Trump v. Cook (No. 25A312) — can the President fire a Fed Governor without cause?

We expect the Court to split the removal-power question rather than decide it as one. The companion FTC case (Slaughter) looks set to let the President fire an agency commissioner and narrow Humphrey's Executor — but we expect the Court to carve out the Federal Reserve as structurally distinct and preserve it from at-will removal. At argument the justices signaled sympathy to Cook, and a ruling that let a President fire a Fed governor at will would be read by markets as the end of central-bank independence — an outcome a majority appears unwilling to author. Most coverage prices the two cases as one removal question; we price them as a deliberate split. There is no clean market on the Cook outcome, which is exactly where the mispricing sits.