It’s not a stretch — or if it is, not an especially large one — to suggest the Trump administration would just as soon lose in the lower courts as win.

The beauty, if you can call it that, of Donald Trump’s strategy for navigating legal challenges to his second-term agenda is in the nature of his policies: Almost without exception, they either posit an emergency as a pretext or create one when implemented. Either way, there’s no time to waste in adjudicating their legality and/or constitutionality. Or no time to waste initially. Note the emphasis. I’ll come back to that.

The built-in (or engineered) urgency virtually assures that a disproportionate number of the disputes stemming from Trump’s power grabs will end up in the Supreme Court’s lap one way or another. And that’s just how Trump intends it.

Trump knew what a lot of legal scholars apparently didn’t. Namely that the Justices aren’t best described as a monastic order loyal first, foremost or even only to a document written centuries ago by men who’d think an iPhone the tool of a wizard, but rather as a panel of regular human beings, no less amenable to bias and partisan capture than any other humans.

It’s not entirely clear how Samuel Alito views Trump — whether the court’s most determined conservative ideologue sees the administration as a like-minded autocratic force demanding an obedience he’s excited to convey or more as a vessel for his own social engineering project. And we can debate John Roberts’s acquiescence along the same lines, and also in a strategic context (i.e., is Roberts retreating to avoid a standoff the Court can’t win, or retreating because the conservative majority’s fine with what Trump’s doing?), but those are somewhat esoteric discussions.

From a practical perspective, what matters is that the Court’s conservative super-majority isn’t just siding with Trump, a Republican president, they’re siding with Trump, an outwardly authoritarian president with plain-as-day designs on establishing an autocracy. Simply put: Roberts isn’t going to save the republic, very much contrary to the narrative peddled earlier this year by Democrats who by and large argued that Trump was “being stopped by the courts.” Nine months in, Trump’s still being stopped by the courts, common noun, but he’s being enabled by the Court, proper noun. Appellate jurisdiction means the former’s irrelevant in the presence of the latter.

The crux of the matter is what I feel entirely comfortable calling collusion between the Court and Trump regarding use of the shadow docket. As noted above, virtually everything Trump sets about doing is either predicated on the existence of an emergency or creates one. That, in turn, forces the judicial issue and because a lot of (most of?) Trump’s policies are facially dubious, the courts (common noun) tend to regard them with suspicion. That’s just as well with Trump, because given that almost all of these cases constitute exigent circumstances, he can claim, quite plausibly, that the Court (proper noun) is obliged to render a decision posthaste, which is to say on the shadow docket.

The great thing about the shadow docket if you’re Trump (and the conservative SCOTUS majority) is that when the Court rules outside the normal process (i.e., in emergency cases, like almost all cases involving the Trump administration), they’re not necessarily obliged to explain themselves, nor even to sign their opinions. There are no oral arguments, no exhaustive briefs and, frankly, no real attempt even to pretend as though the decisions aren’t what they are: Diktats handed down from on high by a panel of ostensibly impartial, but in this case majority-beholden, jurists with the de facto authority to set and reset the laws of the nation completely outside the legislative process and, increasingly, on an ad hoc basis as dictated by Trump.

If you want the context for the reprieve granted late Tuesday to Lisa Cook by the US District Court for the District of Columbia, that’s it. What you just read is the context. And it’s pretty terrifying.

While there’s obviously no guarantee that Trump will prevail in any one specific case which lands before his conservative SCOTUS majority, that’s about like saying there was no guarantee the Alabama Crimson Tide would end up in the national championship game when Nick Saban was still coaching. Was it “guaranteed”? No. But… well, the college football fans among you get it.

In the Cook case, Judge Jia Cobb said alleged mortgage fraud committed prior to Cook’s term as Fed governor likely didn’t constitute sufficient “cause” for Trump to remove her. Cobb also suggested Cook’s attorneys were likely correct to assert that Cook wasn’t accorded due process. Here are the key excerpts from the decision (which is embedded in full, below):

Based on the record currently before it, the Court doubts that Cook received any notice or opportunity to be heard, let alone notice and a hearing that were constitutionally “meaningful.” It is difficult to construe President Trump’s social media post on August 20, 2025, which itself linked to a third-party news article regarding Director Pulte’s allegations, as “written notice of the charges against [her].”

The Court is highly doubtful that Cook should have been required to piece together the evidentiary basis for a “for cause” removal from a scattered assortment of social media posts and news articles. Even if the notice provided had been sufficient, Cook’s due process rights were nevertheless likely violated because she was not given a “meaningful opportunity” to be heard.

[A]t this preliminary stage, the Court finds that Cook has made a strong showing that her purported removal was done in violation of the Federal Reserve Act’s “for cause” provision. The best reading of the “for cause” provision is that the bases for removal of a member of the Board of Governors are limited to grounds concerning a Governor’s behavior in office and whether they have been faithfully and effectively executing their statutory duties. “For cause” thus does not contemplate removing an individual purely for conduct that occurred before they began in office.

And, so, Cook will vote next week at the Fed’s September policy meeting. Thank you Judge Cobb.

But it doesn’t really matter. Because the Fed was going to cut rates next week anyway. Indeed, Cook will probably (surely, even) vote for a rate cut next Wednesday. So, this ruling isn’t a “blow” to Trump. Far from it.

The administration immediately indicated its intent to pursue the case. “This ruling will not be the last say on the matter,” Kush Desai promised, adding that Trump “will continue to work to restore accountability and confidence in the Fed.”

Remember: The goal here isn’t just to get “one more vote,” so to speak. Rather, Trump’s goal is to get one more Board vote. He assumes — maybe correctly, maybe not — that Chris Waller and Miki Bowman are in his pocket. He knows Stephen Miran is. So, if he can oust Cook and replace her with another Miran, he’ll have a 4-3 Fed Board majority which would, in theory anyway, allow Trump to influence the composition of the FOMC by affording The White House indirect veto power over regional Fed president appointments.

In other words: The Cook case is important. It’s a key pillar of Trump’s Fed agenda. He’s not just going to drop it. He needs another Board seat. And it’s difficult for me to imagine he won’t try to get it from the Supreme Court given the apparently high odds of in-effect success on the shadow docket.

In her ruling, Judge Cobb said, “President Trump’s actions and Cook’s resulting legal challenge raise many serious questions of first impression that the Court believes will benefit from further briefing on a non-emergency timeline.” But that isn’t likely to be the trajectory. Rather, my guess is that Trump will force an expedited ruling which, if recent past is precedent, could simply see the conservative majority dodge by staying the lower court’s relief for Cook until the matter works its way all the way back to the Court for longer argument.

Doing that would give Trump what he wants and also allow the conservative majority to temporarily avoid formally invalidating their own carveout for the Fed as delineated torturously in May. Remember: The Justices tried to skirt this issue by claiming the Fed’s a different animal from the other independent agencies Trump’s attempting to reshape through dismissals. As discussed at some length in “Trump, Cook, SCOTUS And The Appeasement Paradox,” the Court’s logic was belabored and in my judgment, deliberately so. I think the Justices were setting the Fed up to be captured by way of a disingenuous, ad hoc “exception” which they knew wouldn’t stand up to a serious challenge. Now (already) that challenge is upon them. But, as noted, they can kick the can while still appeasing Trump.

So, what’s next? Well, Cook will carry on as a Fed governor unless and until someone — namely SCOTUS — decides Trump’s likely to prevail on the merits and de facto re-fires her pending a process which could drag on for months. Remember when I said, 1,400 words ago, that Trump’s strategy often involves creating urgent scenarios such that there’s no time to waste initially, with emphasis on “initially”? Now you see what I meant.

This has played out over and over again since January. Trump does something outlandish, it quickly finds its way onto the Court’s shadow docket and the result is an equivocation which effectively lets Trump’s actions stand indefinitely, until further notice, with all the interim harm that may entail.

If Cobb’s decision ends up blocked, Cook wouldn’t be able to participate in subsequent policy meetings until the Supreme Court delivers a final say on the matter. In the event Trump can secure that outcome — i.e., a situation where Cook’s blocked from participating in rate-setting for the duration of lengthy court/Court proceedings — there’s no obvious reason why he couldn’t employ the same strategy on Jerome Powell. Because Powell only has nine months left on his term as Chair, such a maneuver would amount to removing him.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported this week that among the estimated 22,000 Americans suspected of committing the same type of owner-occupancy fraud as Cook stands (informally) accused of, are two of Bill Pulte’s relatives.

Cook v. Trump memorandum opinion