Supreme Court affirms Trump's power to fire executive branch officials in landmark ruling

The Supreme Court handed President Trump a sweeping victory Monday morning, ruling 6-3 that the president may fire Federal Trade Commission commissioners at will, and overturning a 91-year-old precedent that had shielded independent agency heads from presidential removal. In a separate decision issued the same day, however, the Court blocked Trump from firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook while her legal challenge proceeds.

The twin rulings in Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook landed on the same morning but pointed in different directions. One demolished a Depression-era firewall between the White House and the regulatory state. The other, at least for now, left the Federal Reserve's independence intact.

The practical result: Trump can remove officials across a wide range of independent agencies whenever he sees fit. But the Fed, the institution that sets interest rates and steers monetary policy, remains, for the moment, beyond his reach. The tension between these two outcomes will shape executive power for years to come.

The FTC ruling: Humphrey's Executor overturned

Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion in Trump v. Slaughter, joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Clarence Thomas joined in part. The six-justice majority held that the FTC's statutory "for-cause" removal protection, which had prevented presidents from firing commissioners without specific justification, violates the Constitution's separation of powers.

The ruling explicitly overturned Humphrey's Executor v. United States, the 1935 decision that had stood as the legal foundation for Congress to insulate independent agency leaders from presidential control. As AP News reported, the precedent had survived for 91 years before Monday's decision swept it aside.

Roberts wrote that officers who "derive their offices from" the president's appointment must "remain accountable to the President," meaning "those officers must be removable by the President." In a line that left no room for ambiguity, as National Review noted, Roberts declared there were "no ifs, ands, or quasis about it", the FTC's activities "fall well within the heartland of executive power."

The case arose from Trump's removal of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter in March 2025. Slaughter, a former aide to Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, was appointed to the commission in 2018 and later served as acting chair. Trump stated that keeping Slaughter as a commissioner would be "inconsistent with [the] administration's priorities."

That firing triggered litigation that wound through the courts for more than a year before reaching the justices. The Daily Caller reported that the Court's ruling Monday morning definitively resolved the question in the president's favor.

Broader implications for independent agencies

The reach of the decision extends well beyond the FTC. The ruling's logic applies to virtually every independent agency whose leaders have enjoyed statutory protection from at-will removal. The National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Election Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Merit Systems Protection Board all operate under similar structures.

For decades, Congress built these agencies with the explicit intent of insulating their leaders from political pressure. The theory was straightforward: regulators who could not be fired on a president's whim would make decisions based on expertise and law rather than partisan loyalty. Monday's ruling rejected that theory root and branch.

The decision fits a broader pattern in which the Trump administration has moved aggressively to remove officials it views as obstacles to the president's agenda. Whether the target is a cabinet secretary or an agency commissioner, the administration has made clear it expects the people running the executive branch to answer to the elected president, not to the congressional statutes that created their positions.

Trump celebrated the ruling on Truth Social. As the New York Post reported, the president called it the "Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years," adding:

"BIG WIN just moments ago at the Supreme Court...confirming Presidential Power in our Country to remove Executive Branch Officers."

Roberts, in the majority opinion, put it more soberly but no less firmly:

"Neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work."

The dissent: Sotomayor warns of unchecked power

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The three liberal justices argued that the majority had handed the president authority the Constitution never granted him.

Sotomayor wrote:

"The president, to be sure, emerges with more power than ever before. That power was given to him by six justices on this court, not the people or the Constitution."

In a separate passage, she added:

"It is a power, however, that neither the People, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him."

The dissent's framing, that the majority invented new executive authority rather than recognizing existing authority, will likely become the rallying cry for congressional Democrats and progressive legal organizations in the months ahead. But the dissent's core problem is that it rests on a 1935 precedent the majority found irreconcilable with the Constitution's text and structure. Roberts wrote that "Humphrey's has not withstood the test of time."

The administration's position has drawn criticism even from some Republicans when applied in other contexts. But on the specific constitutional question of whether Congress can prevent a president from removing executive branch officers, the six-justice majority left no doubt.

The Federal Reserve exception

If the FTC ruling was a clean win for the White House, the companion case was not. In Trump v. Cook, the Court denied the government's motion to allow Trump to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook while her legal challenge continues. The vote on that question was 5-4, tighter than the FTC case.

The majority in Trump v. Cook wrote that removing Cook would represent an "interpretive leap out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our Nation's tradition of central banking protected from political interference."

That language matters. The Court did not say the president can never fire a Fed governor. It said he cannot do so right now, while the case is being litigated, and it grounded its reasoning in the Fed's unique institutional role. The distinction suggests the justices view central banking as categorically different from the kind of regulatory work performed by the FTC, the NLRB, or the SEC.

Cook's case carries additional complications. FHFA Director Bill Pulte referred Cook to the Department of Justice over allegations she falsified mortgage documents. The status of that DOJ referral remains unclear from available court filings. Trump attempted to fire Cook, a move Breitbart reported was rejected in a 5-4 decision, but the underlying merits of whether a president can remove a Fed governor at will have not yet been resolved.

That question will return to the Court. When it does, the justices will have to decide whether the Fed's independence rests on the same constitutional footing as the FTC's, or whether central banking occupies a protected category that survived Monday's ruling.

Slaughter responds, calls on Congress

Rebecca Slaughter did not go quietly. After the ruling, the former FTC commissioner called on Congress to push back against what she described as an unchecked executive branch. As Newsmax reported, Slaughter urged lawmakers from both parties to act:

"What we really need from Congress is for members on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican, to reassert their constitutional responsibility to provide checks on an out-of-control executive."

She added: "It is in everybody's interest, whatever party you are from, for Congress to use that power, which it really has been neglecting."

Slaughter's appeal to bipartisanship may find a limited audience. The same Congress that created these for-cause removal protections has shown little appetite for confronting the executive branch on structural questions of power. Legislators prefer to fight over spending bills and confirmation battles, not over the dry mechanics of who can fire whom.

But Slaughter's warning carries a kernel of truth that conservatives should not dismiss entirely. The president who benefits from expanded removal power today will not always be a Republican. The precedent set Monday applies to every future occupant of the Oval Office. The question is whether the constitutional principle, that the president must be able to control the people who exercise executive authority in his name, is worth that risk.

The answer, based on the Constitution's text and the Founders' design, is yes. Article II vests executive power in the president. Officers who wield that power on his behalf should answer to him. The 1935 workaround that allowed Congress to create a shadow executive branch, staffed by officials no president could remove, was always a constitutional improvisation. Monday, the Court finally said so.

The administration's broader push to consolidate executive authority has produced friction across Washington, including clashes with congressional officers and internal tensions among Trump's own allies. But the legal foundation for presidential removal power is now settled, at least outside the Federal Reserve.

What remains unresolved

Several questions hang over the ruling. Justice Thomas joined the majority only "in part," and the Court has not disclosed what portion of Roberts's reasoning Thomas declined to endorse. The scope of Sotomayor's dissent, its specific legal arguments, remains unexamined in the initial reporting. And the procedural posture of Trump v. Cook leaves open whether the government filed an emergency motion, an application for a stay, or some other request that the Court denied.

The DOJ referral involving Lisa Cook and the mortgage document allegations adds another layer of uncertainty. If Cook faces a separate legal proceeding on those grounds, the removal question may become moot, or it may become even more politically charged.

For now, the bottom line is clear. The president of the United States can fire the people who run the federal regulatory apparatus. Congress spent nine decades pretending otherwise. The Court, on a Monday morning in June, told them to stop pretending.

The Founders designed an executive branch accountable to one person. It took 91 years, but the Supreme Court finally agreed. Whether Congress likes it is beside the point, the Constitution does not require their permission.