It was a small, almost bureaucratic detail — two Supreme Court opinions, released simultaneously, physically bound together with a rubber band in the press room.
But according to CNN's Joan Biskupic, that gesture may be one of the clearest signals Chief Justice John Roberts has sent about how he wants the public to understand his approach to Donald Trump's presidency.
"When Roberts issued the opinion providing new power to fire independent regulators, favoring the Trump position, Roberts delivered a separate decision blocking Trump from immediately removing Lisa Cook, a governor on the Federal Reserve," Biskupic wrote.
"Breaking from usual court procedures, the two opinions, one giving Trump a win, one a loss, were published simultaneously on the court’s website," Biskupic added. "In the press room, the distributed opinions were held together by a rubber band — another conspicuous move to ensure that one was not read without the other."
The message went beyond its meaning to the Federal Reserve, which investors had been watching with intense interest, but was instead intended to highlight Roberts’ message of independence, Biskupic wrote.
Roberts didn't want the agency-firing win to be read in isolation, without the Fed carve-out attached. Taken alone, the first ruling could be understood as a sweeping expansion of presidential removal power — exactly the kind of unchecked authority critics worry the Roberts Court has been handing Trump for a decade.
Bound together with the Cook decision, the message shifts.
The president gets broad power over most agencies, but not unlimited power, and not over the Federal Reserve specifically, which the Court described as following a "distinct historical tradition" exempting it from full presidential control.
In other words, Biskupic wrote, the rubber band was a way of forcing a single narrative onto two opinions that might otherwise be read as contradictory or, worse, as evidence the court simply defers to Trump whenever it can.
By physically tying a win to a limit, Roberts seemed to be asserting that the court still draws lines, even as it hands the presidency more tools than it has ever had, she added.
The gesture arrives against the backdrop of a broader pattern granting Trump immunity from prosecution, curtailing nationwide injunctions, expanding removal power, and a string of decisions that have structurally strengthened the executive branch under Trump specifically.
Public approval of the court has fallen to a record low of 33 percent, according to a new Gallup poll — with even Republican support dropping sharply since last year.
"In the birthright citizenship case, the chief justice likely wanted a stronger majority and more forceful public signal on this Trump challenge. Still, with five votes, he got what he needed," Biskupic wrote. "After he read a brief oral summary of the ruling from the courtroom bench on June 30, he looked relieved. His final remarks of the sitting, recognizing retiring staffers, were lighthearted."
"The decision in the birthright case closed out a turbulent 2025-26 session, in the second year of Trump’s second presidency," she added. "Two more years to go."
