NPR News: 06-29-2026 4PM EDT

Lakshmi Singh· Host0:01

Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The U.S. Supreme Court is out with new decisions that directly affect the extent of the president's powers. Today, the High Court said Lisa Cook can keep her job as a member of the Federal Reserve's governing board, at least for now. NPR's Scott Horsley reports the decision is a setback for President Trump.

Scott Horsley0:21

In a five-four ruling, the High Court said the president failed to give Lisa Cook due process when he tried to fire her from the Fed board. The attempted dismissal was part of a broader campaign by the president to bend the central bank to his will in hopes of forcing lower interest rates. While the decision was made on narrow procedural grounds, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the Fed was deliberately designed to be insulated from political pressure to help prevent the kind of economic panics that were common before the central bank was established. That carve-out for the Fed is in contrast to the Supreme Court's general direction of giving the White House greater control over agencies that were once considered independent. The High Court ruled six to three today the president can fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission, reversing a precedent that had stood for nearly a century. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

Lakshmi Singh· Host1:04

In a GOP setback, the High Court upheld a Mississippi law allowing election officials to count mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days later. And in a case over geofencing, the court is restricting use of the new law enforcement technique that allows police to tap into giant tech firm databases to see who was near the scene of a crime. The official death toll in Venezuela is now up to one thousand seven