Supreme Court strengthens Trump's hold on key levers of government power

FE Team | Published: June 30, 2026 22:19:54

WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters): The US Supreme Court's decision to hand Donald Trump broad authority to fire regulatory agency heads caps off a decades-long conservative push to strengthen the president's grip on key levers of government power.
Monday's 6-3 ruling, powered by the court's conservatives, determined that a president can remove agency officials who wield executive power, such as Democratic Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter, whose firing was upheld despite removal protections provided in law by Congress.
The court, however, signaled that the decision should not be seen as undermining the Federal Reserve's independence. The justices described the US central bank as possessing a unique historical tradition, and in a separate case on Monday refused to let Trump fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
Legal experts said the FTC ruling dealt a crippling blow to the so-called "administrative state." That refers to the network of federal agencies that regulate key aspects of American life and business, from finance to air traffic safety to labor relations, and had been largely insulated from direct presidential control.
The decision is also seen as the high-water mark for the "unitary executive" theory, a conservative legal doctrine popularized during the presidency of Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980s that had made steady inroads with like-minded justices. That theory sees the president as having sole authority over the US government's executive branch, including the power to fire and replace heads of federal agencies at will.
The court bolstered presidential power at a time when Trump has tested the limits of his authority in both domestic and foreign affairs.
'NEARLY A NULLITY'
University of North Carolina School of Law professor Michael Gerhardt said Monday's FTC ruling marked "the most significant decision expanding presidential power in decades."
"This is definitely the biggest win yet for the unitary theory of the executive," Gerhardt said, calling it "the culmination of years of planning by conservative groups."
"The administrative state," Gerhardt added, "just shrank to nearly a nullity."
According to John Yoo, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, the ruling gives the president control over an administrative state that was primarily created and expanded by Democratic former Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama.
"The presidency just gained the most constitutional power, at any one time, in Slaughter than in any other single case in Supreme Court history," Yoo said, referring to the case by its name, Trump v. Slaughter. "There is no more independent administrative state."
Slaughter, appointed by Democratic former President Joe Biden, was one of two Democratic FTC commissioners who Trump moved to fire in March 2025 from the consumer protection and antitrust agency. Slaughter's term was due to run until 2029.
In a legal challenge to her removal, Slaughter cited a 1914 law that allowed a president to remove FTC commissioners only for cause - such as inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office - but not for policy differences. Similar protections have covered officials at more than two dozen other independent agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.