The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Trump could fire the last Democratic member of the supposedly independent bipartisan Federal Trade Commission. When a Democrat is elected President, he or she can fire all the Republican members of supposedly independent commissions. The Supreme Court is paving the way to give Trump unchecked power of all government agencies.
Justin Jouvenal of the Washington Post reported:
The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to fire the sole remaining Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission, the latest victory in his aggressive push to exert greater control over the federal bureaucracy.
The justices overturned a lower court injunction that reinstated Rebecca Slaughter to her position with the agency that oversees antitrust and consumer protection issues while litigation over her removal works its way through the courts.
The ruling — while provisional — is significant because the high court also said it will hear arguments on overturning a 90-year-old precedent that allowed Congress to set up independent, nonpartisan agencies insulated from political interference if they do not wield executive power.
In 1935, the justices ruled that President Franklin D. Roosevelt could not fire a board member of the FTC, William Humphrey, simply because he opposed the president’s New Deal policies. Congress had stipulated members could only be fired for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance.” The case is known as Humphrey’s Executor.
The current Supreme Court has all but overturned that precedent in recent rulings. The justices allowed Trump to fire Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission in July and members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board in May. Trump gave no reasons for the officials’ dismissals, despite statutes saying they could only be removed for cause.
“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President,” the majority wrote in the May decision, “he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents.”
The next big case that tests Trump’s power and the Court’s deference to him is his effort to fire Lisa Cook, a Democrat who is a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Trade Commission. He accuses her of mortgage fraud, with no evidence.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This court is ruling against its own existence.
Bobbi Eisenberg
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One of the overlooked policy moves by Biden His FCC was actually starting to go after Corporate monopolies. A big reason he made enemies of Silicone Valley and Bankers.
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One of the overlooked policy moves by Biden His FCC was actually starting to go after Corporate monopolies. A big reason he made enemies of Silicone Valley and Bankers.
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One of the overlooked policy moves by Biden His FCC was actually starting to go after Corporate monopolies. A big reason he made enemies of Silicone Valley and Bankers.
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The Extreme Court continues to make a mockery of law and to enable Fascism.
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Trump is determined to erase any “independent govt agencies” and bring them under his direct control. According to “unitary executive theory,” ALL executive agencies are 100% owned by prez, & will have leaders/ staff replaced by those who kowtow to “president’s preferred policies.” So much for executive agencies that need to be sealed off from ‘president’s preferred policies’ du jour– like FDA, CDC, NLRB, NIH, FCC, CPSC, NSF, FBI, CIA, and so many more. These SCOTUS stays on appeals circuit injunctions are ‘temporary,’ while cases go thru courts until reaching SCOTUS hearing on the merits.
What good are executive agencies that can be whipsawed every 4 or 8 yrs to conform to current pres admin’s “policy preferences”?
Take the FDA. There was a great article in the 7/20/25 NYT Magazine called “The Collapse of the FDA.” Do we want the FDA run by deep-pockets lobbyists from food-processors & Big Pharma? Probably not, & that needs correction/ reining in. But how about the alternative of FDA run by crunchy-granola nutrition nutjobs & promoters of anti-prescriptive drugs/ pro-OTC remedies from Mama Knows Best or whatever floats your boat? Probably a lot worse.
The problem is that Heritage Society, that seems to be running the govt, doesn’t believe that there are public goods that should be protected/ provided by the govt. All should be provided by the invisible hand of the “free market.”
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