Governor Janet Mills (D) will soon learn whether she’s really political bedfellows – even though odd ones – with the nation’s chief justice when it comes to dealing with President Trump.
Republican Chief Justice John Roberts, who owns two pricey oceanfront properties on an island off St. George, today hears arguments in a case that could set limits on Trump’s authority to fire top government officials with whom he’s unhappy.
But though Roberts has long advocated for expansive presidential personnel authority, he – like Democrat Mills – has angrily gone toe to toe with Trump more than once.
Roberts, for instance, has lectured Trump not to criticize lower-court federal rulings just because the deciding judges – as Trump has referred to them – are “Obama judges.”
And Mills, of course, is still riding high on the legacy publicity she received for lecturing Trump during a White House reception shortly after his most recent election about boys playing girls sports.
The Roberts court on Monday heard Trump’s lawyers insist the president has the legal right to fire a Democrat member of the Federal Trade Commission whose policies he believes contradicts his.
But lawyers for Rebecca Slaughter will be claiming that a president can only fire government regulators due to their “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
The eventual ruling will be sweeping either way it goes.
If it should go against Trump and Roberts joins the opinion, he and Janet may be picnicking this summer off the Rockland coast.
But if Trump prevails with Roberts in his corner, Janet will have to ditch that dream of a campaign commercial as she jockeys to win the U.S. Senate primary late this summer.
Based on one SCOTUS observer, it looks like that picnic might not happen.
