Sarah Binder

Political scientist by day (and night), GWU and Brookings, Co-editor

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

2016, but who's counting

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

Why would you call something Mitch McConnell did the Schumer rule 😂.

The unwillingness to grapple with the way two court seats were handled by McConnell by anyone on the right is going to lead to total SCOTUS calvinball for the foreseeable future. Cake was baked in 2020.

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

@ringwiss @OakfeatherGhost Don’t memory hole FY 2021 🤓😂

https://t.co/vtzkI9d9Vg

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

And thank you to @MikeCrespin and @CarlAlbertCtr for sharing Senator Robert Owen's (D-OK) papers with me last week in Norman, OK 🤓

Never more will I refer to the Federal Reserve Act as the "Glass-Owen" bill. From now on, I'm on Team "Owen-Glass" 😂 (Seriously!)

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

Congressional problems, 1933: Senator leaves papers from another senator in a 🚕 and doesn't know the 🚕 driver's name or company.

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

Robert Owen (former senator at that point) later reassured Borah that he had reproduced the material.

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

@peterlafountain I was intrigued by Owen’s address …

https://t.co/tQEkTCDLw0

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

😐

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

@PotomacRC 🤓

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

August 17 in Foggy Bottom. Needs updating 😵‍💫

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

@ringwiss 🤓https://t.co/tpXvWQRoIX

[Philip Wallach @PhilipWallach]

Well this is just about my favorite TV appearance I’ve ever had. Thanks to @costareports and @bindersab for a great conversation!
https://t.co/zniYuTDtAv

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

Can’t believe I’ve been tweeting this for 250 years 😂

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

@SteveMatthews12 @PotomacRC Admittedly a lotta hypotheticals but this SCOTUS finds all sorts of legislative limits on POTUS unconstitutional in ways that 🤯the minds of students of Congress 🤓

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

One of at least 2 questions raised by Cook & Slaughter opinion but left unanswered by SCOTUS: 1) Can POTUS fire FRB presidents? 2) Might a future Court decide Fed’s regulatory powers undermine its Slaughter exemption? @PotomacRC & I discuss these & more in https://t.co/l5EHOnLqmG

[Nick Timiraos @NickTimiraos]

At Brookings last month, former Fed governor Dan Tarullo flagged a concern: even if the Supreme Court said the Fed was special because of monetary policy (in either the Cook and/or Slaughter cases), Slaughter's logic might still let a president reach a governor through the other hat they wear, on bank regulation.

The worry there is that the court might leave an opening, by striking down Humphrey's, to fire a governor for their regulatory conduct, since "for cause" might only apply to monetary policy. Again, the fear would be that a carve-out for monetary policy ≠ a carve-out for the Fed. (The remedy for this could be drastic: pull bank regulation out of the Fed altogether.)

Barrett hits on this in her dissent, noting how Slaughter and Cook are potentially contradictory—regulators are removable because they wield executive power, but Fed governors are not under the majority opinion in Cook. "Do all the Federal Reserve’s existing regulatory powers have the requisite connection to monetary policy? If not, are they grandfathered in?"

It didn't get much attention this week, but Roberts gestures at this in footnote 6. Upholding the Fed "as currently structured and with its existing enforcement authorities," he adds that this doesn't mean Congress could hand the Fed new regulatory powers "attenuated from monetary policy" and expect the same shelter.

The intriguing implication may be as follows: The court drew Tarullo's line for him at least conceptually by suggesting the monetary core is protected (with regulatory authority riding along only as far as it exists as of June 29, 2026). But how attenuated is too attenuated? Could Congress or a future Fed creating new regulatory authorities jeopardize this protection? Who decides when a Fed power has drifted far enough from monetary policy to lose the shelter?

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

@SteveMatthews12 @PotomacRC Agree high hurdle! Board tho approves & can remove FRB prezzies. Were SCOTUS to agree that they are “inferior officers” it raises question whether SCOTUS would ever extend Slaughter to allow POTUS to fire them— declaring that part of the law unconstitutional infringement on Art 2

[Mark Spindel @PotomacRC]

https://t.co/RSTlSP6V68

@bindersab and I weigh in on the Supreme Court’s tenuous defense of Governor Cook and the Federal Reserve. An homage to Hamilton it was not!

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

New post w/ @PotomacRC on the Supreme Court's Trump v Cook decision. Throws a🛟to Gov Cook but carves out possibly only a tenuous safe harbor for the Federal Reserve. We also revise the chief justice's revisionist history of central banking in America 🤓

https://t.co/l5EHOnLqmG

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

Just noticing this piece on court vacancies. Seems 70% of vacancies have no pending nominee. Of those 19 vacancies, about half are in states represented by two GOP senators. True, Senate JudComm narrowly divided, but is WH 😴🛌 @ 🛞?

https://t.co/jaT5LEuWn9

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

Another one for the record books!🤓
119th keeps the 👑 for the most discharge petitions to hit 218 signatures and ties the 1957-8 record for the most measures to pass the House, jump-started by a discharge petition. Also highest "hit" rate over the history of the 1935 rule 🥇

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

Corrected link 🤓: https://t.co/smSV7YyIhC

And a bonus link (if you made it this far 😂) to my Fenno through the looking glass 20 years later piece:

https://t.co/Cn3yILUOKY

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

Senate's 40th C-Span🎂! Bob Dole's wish did not come true :(

"I would hope...that the Senate ... may become a more efficient body because of televised proceedings." NB: Senate vote to allow 📺 also lowered cap on post-cloture debate to 30 hrs. Great Fenno piece on votes & 📺...

[CSPAN @cspan]

#OnThisDay 1986: "We are going public."

Today is the 40th Anniversary of Cameras in Senate on C-SPAN2.

Check out highlights and top moments from the Senate floor over four decades. https://t.co/JD0VcweWA6

More info here: https://t.co/QfPpaOYoSk

[Sarah Binder @bindersab]

Dick Fenno article on Senate deliberations and strategic voting that conditioned C-Span 📺 on changes to Senate's Rule 22 (some successful, some not, some still proposed today). Reading Fenno today, the Senate of 1986 is hardly recognizable today.

https://t.co/QQ7DvSxA1x