Trump wins expanded power to fire independent regulators

Introduction: a 91-year-old precedent swept away in one morning

A ruling that changes the mechanics of presidential power

On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States issued one of the most consequential rulings of the Trump presidency: by a vote of 6 to 3, it ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that the president can now fire the heads of independent federal agencies without having to justify the decision (Guardian).

This ruling directly overturns a 91-year-old precedent, the 1935 Humphrey's Executor v. United States decision, which for nearly a century had protected independent agency commissioners from purely political firings (Guardian, SCOTUSblog).

The specific case that triggered it all

At the heart of the case is Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), fired by email in March 2025 by the Trump administration, which simply told her that her continued service was "incompatible with the administration's priorities," without citing any legal cause (Guardian).

Slaughter immediately challenged her removal in court, winning at the trial level before the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case directly, even bypassing the appeals court in its rush to settle this fundamental question (Reuters).

Watching a firing delivered by a simple email go straight to the Supreme Court, bypassing the normal steps of the judicial process, says something troubling about how quickly this administration is seeking to concentrate executive power in its own hands.

What the Court's majority actually says

Presidential power described as near-absolute

The conservative majority found that the legal provision protecting FTC commissioners from removal without cause "violates the separation of powers," stating that the Constitution grants the president the right to "remove his subordinates at will" (Supreme Court opinion).

Under this reading, the FTC exercises fundamentally executive power and must therefore, like any other agency reporting directly to the president, remain under his full political control, with no statutory protection able to stand in the way of his will (Supreme Court opinion).

How legal observers characterized the ruling

Law professor Stephen Vladeck of Georgetown Law summed up the ruling's scale bluntly: "There's no way to sugarcoat Slaughter. This is a massively significant decision… a massive win for Trump and the executive branch," adding that it would have "massive ramifications" for how government functions long after the Trump presidency ends (Guardian).

This analysis confirms that the ruling's scope extends well beyond Rebecca Slaughter's personal fate, potentially redrawing the balance of power for entire generations of federal agency leaders.

When a well-respected law professor chooses such blunt words to describe a Supreme Court decision, we need to take the exact measure of the institutional earthquake that just occurred, well beyond Rebecca Slaughter's individual case.

The scathing dissent from the three liberal justices

Sotomayor denounces "a power unknown even to the English Crown"

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing the dissent on behalf of Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the majority's ruling gives the president "a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the founders rebelled" (Guardian).

She added that the ruling "reconfigures our government" since "dozens of independent commissions will likely become purely executive agencies, shifting considerable power over vast swaths of American life into the president's hands" (Guardian).

One precise word to describe the ruling: "destabilizing"

Sotomayor called the ruling "destabilizing," accusing the majority of "openly defying the Constitution" for decades according to its own inverted logic, and stating that its "conclusion is wrong" (Guardian).

She went as far as invoking a historic "bait and switch" inflicted on a coequal branch of government, recalling that Congress had believed for more than 90 years, with the Court's explicit approval, that it could lawfully create agencies with genuine independence (Guardian).

A Supreme Court justice's choice of the word "destabilizing" is never a rhetorical accident: it's an institutional alarm bell, deliberately sent to the American public, about a power shift deemed dangerous to the country's democratic balance.

The White House's triumphant reaction

Trump celebrates a "historic victory" on Truth Social

The president immediately celebrated the ruling on his Truth Social platform, writing: "BIG WIN just moments ago at the Supreme Court, in the Slaughter case, confirming the Presidential Power in our Country to remove Officers of the Executive Branch" (Guardian).

He added that this ruling represented "the biggest increase in Presidential Power in the last hundred years," claiming the honor of being the sitting president at the moment of this victory, which he called "historic" (Guardian).

A triumph confirming a long-term strategy

This public, unreserved celebration shows how much the administration viewed this legal battle as a major strategic priority, having pushed the case to the Supreme Court on an accelerated track, requesting and obtaining a stay as early as September 2025 while the appeal ran its course (Guardian).

That stay had already been granted with three dissenting justices, a clear early signal of how the Court would ultimately rule on the merits nine months later.

Trump's unrestrained public joy at such a stark weakening of America's institutional checks should worry us, not reassure us: a power that publicly celebrates the loss of its own counterweights is never a power that will later limit itself.

Criticism from Congress and civil society

Schumer denounces "private clubs for his golf buddies"

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer reacted forcefully: "Trump's MAGA Supreme Court just handed him a license to turn independent federal agencies into private clubs for his golf buddies" (Guardian).

He warned that the ruling sent "an open invitation for bad actors to rig the system," with the Court, in his view, giving "a green light" to this kind of political overreach at the top of government (Guardian).

Raskin calls it a "sledgehammer blow" to 90 years of American law

Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin was equally blunt, saying the ruling deals "a sledgehammer blow to a 90-year-old pillar of American law" and that it "invites presidential domination" over agencies created by Congress to protect citizens against fraud and economic power abuses (Guardian).

Raskin also pointed to a troubling inconsistency with the separate ruling protecting Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, asking why the central bank's independence should matter more than that of the FTC, the SEC or the NLRB (Guardian).

This contradiction Raskin points to, between the fate of the Federal Reserve and that of the FTC, deserves to be repeated relentlessly: if institutional independence really matters for Wall Street, why would it suddenly stop mattering for agencies protecting ordinary consumers?

The first legal ripple effects already visible

The former EEOC commissioner's case already at risk

As early as July 2, 2026, barely three days after the ruling, federal judge Tanya Chutkan signaled that the Supreme Court's decision was likely to doom the lawsuit brought by Jocelyn Samuels, a former Democratic commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) who was also fired by Trump (Reuters).

Judge Chutkan gave Samuels until July 16 to explain why her lawsuit should not be dismissed, a direct and immediate consequence of the new precedent established in the Slaughter case (Reuters).

A domino effect already touching several federal agencies

According to Reuters, this ruling is likely to lead to the dismissal of other lawsuits brought by people fired by Trump last year, with one member of a transportation commission already agreeing to drop his challenge on this exact point the very day after the ruling (Reuters).

The firing of Samuels and commissioner Charlotte Burrows had, in fact, stripped the EEOC of a quorum, preventing it from functioning normally for months, while Trump-appointed chair Andrea Lucas actively pushed the administration's priorities, including a marked rollback of diversity policies (Reuters).

Watching an agency meant to protect workers against discrimination lose its quorum for months, because of a political conflict orchestrated from the White House, is a concrete illustration of the human price ordinary citizens pay for these institutional power struggles.

What this concretely changes for federal agencies

The announced end of statutory independence

According to Max Stier, head of the Partnership for Public Service, Congress had created bodies like the FTC, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to operate "by deliberation," through multi-member boards specifically designed so no single political actor could dictate their decisions (Guardian).

Stier warned that without the guarantee of independence, board members "will now make their decisions under the constant threat of politically motivated dismissal," which in his view amounts to "compliance" rather than genuine "independence" (Guardian).

The price he says American citizens will pay

Stier concludes bluntly that "the American people will pay the price," a warning that resonates particularly strongly for the millions of citizens who rely on these agencies to protect their rights as consumers, workers or savers (Guardian).

This fear, shared by several institutional experts, sketches a scenario where political loyalty could gradually take precedence over technical competence in the appointment and retention of federal regulators.

Replacing technical competence with political loyalty at the head of agencies meant to protect citizens from market abuses is not a mere administrative governance issue: it's a profound change in the very nature of what these institutions are supposed to accomplish for the country.

Lingering concerns over future conflicts of interest

A heightened risk of agency capture by private interests

Several legal scholars specializing in administrative law have pointed out that the loss of statutory protections opens the door to a heightened risk of regulatory capture, where an agency meant to oversee a sector becomes de facto aligned with the interests of the companies it is supposed to regulate rather than with the public interest.

This risk takes on particular weight in the case of the FTC, whose mandate directly covers consumer protection and the fight against anticompetitive practices by major tech companies, a sector where several executives maintain close personal ties to the current administration.

A precedent that could extend to future administrations

Nothing prevents, in theory, a future Democratic administration from invoking this same precedent to in turn fire commissioners appointed by a previous Republican president, potentially turning every change in the presidency into a systematic purge of independent agencies depending on the political color of the moment.

This prospect worries certain institutional conservatives just as much as the Democrats currently up in arms against the ruling, which partly explains why the debate extends well beyond Washington's usual partisan lines.

This precedent could very well one day turn against the very side applauding it today: a weapon this institutionally powerful never stays in one party's hands forever, and those celebrating now could well regret it bitterly in a few years.

Conclusion: a precedent that extends well beyond Trump himself

A ruling that will outlast this presidency

Whatever one's opinion of Donald Trump, this Supreme Court ruling will permanently transform the power of every future American president, Democrat and Republican alike, over the independent federal agencies Congress has created over nearly a century.

Professor Stephen Vladeck put it aptly: the ruling's ramifications will be felt "long after the Trump presidency ends," which should prompt every political camp to think seriously about the long-term consequences of this short-term victory (Guardian).

The real test will come in the years ahead

The coming months will reveal the true scale of this domino effect, as other former commissioners fired by the Trump administration decide whether to pursue or abandon their own legal challenges, now weakened by this new Supreme Court precedent.

This case will remain a striking example of how a single judicial ruling can redraw, in a single morning, a balance of power that had stood for more than nine decades in the United States.

It's easy to applaud a victory when it serves your own side, but American history rarely looks kindly on presidents who weakened institutional checks and balances: the judgment of time, unlike that of the Court, is never handed down in a single morning.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and my acknowledged biases

I am a columnist and analyst, not an American constitutional lawyer. I rely exclusively on the text of the Supreme Court's ruling and on established journalistic sources to build this essay. My editorial mandate commits me to treating the Trump administration's domestic overreach with an openly critical eye, while rigorously respecting the facts.

I have no ties to the parties involved in this case, nor to the FTC, the EEOC, or the organizations cited in this article.

What I don't know and my method

I have no definitive data on the exact number of lawsuits that will ultimately be dropped or dismissed as a result of this ruling, and I flag this explicitly rather than speculating. My method consisted of cross-referencing the text of the Supreme Court's ruling with several established legal and general-interest reports.

Sources

Primary sources

Supreme Court of the United States — Full opinion, Trump v. Slaughter — June 29, 2026

Federal Trade Commission — Official site

Secondary sources

The Guardian — Liberal supreme court justices condemn 'destabilizing' ruling that expands Trump's power to fire regulators — June 29, 2026

SCOTUSblog — The final four cases — June 29, 2026

Reuters — Ex-EEOC member's challenge to Trump firing may be tossed after Supreme Court ruling — July 2, 2026

CBS News — Supreme Court rulings on Trump, birthright citizenship, tariffs and presidential power — 2026