Seeking more power, Trump uses firings to test presidential limits

Musing this week about the possibility of sending National Guard troops to patrol Chicago, after deploying them in Washington, D.C., Trump claimed he had "the right to do anything I want to do."

A string of high-profile firings last week will test how far he might be able to take that assertion.

Over three days last week, the Republican president moved to terminate Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Susan Monarez, leading other top officials at the CDC to resign.

The actions underscored Trump's desire for influence in sectors normally seen as independent from overt political control and could have major implications for financial markets, health policy and public trust in institutions.

The firings could undermine confidence in agencies that are meant to provide expertise while operating above any one party's politics, according to experts such as Jane Manners, associate professor of law at Fordham University in New York and an expert on presidential powers.

"The thinking is, people who are in charge of making these really important decisions about safety of consumer products, public health, our economy -we don't want those people to be influenced by political pressure. We want instead their decisions to be based on expertise, they want them to be kind of bound by the rule of law,absent political pressure."

White House officials said the president was acting within his legal authority to deliver on the agenda he was elected to enact. The administration has said Monarez was dismissed because she did not align with Trump's agenda.

Monarez , sworn into her job less than a month ago, had resisted changes to vaccine policy that she believed contradicted scientific evidence, a close associate said.

The administration has accused Cook of mortgage fraud, which she denies. But Trump made clear another motivation for her removal, telling a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that he would soon have a majority of loyalists on the Fed's board of governors, which helps set the interest rates that Trump wants lowered.

Cook has sued Trump and the Fed, saying an unsubstantiated claim of mortgage fraud does not provide legal authority for her removal.

Most U.S. presidents steer clear of commenting about the Federal Reserve, let alone influencing monetary policy or knocking members off the board of governors. Independent central banks around the world are seen as key to maintaining a stable global economy, but Trump has often challenged norms. He has repeatedly pushed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to lower rates and questioned his spending on an extensive renovation of the Fed offices.

The White House maintains Trump's overall approach is appropriate and defended the recent firings.

"The Trump administration is using every lever of power granted to the executive branch by the Constitution and Congress to implement the America First agenda that the president campaigned on," said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers.

Unlike ambitious U.S. presidents who preceded him, from Abraham Lincoln to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the current commander-in-chief has so far faced little opposition from the co-equal branches of Congress and the Supreme Court.

His decision to impose sweeping tariffs on other nations, which rattled markets, came despite a provision in the Constitution granting Congress the power over taxation and tariffs. A federal appeals court on Friday said Trump's approach had overstepped his authority.

"Congress is essentially not offering any check, or almost not any, on presidential actions," said Daniel Farber, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley.

The conservative-dominated Supreme Court has approved of some of Trump's assertions of executive authority, including his ability to fire members of nominally independent regulatory agencies. The court hinted at some limits in a recent ruling, suggesting such authority might not fully extend to the Fed.