'Huge': CNN analyst floored as Supreme Court signals thinking on Trump's 'vast' powers

A CNN legal analyst appeared stunned Thursday as the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump what she called a "huge" win, allowing him to fire independent agency heads at a pair of key government institutions in an order released on Thursday.

"This is huge," Paula Reid, CNN's chief legal affairs correspondent, told anchor Jake Tapper on Thursday afternoon. "This is a win for Trump and his larger effort to reshape the federal government. It also suggests the Supreme Court is sympathetic to stripping away some protections for federal workers.

The high court ruled that Trump does not have to reinstate two senior officials who oversaw federal agencies that helped enforce labor protections, she noted. Trump had sought to fire Kathy Harris, former chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board, an agency that ensures federal employment decisions are not influenced by politics.

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"They oversee federal firings and can reinstate wrongly terminated workers," Reid noted, of the protection board.

He also sought to fire Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board. Harris and Wilcox were both Democrats appointed by Biden. Their terms weren't expected to expire for years, but they were fired in April.

"The Supreme Court sort of put a pause on those terminations, looked at the case, and decided that their terminations can proceed while they continue to litigate their firings at the lower court. So a lower court could reinstate them. But if that doesn’t happen, their jobs are gone," Reid said.

She emphasized: "And this win is so significant because it suggests that a majority of this Court is open to Trump’s very vast interpretation of executive power. And we know we have a lot of other questions related to the expansiveness of his power pending before this court. That’s why this is so significant, because it’s giving us a sense of where that conservative supermajority stands."

The 6-3 move, with all liberal justices dissenting, notably constituted yet another controversial use of the so-called "shadow docket," or decisions issued on an emergency basis without hearing the merits of the case or making any real review of the matter.

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