Wins and Losses

Good morning. For a lot of the country today, it’s going to be a scorcher. In deep-red Texas, Democrats have a chance to win a Senate seat this fall, according to a new Times/Siena poll. And yesterday President Trump saw some mixed rulings at the Supreme Court. Let’s start with those.

Wins and losses

The Supreme Court significantly expanded presidential power yesterday, holding that Trump can fire most independent government regulators. That’s a big deal. Critics say a president who can fire regulators at will is a president less constrained by constitutional checks and balances. He or she can issue loyalty tests. The court framed only one exception: governors of the Federal Reserve.

The decisions came in two separate, but related, cases.

The first concerned Trump’s efforts to fire Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, because her policy views are, in his mind, inconsistent with the priorities of his administration. (As in, she’s a Democrat.) The 6-to-3 decision in that case determined that the president could indeed fire her at will.

That’s a substantial shift in political power, one that gives the president more direct control over independent government agencies. The ruling has implications for more than two dozen of those agencies — including, but not limited to, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Postal Service. As my colleagues note, the president has already changed the leadership of at least 13 agencies.

In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the ruling “promises to unleash only chaos.”

At the same time, the Slaughter decision carved out the “unique role” of the Federal Reserve, with justices ruling that officials at the long-independent central bank could be fired only for cause.

The second case, involving Trump’s efforts to do just that to Lisa Cook, a governor of the Fed, underscored the carve-out. In a 5-to-4 ruling — with two conservative justices, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, joining the three liberals — the court said that Cook could not be fired without the chance to rebut unproven allegations of mortgage fraud leveled by the Trump administration against her. Only a president can remove a governor from the Fed for cause, the justices wrote. “But that does not mean that he may make that decision for any reason, or no reason,” they added. (Trump immediately renewed his vow to fire her anyway.)

Request denied

The Supreme Court also ruled yesterday on a request by Trump to re-examine a $5 million civil judgment against him after a jury found in 2023 that he had sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll. The justices declined to take up the case. That could end his legal efforts to fight back against the jury verdict finding that he assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room.

Trump condemned the decision on social media. “I will continue the fight against this Weaponization and Lawfare Case against me, including the ridiculous claim of Defamation, with all of my power and strength,” he wrote.

From the mailbag

Trump was no less pugnacious in responding to another Supreme Court ruling yesterday. (We’re coming to the end of the court’s term, and the decisions are coming in hot.) This one upheld the grace period that Mississippi has for late-arriving mail-in ballots. The ruling means that Mississippi can count ballots that come in up to five business days after Election Day, so long as they’re postmarked by that day. And it leaves in place laws similar to Mississippi’s in 18 other states and territories, including Nevada and California.

On social media, Trump excoriated the decision and called for passage of his voter identification law:

“In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.”

Midterm Elections

Democrats have a serious chance to win a Senate seat in Texas for the first time in a generation: James Talarico is tied with Ken Paxton, a New York Times/Siena poll finds. (We’ve made this story free for you to read, along with some others in this newsletter.)
It’s Primary Day in Colorado. The biggest race is to be the Democratic candidate for governor. Senator Michael Bennet is facing off with the state’s attorney general, Phil Weiser.
Gen-Z candidates — including a 29-year-old running for a House seat in Colorado — are stepping up to challenge the Democratic establishment.
Republicans have tried to focus on affordability, but Trump keeps veering off script. In the video below, Tyler Pager, a White House correspondent, explains how the president is giving his own party midterm anxiety. Click to watch.

Since the earthquakes, Venezuelans have had to fend for themselves under a repressive government that has abandoned them, Carolina Jiménez Sandoval writes.

Trump’s re-election seemed to be a generational political realignment. But the vibe is shifting again, David Wallace-Wells writes. (This link is free.)

Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was a photo essay about people who clean houses and mow lawns in the Hamptons.

Gym rat: Les Mills represented New Zealand in four Olympic Games, in shot put and discus, then founded a fitness empire that helped popularize aerobics. He died at 91.

TODAY’S NUMBER

70 percent

— That is the rough percentage of parents in Australia who said their children still had accounts on social media, despite a law banning anyone under 16 from major platforms. “What you’re effectively asking us to do with this is fence the ocean,” a government official said.

WORLD CUP

Germany, considered a World Cup contender, is out after losing on penalty kicks to Paraguay.

Japan is done, too, succumbing to a late comeback from Brazil, which scored in the 96th minute to win 2-1.

Morocco triumphed over the Netherlands, also on penalty kicks. Morocco’s decisive shot came from Ismael Saibari, who’s played his entire professional career in the Netherlands.

You can deploy ranch dressing in any number of ways. It’s terrific on a salad, of course, and with crunchy raw vegetables. But I particularly like it as a dip for pizza crusts and for chicken wings. I’ve been making those in the oven lately, so I can eat them while watching W.N.B.A. games or the World Cup. No recipe: just dry flats tossed with salt, pepper, cornstarch and a little oil. Lay them out on a racked sheet pan and roast at 425 until crisp. Toss with a mixture of melted butter and plenty of Frank’s hot sauce. Get on that.

A HOLY PLACE

Generations of “Dawn of the Dead” fans have made pilgrimages to the mall in Monroeville, Pa., that George A. Romero filled with zombies in the late 1970s. But this year’s gathering of what’s called the Living Dead Weekend had an elegiac feel: Walmart has bought the building and plans to demolish it.

Folks are bummed. “I’d equate visiting the mall to going to Georgetown and standing at the bottom of the steps where Father Karras lands in ‘The Exorcist,’” one fan said. “Or going to Martha’s Vineyard and seeing Quint’s shack from ‘Jaws.’”

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