Supreme Court Frees Trump To Fire The Independent Regulators Watching Him, Overturning 90-Year-Old Precedent That Had Kept The Referees Off The President's Payroll

WASHINGTON. In a 6 to 3 decision hailed by the White House as a triumph for accountable government, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that President Donald J. Trump may fire the independent regulators appointed to watch him, resolving a 90-year-old constitutional concern that the officials charged with policing the executive branch were not yet doing so at the executive branch's pleasure.

The ruling in Trump v. Slaughter, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, overturned Humphrey's Executor v. United States, the 1935 precedent that for nine decades had allowed members of the Federal Trade Commission and similar bodies to be removed only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. Legal observers noted that the President had spent the preceding 15 months treating those three conditions as optional, having fired FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter in March 2025 after informing her that her continued service was "inconsistent" with administration priorities, a category Congress had inexplicably left out of the 1914 statute.

"The President has always believed that the people overseeing him should report to the person they are overseeing," said one senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the arrangement is the entire point. "An independent agency is just an agency that has not yet been reminded who is in charge. Today the Court reminded roughly two dozen of them."

The decision applies to the FTC, the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the rest of the multimember agencies that Congress had designed, with what the majority described as misplaced optimism, to function at arm's length from whoever currently held power. Going forward, each will be staffed by commissioners who may be dismissed the moment their independence becomes apparent, an outcome the industry groups regulated by those agencies greeted with measured enthusiasm and the immediate scheduling of meetings.

The Court did preserve a single exception, ruling in a separate 5 to 4 opinion that the Federal Reserve was "a different kind of entity" and blocking the removal of Governor Lisa Cook, a carve-out widely understood to reflect the bond market's feelings rather than the Constitution's. In dissent, the Court's three remaining members warned that the majority had handed the President "the powers of a king," a phrase the White House reportedly considered for the commemorative coin.

At press time, the President was reviewing the rosters of all two dozen newly dependent agencies and asking an aide which of the regulators had most recently regulated something.