President Donald Trump’s attempt to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, isn’t the sort of story that will captivate the average American.
But it should: It is the latest in a slew of incidents in which Trump is operating in legally grey area, testing the limits of what he can and can’t do as president. Or, to borrow my favorite metaphor, stretching the rubber band of democracy in ways it simply has never been stretched before.
The Federal Reserve is an independent agency of the federal government. The only way a president is allowed to remove one of the board of governors is “for cause.” Trump has cited allegations that Cook falsified information on two mortgage applications as that cause. But Cook has not been charged with any crime, and is refusing to leave office, insisting that “[Trump] has no authority” to remove her.
Which gets me to this—the single biggest revelation I have had in Trump’s second term: I assumed that there were a series of laws and regulations that would limit Trump’s ability to follow some of his worst instincts in office.
But what has become very clear to me in the last few months is that there are far fewer legal constraints on a president than I assumed. The truth is that most past presidents have operated within a relatively standard definition of the office, not because they were bound by law to do so but because they acted in accordance with accepted norms and traditions.
Over and over again during Trump’s second term, I have found myself turning to experts and asking “Can he do that???” The answer, more times than not, is a shrug of the shoulders.
Because the reality is this: No past president has even tried half of the things—in terms of asserting executive branch powers—that Trump has. And so even our top legal scholars are forced to admit that they aren’t totally sure whether he can do what he is trying to do because, well, no president has ever tried it before.
I made a list off the top of my head this morning. This is far from complete, but you get the idea:
- Attempting to end birthright citizenship.
- Overseeing mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
- Defunding various government agencies like USAID.
- Sending the National Guard into Los Angeles—and now D.C.—against the wishes of state and local politicians.
- Firing the board of the Kennedy Center and inserting himself as chairman.
- Demanding that major colleges and universities change their admissions and DEI practices, or run the risk of losing hundreds of millions in federal funding.
- Threatening major law firms, who he claimed opposed him, and demanding they offer pro bono services
- Oh, and threatening to take back the Panama Canal.
I have long maintained that Trump is effectively amoral—he sees only things that work to his advantage and those that don’t. There is nowhere that the lack of a sense of right and wrong is more apparent than in his willingness to push standards, traditions and boundaries. In Trump’s mind, what’s legal is what you can get away with. And the limit on your power as president is largely dependent on how willing you are to try to push it.
Lisa Cook isn’t a household name. But Trump’s attempt to remove her is a symbol of his broader approach to the presidency. And it’s the thing that I have learned— the hard way—in the past eight months.
