate criminal cases emerging from the investigation of Jan. 6 — especially those involving weapons discovered during searches — should be covered by Mr. Trump’s sweeping reprieves.Ed Martin, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, advanced that view on Tuesday in the case of another pardoned Jan. 6 defendant, Daniel Edwin Wilson.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Ban on The A.P. Echoes Orwell’s ‘1984’

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      President Trump has been battling with The Associated Press over his decree that the body of water between Florida and Mexico be identified as the Gulf of America. This may look like no more than a classic Washington quarrel, long a characteristic of the press and the presidency, that has reached an extreme level over semantics. It’s much bigger than that, and the implications are far-reachingI say that as a former longtime White House reporter. I began my stint there covering Jimmy Carter for The A.P. As its senior White House correspondent during most of Ronald Reagan’s first term, I was in and out of the Oval Office almost daily and regularly traveled aboard Air Force One. Later, as a Los Angeles Times correspondent, I covered the White House during Mr. Reagan’s second term and the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.This far from conventional dispute erupted nearly two weeks ago when an A.P. reporter was barred from an Oval Office event because his news organization had continued to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its longstanding name. Three days later, a White House official said the administration would bar A.P. reporters from the Oval Office and from Air Force One, though they would retain credentials to the White House complex. Mr. Trump weighed in on Tuesday, saying, “We’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America.”Dozens of major news organizations, including The New York Times and the conservative outlets Fox News and Newsmax, called on the White House on Monday to lift its ban on The A.P., to no avail. On Friday, The A.P. sued top White House officials, accusing them of violating the First and Fifth Amendments by denying its reporters access.The attack on the news agency brings into focus the administration’s refusal to respect the First Amendment, with presidential aides and the president himself trying to dictate the very language news reporters may use — just as George Orwell’s fictional dictators did. It is emblematic of the broader assault by the White House on the public’s right to know. In the administration’s opening weeks, Brendan Carr, Mr. Trump’s new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has ordered his agency to investigate ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and NPR. The Defense Department has thrown such mainstream media outlets as The New York Times, NBC News and NPR out of their work spaces in the Pentagon and moved in some conservative outlets.The pressure has begun to take on the outlines of chilling history. Dictators and other authoritarian leaders have long sought to control the critical role the mass media plays in shaping public discourse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      This Is What the Courts Can Do if Trump Defies Them

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      Are we heading toward a full-blown constitutional crisis? For the first time in decades, the country is wrestling with this question. It was provoked by members of the Trump administration, including Russell Vought, the influential director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, who have hinted or walked right up to the edge of saying outright that officials should refuse to obey a court order against certain actions of the administration. President Trump has said he would obey court orders — though on Saturday he posted on social media, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”Some have argued that if the administration is defiant there is little the courts can do. But while the courts do not have a standing army, there are actually several escalating measures they can take to counter a defiant executive branch.The fundamental principle of the rule of law is that once the legal process, including appeals and stay applications, has reached completion, public officials must obey an order of the courts. This country’s constitutional traditions are built on, and depend upon, that understanding.A profound illustration is President Richard Nixon’s compliance with the Supreme Court decision requiring him to turn over the secret White House tape recordings he had made, even though Nixon knew that doing so would surely end his presidency.If the Trump administration ignores a court order, it would represent the start of a full-blown constitutional crisis.The courts rarely issue binding orders to the president, so these orders are not likely to be directed at President Trump personally. His executive orders and other commands are typically enforced by subordinate officials in the executive branch, and any court order — initially, it would come from the Federal District Court — would be directed at them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?

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      When I was a teenager, my older brother took me to see “Shane.”I wasn’t that into westerns, and the movie just seemed to be about a little boy running after Alan Ladd in the wilderness of the Tetons, screaming “Sha-a-a-a-ne, come back!”I came across the movie on Turner Classic Movies the other night, and this time I understood why the George Stevens film is considered one of best of all time. (The A.F.I. ranks “Shane, come back!” as one of the 50 top movie lines of all time.)The parable on good and bad involves a fight between cattle ranchers and homesteaders. Ladd’s Shane is on the side of the honest homesteaders — including an alluring married woman, played by Jean Arthur. Arriving in creamy fringed buckskin, he is an enigmatic golden gunslinger who goes to work as a farmhand. Jack Palance plays the malevolent hired gun imported by the brutal cattle ranchers to drive out the homesteaders. Palance is dressed in a black hat and black vest. In case you don’t get the idea, a dog skulks away as Palance enters a saloon.It’s so easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, the right thing to do versus the wrong. Law and order wasn’t a cliché or a passé principle that could be kicked aside if it interfered with baser ambitions.The 1953 film is also a meditation on American masculinity in the wake of World War II. A real man doesn’t babble or whine or brag or take advantage. He stands up for the right thing and protects those who can’t protect themselves from bullies.I loved seeing all those sentimental, corny ideals that America was built on, even if those ideals have often been betrayed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Opinion Today: Decoding the Chaos of Trump’s America

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      Where America Stands: Donald Trump’s reckless and illegal campaign to remake the government crossed more lines in Week 4, but we’re seeing the emergence of heroes and fresh demonstrations of courage.What Times Opinion Is Doing: “The actions of this presidency need to be tracked,” our editorial board wrote last weekend, as Trump tries to overwhelm people so he can blaze ahead unchecked. We are sorting through the chaos by identifying what matters most in columns, guest essays and podcasts, and we are rolling out ways to track Trump’s moves and the good work of others. Today’s newsletter is one way — looking at where Americans can’t afford to turn away from.Trump Abhors Independent Voices, Part I: Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten are new names to many of us, and they are among the heroes of the Southern District of New York for standing up to Trump’s Department of Justice and its farcical orders to dismiss the Eric Adams case. Read The Times’s annotations of Sassoon’s letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi for insight into what courage and duty look like, and Justice’s Emil Bove’s letter of reply for the plain purpose of this administration: Crush anyone, even appointees and friends, who stakes out independence from Trump.Worth reading: Two deeper articles about Bove in The Times and The Wall Street Journal.Trump Abhors Independent Voices, Part II: The administration is trying to redefine free speech into state-permitted speech, with the Federal Communications Commission going after NPR, CBS and now NBC-owned Comcast, and the Trump White House penalizing The Associated Press for not using the president’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico. Keep an eye on this: Trump has long labeled facts as “misinformation,” but now he’s escalating a crackdown on disfavored speech. What happens when he renames the Panama Canal “the American Canal”?A Notorious Science Denialist Takes Power: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed Thursday as health and human services secretary — a dark day for the Senate, where many Republican members would have voted against Kennedy on a secret ballot. America will need watchdogs and whistle-blowers to protect public health from Kennedy.Worth reading: A Post examination of Kennedy’s public statements.A Terrible Message for Europe and Ukraine: Trump started negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine — with Vladimir Putin, and initially without Ukraine — at the same time Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Europe that the United States is no longer the guarantor of European security. So Putin can take any part of Europe he wants (except maybe Greenland)?Musk in the Oval: While he wasn’t quite behind the Resolute Desk, Elon Musk held forth in the Oval next to Trump, whose moments of assent made clear for anyone who wondered if Musk was at the wheel. “The fraudsters complain the loudest,” Musk said of the brave people standing up to illegal efforts to disband agencies and cut off grants and funds authorized by Congress.Worth reading: Three closer looks at Musk from my colleagues David Brooks and Tressie McMillan Cottom (or watch her TikTok) and from The Post.Heroes in the Land: And I’d like to end with a few more heroes to read about: Brian Driscoll at the F.B.I.; Chrystia Freeland, former deputy prime minister of Canada; and the federal judge John McConnell and other judges who have issued temporary restraining orders against Trump actions. Some of these folks are heroes simply for doing their duty — a great American value that is no small thing in Trump’s America.With contributions from M. Gessen, Binyamin Appelbaum, Mara Gay, Michelle Cottle and Serge Schmemann of Times Opinion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Muses About a Third Term, Over and Over Again

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      The president’s suggestion that he would seek to stay in office beyond the constitutional limit comes as he has pushed to expand executive authority.Standing inside the Capitol for the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Trump declared his plans to resurrect an idea he had in his first term: to create a national garden filled with statues of notable Americans.The choice of who would be included would be “the president’s sole opinion,” Mr. Trump said, chuckling. And he was giving himself “a 25-year period” to make the selections.A short time later, at a breakfast at a Washington hotel, Mr. Trump flicked again at the prospect that his time in office could extend beyond two four-year terms.“They say I can’t run again; that’s the expression,” he said. “Then somebody said, I don’t think you can. Oh.”At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Mr. Trump spoke of giving himself a “25-year period” to choose statues for a national garden.Eric Lee/The New York TimesJust eight days after he won a second term, Mr. Trump — whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory from being certified — mused about whether he could have a third presidential term, which is barred by the Constitution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More