From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavarro. This is a daily.

In a major ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court delivered one of the biggest changes in decades to how the federal government works.

And then, the court turned around and announced an exception to its own ruling.

Today, my colleague, Anne Marimo, explains what the court was up to.

Music It's Tuesday, June 30th.

And thank you for coming on on a busy Supreme Court day for you. Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

So, and Monday was a day of big, and I think if we're being honest, somewhat contradictory

rulings in theory by the Supreme, about the scope of presidential power.

So let's start with what just happened and what it means.

So there are two big decisions on Monday.

The first was a major expansion of presidential power.

It makes it far easier for presidents to fire the heads of independent agencies,

like the Federal Trade Commission. It says the president can fire regulators for no reason or any

reason at all, and these have been traditionally independent agencies. So the court's decision really

upends the structure of the federal government as it's been for over 100 years.

Right. It's not every day that you hear a colleague say that 100 years of federal government

precedent and practice has been upended, but that's what you just said. That's right. At the heart of

this case was a 90-year-old precedent from 1935 that said Congress could protect these independent regulators from being

fired on a whim by the president. And now the court said today that they can. Right. Basically,

they overruled a major precedent. That's the first case. That's right. And then the second case,

as you mentioned, seemed somewhat contradictory. In this case, the court carved out

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