In the latest episode of Washington’s favorite long-running tragicomedy, the nine robed deities of the Supreme Court have deigned to listen to a dispute regarding whether the orange avatar of the American Id, Donald Trump, possesses the legal scalpels necessary to excise Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board. It is a truly breathtaking display of institutional theater, featuring a group of lifetime-appointed fossils debating the exact diameter of the leash attached to a technocrat whose primary job is to adjust the interest rates on a currency that is currently backed by nothing more than collective delusion and the threat of drone strikes. The Court, in its infinite and well-compensated wisdom, appeared 'skeptical' of the President’s desire to treat the Federal Reserve like a failing Atlantic City casino where the dealers can be fired for not hitting on a soft seventeen.

The core of the matter is, as always, the ‘unitary executive theory’—a high-minded legal term for the basic human impulse to be the biggest bully on the playground. On one side, we have the Trump legal team, arguing that if the President is the head of the executive branch, he should be able to fire anyone who doesn’t sufficiently praise his tie selection or agree with his macroeconomic hallucinations. On the other, we have the defenders of ‘independent’ institutions, who believe that the Federal Reserve operates in a vacuum of pure, apolitical logic, untouched by the grubby hands of partisanship. Both sides are, naturally, lying through their teeth. The Fed is as ‘independent’ as a teenager living in a basement on a trust fund; it is intrinsically tied to the political winds of the day, it simply prefers to dress its biases in the sterile language of ‘basis points’ and ‘quantitative easing.’

Lisa Cook, the current target of this executive pique, represents everything the Right hates and the Left fetishizes: a credentialed academic who understands the levers of the administrative state. To the MAGA faithful, she is a ‘deep state’ operative standing in the way of a glorious, gold-leafed economic rebirth. To the performative progressives, she is a thin line of defense against a fascist takeover of the money supply. In reality, she is a bureaucratic cog in a machine that has been printing money into the abyss for decades. The Supreme Court’s skepticism toward firing her isn’t born of a sudden love for academic tenure or economic stability. Rather, it is the reflexive twitch of a judiciary that realizes if the President can fire anyone at will, he might eventually realize he doesn’t actually need nine people in black pajamas to validate his tantrums. It is a turf war disguised as a constitutional crisis.

The oral arguments, as reported, were a masterclass in the kind of intellectual masturbation that only a law degree from Yale can provide. The justices wrestled with precedents that were written by men who died before the invention of the lightbulb, trying to apply 18th-century logic to a 21st-century administrative monstrosity. They speak of ‘for-cause’ removal protections as if they were holy relics, ignoring the fact that the ‘cause’ is usually just ‘the person in charge doesn’t like you.’ The absurdity of the situation is compounded by the fact that the Federal Reserve itself is a creature of pure artifice. We are watching a branch of government that doesn’t understand the internet debate whether a branch of government that doesn’t understand the people can fire a woman who manages a system that doesn’t understand reality.

If the Court eventually rules that Trump cannot fire Cook, the Left will cheer for the ‘rule of law,’ ignoring the fact that they have spent the last four years calling the Court an illegitimate junta of religious extremists. If the Court rules he can, the Right will hail it as a victory for ‘accountability,’ despite their own penchant for ignoring any accountability that doesn’t involve a subpoena for a political rival. It is a cycle of hypocrisy so perfect it could power the very grid that the government is currently failing to maintain. We sit in the audience, watching these vultures pick over the carcass of ‘independence,’ while the actual economy remains a precarious house of cards held together by spit and bad credit.

Ultimately, whether Lisa Cook remains on the Board or is cast out into the wilderness of cable news punditry is irrelevant to the average citizen. The prices will still rise, the debt will still balloon, and the elite will still gather in marble halls to discuss the nuances of their own power. The Supreme Court’s skepticism is not a shield for the people; it is a maintenance check on the machinery of the state. They aren't worried about the economy; they are worried about the pecking order. In the end, we are just spectators to a divorce court where both parents are toxic and the kids—the American public—are just waiting for the house to be foreclosed on.