Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Claire B. Wofford, Associate Professor of Political Science, College of Charleston

President Donald Trump’s penchant to act first, ask later was on full display recently when he became the first president in American history to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board.

Trump’s axing of federal employees is nothing new – thousands have been terminated, including the heads of agencies that, like the Federal Reserve, are designed to be insulated from presidential control.

But in removing Lisa Cook, Trump has entered into a morass of legal questions and challenged long-standing beliefs about the power of the president to control the U.S. economy.

Trump’s action, if upheld by courts, would upend the Fed’s century-long practice of formulating the nation’s monetary policy free from political pressure. It also could affect the budget of every American household, with the cost of goods and services influenced by political ideology more than financial expertise.

As a scholar of the American courts, I believe that, depending upon how courts resolve the case, it could also mark a significant shift in the ability of the judicial branch to check executive power.

This agency is different

The dispute with Cook reached the public on Aug. 20, 2025, when Trump-appointed director of the Federal Finance Housing Agency Bill Pulte announced on social media that he had made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice about potential mortgage fraud by Cook. The DOJ subsequently opened an official investigation.

After Pulte’s announcement, Trump posted, “Cook must resign, now!!!” She refused and was officially fired by Trump five days later.

Cook then filed suit in federal court on Aug. 28, asking U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb to issue an emergency order blocking her removal. Cobb did just that on Sept. 9, 2025.

Cobb’s order, however, will likely be appealed by Trump. In the meantime, Cook will stay on the job and participate in decisions made by the Fed, which is set to meet again on Sept. 16.

Among the multitude of cases about Trump’s ability to fire employees of federal agencies, this one is different – because the agency is different.

Created by Congress in 1913 after a series of banking panics, the Federal Reserve is charged with managing the nation’s economy. It acts as the national bank, monitors the health of other financial institutions, and, most critically, develops monetary policy, which includes setting interest rates, the primary tool with which it manages inflation and ensures long-term economic growth and stability.

Precisely because of the Fed’s power, presidents have often tried to influence it. Sharp criticism of its members is nothing new. Trump has an ongoing and very public fight with the chair of the Fed board, Jerome Powell, about interest rates.

But a president actually firing a board member is something else entirely.

Supreme Court warning

The Fed is just one of dozens of what are termed “independent agencies.” These are part of the executive branch but designed by Congress to operate insulated from the president’s preferences and pressure. Over time, precisely because it is so powerful, the Fed’s ability to act free from the president has become particularly sacrosanct.

The primary mechanisms through which Congress ensures agency independence are “removal provisions,” statutory directives that define when and why the president can fire agency leadership. The Federal Reserve Act, the law that creates the Fed and sets out its structure and mission, provides that members of the board, called “Governors,” serve 14-year terms, “unless sooner removed for cause by the President.”

“For cause” may sound familiar because its appearance in a different law also recently triggered litigation. That happened when Trump removed the heads of two other independent agencies, Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board. The Supreme Court decided in April that the restriction on the president’s ability to fire those two independent agency heads violated Article 2 of the Constitution.

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Read more:
Supreme Court ignores precedent instead of overruling it in allowing president to fire officials whom Congress tried to make independent

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In that same opinion, however, the court took pains to specify that its ruling did not apply to the Federal Reserve Board. Calling the Fed a “uniquely structured, quasi-private agency” with a “distinct historical tradition,” the majority signaled to Trump that booting members off the Federal Reserve Board was a no-go.

When he fired Cook, Trump flouted this directive. A legal battle was inevitable.

What’s behind the case

The case is complex and involves questions about whether Cook’s termination violates a congressional statute and the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Notably, the parties are not arguing about the constitutionality of the removal provision itself, as they were in the Wilcox case. Instead, the dispute centers primarily around the meaning of “for cause” – that is, what reasons can legally justify firing a board governor. Unlike other statutes, which use additional terms such as “inefficiency, neglect or malfeasance of duty while in office,” the Federal Reserve Act provides no further guidance.

Trump argues that the – alleged – mortgage fraud is sufficient “cause” to remove Cook, particularly from an agency charged with managing the nation’s finances. Cook claims that mere allegations about private conduct before she was appointed to the board cannot justify her termination, particularly when those allegations appear to be a pretext for a political disagreement.

But lurking in the background of this seemingly picayune fight over a single word in a 111-year-old statute are fundamental questions about separation of powers, checks and balances, and which branch of government determines the law.

‘Say what the law is’

Trump’s fuller argument is actually quite bold.

As he is doing in other lawsuits, the president is asserting that he – and he alone – gets to determine the meaning of “cause.” The term, his lawyers write, is “capacious” and its meaning is entirely vested by Congress in the president. No court can second-guess his judgment.

The claim is striking and seems to fly in the face of the country’s system of checks and balances. In addition, if the branch of government charged with carrying out the law – the executive branch – also gets to define it, separation of powers also appears to be left by the wayside.

Cook counters that judicial review of termination decisions is critical.

If courts abandon their responsibility here, she argues, they will obliterate the independence of the Federal Reserve and subject the national economy to the short-term whims of a president rather than the long-term vision of economic experts.

In her order blocking Trump’s removal of Cook, Judge Cobb declared that the court has a “responsibility to review” the president’s firing of Cook, rejecting Trump’s claim that the decision was immune from judicial oversight.

And given the clear and continued acquiescence of Congress to this president’s broad assertions of power, they would also remove what, at least until the next presidential election, may be the last remaining check on executive power.

The case will likely reach the Supreme Court this fall, and the outcome is hard to predict. Trump has benefited from a string of victories there issued by a conservative majority that believes strongly in executive power and judicial deference to the president.

At the same time, it will be difficult to ignore the sentiments about the independence of the Fed that those same conservative justices expressed in the Wilcox case and the potential economic consequences a ruling for Trump might generate.

The court’s ultimate decision may actually depend upon what role it wants to play in the country’s fraying democratic system. The legendary Chief Justice John Marshall famously wrote in 1803 that it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary department to say what the law is,” a sentiment inscribed on the marble wall of the Supreme Court building in D.C.

This case provides the opportunity to see whether the maxim still holds true.

This story has been updated to reflect U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb’s Sept. 9, 2025, decision blocking President Trump from removing Cook from the Federal Reserve Board.

Claire B. Wofford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Trump’s radical argument that he alone can interpret vague laws fails its first court test in dismissal of Fed governor – https://theconversation.com/trumps-radical-argument-that-he-alone-can-interpret-vague-laws-fails-its-first-court-test-in-dismissal-of-fed-governor-264566

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Karrin Vasby Anderson, Professor of Communication Studies, Colorado State University

In an authoritarian state, the leader engages in unconstitutional or undemocratic practices for the purpose of consolidating power.

Key components of authoritarianism include rejecting democratic rules; denying the legitimacy of opponents; tolerating or encouraging political violence; and curtailing the civil liberties of opponents.

Since he took office for a second time, President Donald Trump has sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, named other cities run by Democrats as targets for military intervention, deployed masked and unidentifiable agents in immigration raids, explicitly threatened the city of Chicago with a military invasion and used government power to persecute his perceived political enemies.

But many journalistic outlets have yet to call him what he is – an authoritarian.

As a political communication scholar, I study how media framing shapes people’s understanding of the world.

Because authoritarianism is most visible in hindsight, people often don’t recognize it until it’s too late. Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard political scientist, notes that when it comes to democratic backsliding, “there are no bright lines … people often find out the world they’re in after the fact.”

That’s why it’s particularly important for journalists to label authoritarians as such when the evidence warrants. In Trump’s case, I believe the U.S. is well past that point.

Trump’s authoritarianism

Scholars with expertise in authoritarianism have been sounding the alarm about Trump for years.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s book “How Democracies Die” describes how, during the 2016 campaign and his first presidential term, Trump exhibited the key indicators of authoritarian behavior. He undermined the legitimacy of elections Republicans lost, baselessly described his rivals as criminals, refused to unambiguously condemn violence committed by his supporters, and threatened to punish critics and members of the media.

Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that “no other major presidential candidate in modern U.S. history, including Richard Nixon, has demonstrated such a weak public commitment to constitutional rights and democratic norms.”

That intensified when Trump returned to office in 2025.

Levitsky and Lucan A. Way documented Trump’s “path to American authoritarianism” for the journal Foreign Affairs in early 2025. In March, Levitsky told New York magazine that things were going worse than even he expected, asserting, “We’re pretty screwed.”

Levitsky is not alone in that view. In a February 2025 survey of political scientists conducted by Bright Line Watch – an academic organization that researches democratic health – the percentage of scholars plummeted who said that the U.S. “mostly or fully” meets the standard for democratic health.

That was before Trump, via social media, promised to go to war in Chicago. When asked about his post, Trump said, “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities,” but he did not back away from the intent to deploy troops against the wishes of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

Pritzker responded to Trump’s post by noting, “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”

On Sept. 7, 2025, New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein itemized some of Trump’s authoritarian actions, concluding, “This is not just how authoritarianism happens. This is authoritarianism happening.”

What journalists have been saying

Although other opinion journalists like Jamelle Bouie, M. Gessen, Jonathan Chait and nearly every MSNBC anchor have been labeling Trump an authoritarian for some time, much hard news coverage of the Trump administration has not.

When Trump deployed troops to Washington, The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic dismissed it as “farcical” and “not a likely prelude to full authoritarian takeover.”

A CNN analysis similarly minimized the action as a “gambit,” a “distraction” and a “neat political trick.” CNN characterized concerns about authoritarianism as “hyperbolic warnings of looming tyranny that circulate all day on liberal media programs — whatever Trump does” and asserted that such reports “don’t really help voters understand what is going on.”

The New York Times’ Aug. 3 story by Peter Baker on Trump’s “tendency to suppress facts he doesn’t like and promote his own version of reality” bore a headline that read “Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook,” suggesting that his actions were authoritarian without applying the label to Trump directly.

During the April 14, 2025, broadcast of CNN News Central, anchor Jessica Dean spoke with Nikolas Bowie, a Harvard Law School professor participating in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Bowie repeatedly called Trump an authoritarian for illegally freezing federal research funding awarded to Harvard.

When Dean noted that the “Trump administration says it’s doing all of this in an effort to combat antisemitism on campus,” Bowie responded that “antisemitism is really just a pretext for what is really an authoritarian attack on higher education.” Federal Judge Allison Burroughs later agreed with that interpretation in her ruling against the Trump administration.

Dean, however, sidestepped that interpretation, saying, “What I’m hearing is you think that enough was done to combat antisemitism, that this is about something else.”

Competitive authoritarianism

There are reasons why journalistic outlets may hesitate to identify the “something else” as authoritarianism, or portray it as a looming threat rather than a current danger.

Trump’s propensity to sue journalists, and large media corporations’ decisions to settle even when the law was on their side, have likely made journalists and editors hesitant to describe Trump as an authoritarian.

And the imperative for balance sometimes results in a “both sides-ism” that misrepresents what authoritarianism actually looks like.

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a speech asserting Trump’s military response to immigration protests in California was an assault on democracy, the New York Times covered it, quoting Newsom at length about the danger Trump presented. The article also quoted Republicans who alleged that Newsom’s public health directives during the COVID-19 pandemic made him “the ultimate authoritarian.”

But the particular nature of the authoritarianism the U.S is facing in the 21st century also plays a role.

Levitsky and Way have written about “competitive authoritarianism,” a new version of authoritarianism that doesn’t look like 20th-century fascism.

Many laypeople associate the word authoritarianism with military dictatorships and totalitarian rule. In competitive authoritarian regimes, however, there’s a constant push and pull between democratic and autocratic impulses. Levitsky and Way write that elections are held, but they may not be fair. The authoritarian regime uses power gained democratically to break democratic norms, undermine democratic institutions and tilt the playing field in its own favor.

Constraining free speech

Journalistic norms of independence can pressure even ethical journalists into acquiescence to competitive authoritarianism because they want to avoid looking partisan when all coverage that falls outside the authoritarian’s approved message gets characterized as resistance.

Paramount settled what one free speech advocate described as a “widely derided lawsuit brought by Donald Trump against ’60 Minutes,’” and CBS recently pledged to stop editing recorded interviews on “Face the Nation” after complaints lodged by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The Paramount and CBS cases suggest that, left unchallenged, a competitive authoritarian leader will use their leverage to influence what should be independent journalism.

Words matter. And how a democratic society responds to its leaders can make the difference between a free society and one in which a leader increasingly suppresses the voices, rights and will of the governed.

Karrin Vasby Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why journalists are reluctant to call Trump an authoritarian – and why that matters for democracy – https://theconversation.com/why-journalists-are-reluctant-to-call-trump-an-authoritarian-and-why-that-matters-for-democracy-263778

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Henry F. Fradella, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University

President Donald Trump recently signed two executive orders targeting “cashless bail,” the policies that permit the release of people arrested for crimes pending trial without requiring them to pay money.

One executive order directs arrestees in Washington, D.C. to be “held in Federal custody to the fullest extent permissible under applicable law.” The other order calls for the withholding of federal funds to states that “substantially eliminated cash bail as a potential condition of pretrial release from custody” for many offenses.

Cashless bail does not mean that everyone is simply released unconditionally to await trial. Instead, judges have the ability to detain people who pose a specific threat to another person or the community. And they can impose conditions on those who are released, including stringent measures like electronic monitoring.

Trump has criticized cashless bail policies for threatening public safety because they can release dangerous people from detention.

As legal and criminal justice scholars, we have studied bail reforms across the United States.

We have found that jurisdictions that reduce reliance on cash bail can maintain public safety. And they can also curtail mass pretrial incarceration that overwhelmingly locks up people who are too poor to afford bail. That includes three jurisdictions that we examine in detail below: Washington, D.C., New Jersey and Illinois.

The rise of bail bonds

Bail is a promise by an accused person to show up at court hearings in exchange for being released from custody pending the resolution of criminal charges.

In many U.S. jurisdictions, however, people pledge money or property as collateral for their pretrial release. But some people are released unconditionally, referred to as release on their own recognizance. Others are denied pretrial release altogether because they pose a risk of flight, a risk of failing to appear, or pose a danger to the community.

Historically, the bail system worked on promises and one’s reputation, not money. Money bail became more common around the turn of the 20th century with the rise of commercial bail bonds, in which a bail bond business would front the bail money, charging the arrestee a portion of the bail amount as a fee.

This created a system in which people with money could buy their pretrial freedom for many crimes – even serious felonies. Conversely, between 60% and 90% of people remained jailed despite the availability of bail bonds. This was not because they were dangerous, but because they lacked the financial resources to come up with the 10% of their bail amount to purchase their pretrial freedom.

The problems with cash bail

On any given day, approximately 664,000 people are locked up in jails in the United States. Only about 30% of these people are serving sentences following criminal convictions. The remaining 70% in jail are awaiting trial.

Typically, this is not because a court has judged them a risk to public safety. And usually it’s not because a judge decided they are unlikely to appear at scheduled court hearings.

Instead, they remain in jail because they cannot pay the money bail that has been set in their cases. This can have serious or even tragic consequences, such as lost homes and jobs, and even suicides. Indeed, suicide is the leading cause of death in jails, and pretrial detainees are six times more likely to die by suicide than those serving jail time after convictions.

A 2012 study in New York City found that “even when bail is set comparatively low – at $500 or less, as it is in one-third of nonfelony cases – only 15% of defendants are able to come up with the money to avoid jail.” In 2017, the jailing of people who could not afford bail cost taxpayers US$38 million each day – an amount that exceeds $50 million today, adjusted for inflation.

And it has allowed commercial bail businesses – and the nine insurance companies that back the roughly 30 corporations that underwrite more than $14 billion in bail bonds issued each year – to earn profits in excess of $2.4 billion annually.

Conversely, money bail systems allow people with financial means, even those who might be dangerous or pose a genuine risk of flight, to be released because they can afford to post bail.

Bail reform in Washington

Washington abolished cash bail in the early 1990s. The city replaced it with a system that overwhelmingly pairs pretrial release with levels of supervision tied to the risk that a court determines a defendant might pose. As a result, roughly 87% of all people arrested in Washington are released pending trial without needing to pay or pledge any money.

Despite the lack of money bail, the city has experienced high court appearance rates and low reoffending rates. Between 2019 and 2024, 89% of defendants awaiting trial in the city showed up to their scheduled court appearances – and 90% remained arrest-free. Even among those accused of violent offenses, 98% were not rearrested for violent crimes while on pretrial release.

Washington shows that when people are given the tools and reminders they need, they are overwhelmingly likely to comply with court obligations. That includes phone calls, text messages and email reminders about court dates or access to pretrial services. Moreover, these results illustrate that alternatives to cash bail can function effectively, without compromising public safety.

The Illinois and New Jersey experiences

New Jersey overhauled its bail system
in 2017 by virtually eliminating cash bail. The state replaced it with a framework that relies on judicial assessments and pretrial monitoring to decide whether defendants should be detained or released.

Within two years of New Jersey’s bail reforms, the state’s pretrial jail population decreased by roughly 44%. Most notably, the state did this by reducing the number of defendants held in jail for more than a day or two.

This reduction was not accompanied by an increase in failures to appear in court or in new criminal charges.

A recent Drexel University–Boston University study echoed those findings, confirming that the decline in incarceration came without increases in gun violence. The study also found that the number of people held on low bail amounts – $2,500 or less – fell sharply, from more than 12% of the jail population in 2012 to just 0.4% by 2021.

Early data analyses after Illinois eliminated cash bail in September 2023 show that jail populations declined with no uptick in failure-to-appear rates.

Further, violent crime and property crime rates in Cook County have decreased since the law took effect, including a 15% reduction in Chicago.

Broader considerations

In 2024, the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute, analyzed data from 33 cities, comparing 22 that had enacted bail reforms with 11 that had not. The researchers found that there was no relationship between bail reform and crime rates. When combined with the data from Washington, New Jersey and Illinois, it seems clear that jurisdictions can protect public safety while also reducing unnecessary and harmful pretrial detention.

In New Jersey, for example, thousands of people – many from communities of color – were able to remain employed and housed while awaiting trial. Rather than destabilizing people’s lives by unnecessary incarceration, the state contributed to greater stability for them, their families and communities.

The question moving forward is how to build on these successes.

As policymakers consider next steps, these empirically supported results can provide guidance. They provide evidence that cashless bail is not a threat but an opportunity for fairer, smarter justice.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Bail reforms across the US have shown that releasing people pretrial doesn’t harm public safety – https://theconversation.com/bail-reforms-across-the-us-have-shown-that-releasing-people-pretrial-doesnt-harm-public-safety-264448