2026-06-29T19:09:01.651Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/29/politics/takeaways-supreme-court-cook-slaughter-carroll-ballots
美国最高法院周一为总统唐纳德·特朗普带来重大胜利，允许他随意罢免曾具有独立性的联邦机构负责人，同时推翻了1935年的一项先例，此举可能重塑政府运作方式。
与此同时，最高法院大幅提高了本届或未来总统解雇美联储成员的难度——暂时阻止了特朗普政府基于备受争议的抵押贷款欺诈指控解除美联储理事丽莎·库克职务的企图。
这些裁决是特朗普第二任期最初几个月爆发的一系列争议的最新进展。尽管联邦法律要求总统在解雇官员前必须说明理由——比如渎职行为——特朗普仍试图解雇政府内部的批评者。
与此同时，最高法院给特朗普带来了个人层面的失利，维持了对他性侵并诽谤前杂志专栏作家E·让·卡罗尔的判决。最高法院拒绝受理特朗普的上诉，为卡罗尔获得500万美元赔偿金扫清了道路。
在另一项裁决中，大法官们允许各州收集并清点选举日之后送达的邮寄选票，这一决定正值特朗普游说国会限制邮寄投票并通过选民身份证法案之际。
以下是最高法院周一多项重大裁决的核心要点：
最高法院周一同时公布了两项关于政府官员解雇的裁决——一项对特朗普不利，另一项对他有利。
更具影响力的裁决以6票赞成、3票反对的保守派与自由派分歧结果作出，核心涉及丽贝卡·凯利·斯劳特案。特朗普去年不顾联邦法律要求，将斯劳特从联邦贸易委员会解雇，该法律规定总统在解雇委员前必须说明理由，比如渎职行为。
特朗普辩称，作为行政部门首脑，他有权管控联邦政府内独立机构的负责人，而保护这些官员免受解雇的法律违反了三权分立原则。
首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨为多数方撰写意见，基本同意了这一主张。
“行使总统权力的下属应接受总统的罢免，”罗伯茨写道。“唯有如此，他们才能对总统负责，总统才能对人民负责。”
第二起涉及库克的案件同样涉及总统罢免官员的权力，但情形不同。在此案中，特朗普试图基于库克涉嫌抵押贷款欺诈的指控将其解雇。
总统去年在社交媒体上宣布了解雇决定，并发布了一封信，指控库克“存在欺骗且可能构成犯罪的行为”，理由是她据称在2021年将两处不同房产申报为主要居所。
库克否认有任何不当行为，并称这些指控是“捏造的”。
与此同时，斯劳特对裁决结果表示谴责，并称两起案件的核心差异显著。
“不知为何华尔街享有特殊待遇，但除此之外，那些为普通美国人保驾护航的机构却没有，”斯劳特在周一的新闻发布会上说道。
最高法院的保守派多数本可以对斯劳特案采取更有限的处理方式。例如，他们可以裁定，联邦贸易委员会自1914年成立以来权力扩张过大，不再属于应独立于行政部门首脑的机构。
尽管最高法院确实表达了此类观点，但它同时通过推翻1935年最高法院“汉弗莱遗嘱执行人诉美国案”的先例，得出了影响广泛的结论。该先例允许国会对总统解雇某些独立机构负责人的时机设置限制。
罗伯茨对“汉弗莱案”的鄙夷几乎跃然纸上。
“如果‘汉弗莱案’还剩下什么余绪，我们现在就推翻它，”罗伯茨写道。“几十年来，‘汉弗莱案’一直是一个先有结论、后找理由的裁决。”
最高法院资深自由派大法官索尼娅·索托马约尔宣读了情绪激昂的异议意见，警告该裁决可能导致“唯有混乱”。
索托马约尔罕见地当庭宣读异议——这是她强烈反对的标志——她警告该裁决将“从根本上重塑国家的权力平衡”。
索托马约尔写道，该裁决“颠覆了数个世纪的政治惯例”，最终将使联邦政府状况更糟。
“汉弗莱遗嘱执行人案”的渊源可追溯至富兰克林·罗斯福总统任期内。1933年，罗斯福解雇了由赫伯特·胡佛总统任命的联邦贸易委员会委员威廉·汉弗莱。汉弗莱辩称自己的解雇行为违反法律，其遗产试图追讨薪水。
当时最高法院一致认为，解雇汉弗莱的行为不当。
此后数十年间，该先例保护了约24个独立机构免受总统干预，其中包括核管理委员会、联邦通信委员会和国家运输安全委员会等。在此之前，总统若要解雇这些机构的负责人，必须说明理由。
如今，这一情况可能不复存在。
“尽管参议院有权决定是否确认总统心仪的人选，但国会和法院都不能强迫总统接受他无法共事的人，”罗伯茨写道。“行使总统权力的下属应接受总统的罢免。”
尽管库克在特朗普试图解雇她的斗争中暂时获胜，但她能否保住工作仍是未知数——这一问题未来很可能再次提交最高法院审理。
最高法院周一的裁决部分涉及一个技术性但影响重大的问题：在特朗普挑战罢免决定期间，库克是否应被允许继续留在美联储理事会。但罗伯茨撰写的裁决意见明确表示，未来特朗普可能合法解雇她。
罗伯茨与四位支持其意见的大法官——保守派大法官布雷特·卡瓦诺以及自由派大法官索尼娅·索托马约尔、埃琳娜·卡根和凯坦吉·布朗·杰克逊——表示，联邦法律要求特朗普在解雇库克前为其提供充分的正当程序。罗伯茨写道，总统仅通过简短的社交媒体帖子宣布解雇决定，这并不符合要求。
https://www.cnn.com/
最高法院允许丽莎·库克留任美联储
1:21
相反，首席大法官表示，她“有权了解涉案证据的相关解释、获得回应的途径，以及回应的截止期限”。
特朗普现在必须为库克提供机会，让她就对自己的指控提出抗辩。罗伯茨写道，此事发生后，下级法院将能够“在掌握更充分事实记录的情况下，审查此类指控的有效性和充分性”。
最高法院表示，如果不进行某种形式的审查，总统将拥有“随时、以任何理由解雇美联储负责人的权力，无需事前通知，事后也不受司法监督。这将使因由解雇保护沦为形同虚设的随意雇佣”。
这意味着该案几乎肯定会再次提交最高法院审理。“总统能否因正当理由解雇库克的最终问题，将部分取决于背后的事实，”罗伯茨写道。
目前，在审查程序完成前，库克将继续留任。
特朗普迅速抓住了法院周一裁决所依据的“严格程序理由”，在Truth社交平台上发帖称，他的政府“将立即采取适当行动”，试图将库克赶下理事会。
笼罩在库克案上方的一大担忧是，经济学家、政客和其他人士担心，如果特朗普被允许几乎不受监督地解雇美联储成员，可能会引发经济灾难。
由特朗普任命的卡瓦诺大法官明确表达了这种焦虑。
他在协同意见中写道，如果法院允许特朗普暂时解雇库克，将无法回答美国中央银行是否真正独立的问题。
“悬而未决的这一问题将引发严重不确定性，即最高法院是否很快会取消美联储的独立性，从而使美联储受到政治影响，危及美国货币政策的有效性，”卡瓦诺写道。“即便只是暂时不确定美联储的地位，也可能引发……美国和世界经济的动荡。”
“我不会走上这条路。我不会冒险破坏美国经济的稳定，”他部分写道。
库克的律师团队极力强调特朗普胜诉可能带来的经济后果。至少在本案中，大法官们显然听取了这一观点。
经济学家普遍认为，独立的美联储对美国经济稳定至关重要。美联储根据经济数据调整利率，以应对高通胀和高失业时期。政治化的美联储将意味着美国央行不再以美国经济的最佳利益为行事准则。
然而，同为保守派的克拉伦斯·托马斯大法官不同意卡瓦诺关于美联储一直妥善管理美国经济的前提。他在异议意见中写道，“许多人并不认同最高法院对过去一个世纪的乐观看法”。
“但如果最高法院更倾向于独立的联邦储备委员会，那么问题不在于总统，而在于宪法，”托马斯写道。
在另一项备受关注的裁决中，大法官们维持了各州清点选举日之后送达的邮寄选票的法律——这等于驳斥了特朗普关于邮寄投票存在广泛欺诈的无根据主张。
最高法院驳回了共和党人的论点，即十余州采用的这种做法违反了联邦法律规定的11月选举日规则。特朗普多次 falsely 将邮寄投票和漫长的计票过程等同于“作弊”，尽管他本人曾多次通过邮寄投票。
保守派大法官艾米·科尼·巴雷特为5票赞成、4票反对的多数方撰写意见，将这场争议描述为“狭义”问题，聚焦于密西西比州的法律：该法律允许“选举日盖戳，但最多可在五天后收到的选票”被计入。
“选举日相关法规并未提及选票接收问题，我们不能在国会选定的措辞之外自行添加内容，”巴雷特写道，罗伯茨和最高法院三位自由派大法官加入了这一意见。
“选举欺诈及其表象是严重问题，”巴雷特补充道。“不过，与其他此类问题一样，必须通过民主程序加以解决。”
特朗普在社交媒体帖子中抨击了这项裁决，称这是“巨大损失”。
“禁止邮寄选票（除非因疾病、残疾、军事部署或旅行原因！），”特朗普写道。
就在最高法院开始公布裁决前不久，法院拒绝受理特朗普对卡罗尔案的上诉。按照常规惯例，最高法院未解释理由，也没有大法官公开表示异议。
最高法院的决定意味着总统现在必须向卡罗尔支付500万美元赔偿金。该赔偿金是数年前纽约陪审团裁定的，陪审团认定特朗普在声称卡罗尔编造了他在20世纪90年代中期性侵她的说法时，对其进行了诽谤。
2023年陪审团作出裁决后，特朗普已向法院控制的账户转账550万美元，因此卡罗尔可能很快就能收到这笔款项。
特朗普多次否认有不当行为，他辩称负责民事审判的美国地区法官刘易斯·卡普兰存在多处错误，比如允许陪审团听取两名指称特朗普多年前性侵她们的女性的证词。
特朗普还辩称，法官不应让陪审团观看“走进好莱坞”录音带，这段录音捕捉到2005年特朗普在公开麦克风前称自己会抚摸和亲吻女性。
原定于最高法院审理的上诉被多次推迟，法院多次将其列入讨论议程，随后又从日程中移除。
CNN的蒂尔尼·斯尼德、布莱恩·梅纳和阿比盖尔·罗德塞海默对本文亦有贡献。
Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s decisions expanding Trump’s firing power but preserving Fed for now
2026-06-29T19:09:01.651Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/29/politics/takeaways-supreme-court-cook-slaughter-carroll-ballots
The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a significant win Monday by allowing him to remove the leaders of once-independent federal agencies at will, toppling a 1935 precedent in the process that could reorder the way the government functions.
At the same time, the court made it far harder for this or future presidents to remove members of the Federal Reserve — blocking the Trump administration, for now, from ending the tenure of Fed Governor Lisa Cook over contested allegations of mortgage fraud.
The decisions were the latest development in a series of controversies that erupted during the first months of Trump’s second term. He sought to fire critics within the government despite federal laws that protected them by requiring a president to show cause — such as malfeasance — before booting them from office.
Meanwhile, the court dealt Trump a personal defeat, letting stand the verdict against him for sexually abusing and defaming former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. By declining to hear Trump’s appeal, the court paved the way for Carroll to collect $5 million in damages.
In a separate ruling, the justices also allowed states to collect and count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, a decision that comes as Trump lobbies Congress to limit mail voting and pass a voter ID law.
Here are the key takeaways from the court’s major decisions Monday:
The Supreme Court handed down two opinions at the same time on Monday on the firing of government officials – one that was a loss for Trump and the other that was a win.
The more significant decision, decided 6-3 along conservative-liberal lines, centered on Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, whom Trump fired from the Federal Trade Commission last year despite a federal law that requires presidents to show cause — such as malfeasance — before booting commissioners.
Trump had argued that, as the head of the executive branch, he should have the power to control the leaders of independent agencies within the federal government and that the law intended to shield those officials from removal violated separation of powers principles.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts largely agreed.
“Subordinates who exercise the president’s power are subject to removal by him,” Roberts wrote. “Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the president, and the president to the people.”
The second case, dealing with Cook, also touched on the president’s ability to remove an official — but under different circumstances. In that case, Trump attempted to dump Cook based on allegations that she had committed mortgage fraud.
The president announced the firing on social media last year, posting a letter that accused Cook of “deceitful and potentially criminal conduct” because she allegedly claimed two different homes as her primary residence in 2021.
Cook has denied any wrongdoing and has called the charges “manufactured.”
Slaughter, meanwhile, decried the ruling against her and called the major difference between the two issues.
“Somehow Wall Street is special and gets special treatment, but other than that, the agencies that look out for everyday Americans do not,” Slaughter said at a news conference Monday.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority could have taken a more limited way out of the Slaughter case. It could have ruled, for instance, that the power of the FTC has grown so vast since it was created in 1914 that it no longer qualified as agency that should be independent from the leader of the executive branch.
While the court did say those things, it also steered to a broad outcome by overruling a 1935 Supreme Court precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor v. US that allowed Congress to include restrictions on when a president may fire the leaders of certain independent agencies.
Roberts’ disdain for Humphrey’s virtually dripped off the page of his opinion.
“If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it,” Roberts wrote. “Humphrey’s has for decades been a result in search of a rationale.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s senior liberal, read an impassioned dissent warning that the decision could lead to “only chaos.”
Taking the rare step of reading from the bench — a sign of her strong disagreement – Sotomayor warned the decision would “fundamentally recalibrate the balance of power in the nation.”
Sotomayor wrote that the decision “undoes centuries of political practice” and would ultimately make the federal government worse.
Humphrey’s Executor dates back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tenure. Roosevelt fired an FTC commissioner, William Humphrey, in 1933 who had been appointed by President Herbert Hoover. Humphrey argued that his firing violated the law and his estate sought to recover his salary.
The Supreme Court unanimously agreed at the time that his dismissal was improper.
In the decades since, the precedent has shielded some two dozen independent agencies from presidential interference, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Transportation Safety Board, among others. To fire the leaders of those agencies, presidents needed to show cause.
Now, they likely will not.
“Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the president would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work,” Roberts wrote. “Subordinates who exercise the president’s power are subject to removal by him.”
Though Cook won her battle in the fight over Trump’s ability to fire her, whether she wins the ultimate war over her job remains an open question – and one that is likely to return to the Supreme Court in the future.
The high court’s decision Monday dealt partly with the technical – yet hugely consequential – question of whether Cook should be allowed to remain on the Federal Reserve Board while she challenges the president’s bid to remove her. But the ruling, delivered in an opinion also penned by Roberts, made clear that there may be a world in which Trump can lawfully fire her.
Roberts and the four justices who signed on to his opinion (conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh and liberal Justices Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson) said federal law required Trump to give Cook adequate due process before firing her. The president’s decision to announce her ousting via a curt social media post, Roberts wrote, was insufficient.
https://www.cnn.com/
Supreme Court allows Lisa Cook to remain at Fed
1:21
Instead, the chief said, she “was entitled to some explanation of the evidence at issue, some avenue for a response, and a deadline by which a response would be due.”
Trump will now have to provide her with a chance to contest the allegations lodged against her. After that happens, lower courts will be able to scrutinize “the validity and sufficiency of such charges” with the benefit of having a more developed factual record in hand, Roberts wrote.
Without some form of review, the court said, the president would have power to remove Fed leaders “at any time, for any reason, without any notice before, and without any judicial check after. That would turn for-cause protection into little more than at-will employment.”
That means that the case is all but certain to land back at the high court at some point. “The ultimate question of whether the President can remove Cook for cause will depend in part on the underlying facts,” Roberts wrote.
For now, while that review happens, Cook will remain in her job.
Trump quickly seized on the “strictly procedural basis” on which the court resolved the case on Monday, writing in a post on Truth Social that his administration “will take appropriate action immediately” to try to keep Cook off the board.
Looming large over Cook’s case were concerns from economists, politicians and others about the possibility of Trump triggering economic ruin if he was allowed to fire members of the Federal Reserve with little to no oversight.
Kavanaugh, who was put on the bench by Trump, made clear that he shares that anxiety.
He wrote in a concurring opinion that if the court permitted Trump to fire Cook for now, it would leave unanswered the question of whether the nation’s central bank is a truly independent body.
“Leaving that question open would create significant uncertainty about whether the Court might soon eliminate the Federal Reserve’s independence, and thereby expose the Federal Reserve to political influences and jeopardize the efficacy of U. S. monetary policy,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Even temporary uncertainty about the status of the Federal Reserve could spark … turmoil in the US and world economies.”
“I would not go down that road. I would not risk destabilizing the US economy,” he wrote in part.
Cook’s attorneys had leaned hard into the potential economic consequences of a win for Trump. It was clear that, in this case at least, the justices were listening.
Economists broadly agree that an independent Fed is essential for a stable US economy. The Federal Reserve addresses times of high inflation and high unemployment by swaying interest rates in either direction based on what economic figures show. A politicized Fed would mean the US central bank isn’t doing what’s in the best interest of the US economy.
Fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, however, disagreed with Kavanaugh’s premise that the Fed has been a good steward of the US economy. He wrote in a dissenting opinion that “many do not share the court’s rosy appraisal of the past century.”
“But if the court prefers an independent Federal Reserve Board, then its issue is not with the President but with the Constitution,” Thomas wrote.
In another high-profile move, the justices upheld state laws that count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day – which amounted to a repudiations of Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread fraud in mail voting.
The high court rejected Republican arguments that the practice, embraced by more than a dozen states, runs afoul of federal laws setting the November Election Day. Trump has repeatedly and falsely equated mail-in balloting and lengthy vote counts with “cheating,” even though he has voted by mail several times.
Writing for a 5-4 court, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett described the dispute as a “narrow” one, focused on the Mississippi law that counts “ballots postmarked by election day, but received up to five days later.”
“The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt and we cannot add to the words Congress chose,” Barrett wrote, joined by Roberts and the court’s three liberals.
“Election fraud and its appearance are serious issues,” Barrett added. “Like other such issues, however, they must be addressed through the democratic process.”
Trump blasted the decision in a social media post, calling it a “tremendous loss.”
“NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPT FOR ILLNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY DEPLOYMENT, OR TRAVEL!),” Trump wrote.
Just before the Supreme Court began handing down its opinion, it declined to take up Trump’s appeal in the Carroll case. Per its normal practice, the court did not explain its reasoning and no justice publicly dissented.
The court’s decision means the president will now have to pay Carroll the $5 million, which was awarded to her several years ago by a jury in New York after it found that Trump defamed her when he claimed she made up her story that he sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s.
Trump transferred $5.5 million to a court-controlled account in 2023 following the jury verdict so Carroll is likely to receive the cash relatively quickly.
Trump, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, has claimed US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the civil trial, made numerous errors by allowing the jury to hear testimony from two women who alleged Trump sexually assaulted them years ago.
Trump also argued that the judge should not have let the jurors see the “Access Hollywood” tape, which captured Trump in 2005 on a hot mic saying he gropes and kisses women.
The appeal was rescheduled for months at the Supreme Court, which repeatedly set it for discussion and then yanked it from the agenda.
CNN’s Tierney Sneed, Bryan Mena and Abigail Roedersheimer contributed to this report.
