Trump Wins in Critical Supreme Court Case, Gains New Powers

Aside from the significant recent losses in the birthright citizenship case, the election ballots being received after election day case, the firing of the Federal Reserve Governor Ms. Lisa Cook case, as well as the rejection of his appeal in the sexual abuse case involving Ms. E. Jean Carroll, President Trump did score one significant victory in the recent flurry of decisions that came out of the U.S. Supreme Court. The case in question was called Trump v. Slaughter, and the decision in that case bestowed significantly more power as well as authority, not just to President Trump himself, but rather to the office of the president overall, whoever that may be in the future. Let's go through the details of that case together, starting with a bit of needed background. The Federal Trade Commission, otherwise known as the FTC, it's an independent agency within the federal government. It was created in 1914. It was signed into law in 1914 by Woodrow Wilson when he signed the Federal Trade Commission Act into law, and the agency itself came into being in 1915. And the agency was basically set up to deal with monopolies. The idea was that it would be led by a bipartisan team of experts who could handle antitrust issues more flexibly than the courts could. They would have more knowledge and they would have more expertise and more focus, and that way they can deal with monopolies that much quicker and more efficiently. And the way it's structured is that the agency is led by an independent five-member commission. By law, you can't have more than three commissioners from the same political party, and the commissioners themselves are appointed by the president with Senate confirmation, and they serve staggered seven-year terms. And if the president wanted to remove a commissioner that they didn't like, the U.S. Supreme Court all the way back in the year 1935 determined that the president could only do so for cause, with the cause including things like the commissioner being inefficient, negligent in his or her duties, and or malfeasant in their office. Now, for your reference, that earlier Supreme Court case that established this for-cause firing requirement was called Humphrey's Executor versus the United States. That'll come into play in a little bit. And so basically, ever since the year 1935 with that precedent, it's been understood that the president could not just fire an FTC commissioner at will just because they have a disagreement about policy issues. And also it's worth mentioning that the same reasoning has been applied to other independent agencies as well, such as the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, the Consumer Product and Safety Commission, and so on. Those other independent agencies were likewise led by presidential appointees, but the president could not just fire them at will. There had to be a specifically articulable cause to let them go within those three different categories we mentioned earlier. All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about tungsten, a metal that most people might have never even thought about but actually use every day without realizing it. Tungsten is one of the hardest and most heat-resistant metals on earth. It's used in aerospace, defense, electronics, manufacturing, energy infrastructure, and countless other industrial applications. 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So, U.S. Tungsten, thank you so much for sponsoring the episode. And now, back to the video. However, in the 100 plus years since the formation of the FTC, and then to the close to 100 years since that 1935 earlier decision, the agencies in question have grown in authority and power. And so, conservative legal scholars, they've been debating for a while now whether Congress even truly had the authority to create these hybrid power centers within the federal government, like the FTC as an example, which are part legislative and part executive, led by officials who are protected from removal by the U.S. President. They have the authority to create rules and regulations, which the whole country has to follow. They have the executive authority to enforce those rules and regulations, but they also can be removed from office. And so, that brings us to the present day. In 2025, shortly after winning the election and retaking the office, President Trump fired two Democrat FTC commissioners. He fired Mr. Alvaro Bedolla, nominated by Joe Biden, as well as Ms. Rebecca Slaughter, originally nominated by President Trump himself in 2018, and then re-nominated by Joe Biden in 2023. However, President Trump fired Ms. Slaughter in 2025 by saying that her service was, quote, inconsistent with his administration's priorities, meaning he was firing her at will, not for cause. He did not say that she was negligent, that she was malfeasant, or that she was doing a bad job. He just basically did not want her in that position, which was a move that went directly against Supreme Court precedent. And as such, Ms. Slaughter sued the Trump administration, saying that Trump violated federal law when he fired her. Here was the central issue in the case, quote, the central issue in Slaughter is whether Congress may create independent federal agencies, which are led by a board of people appointed by the president, but who cannot be removed by the president except for neglect, malfeasance, or some other cause other than the fact that the president wants to replace them with people who are more loyal to his agenda. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the case, heard arguments from both sides, and eventually, just earlier this week, they ruled in favor of the Trump administration. In the typical six to three split decision, you had Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, and John Roberts all rule against the precedent. Delivering the opinion of the court, you had Chief Justice John Roberts say the following, quote, nearly 250 years ago, the framers decided to vest the executive power in one person, a president of the United States of America. The choice was not made lightly. Within living memory were the long train of abuses and usurpations of a king who reigned as a tyrant. Today, we confront one of several regulatory agencies that deviate from this model of presidential supervision, the Federal Trade Commission, FTC. Since its creation in 1914, the FTC has accumulated vast rulemaking, enforcement, and adjudicatory powers under more than 80 statutes. Not only does it promulgate rules that carry the force of law, but it also enforces those rules against private parties, collecting civil penalties in the billions of dollars. Its powers, however, do not belong to the president or his appointees alone. They instead belong to five commissioners, each of whom serves for seven years and may be removed by the president only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. We hold that such protection from removal is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. And then, if there was any ambiguity in terms of the prior 1935 ruling with today's ruling, well, Justice Roberts added the following, quote, if anything more is left of Humphreys, the earlier ruling, we overrule it. Humphreys has for decades been a result in search of a rationale. The FTC's four cause removal provision violates the separation of powers. In its present form, the FTC enforces and administers some 80 statutes which cover almost every facet of our nation's economy. The tasks it undertakes are the very essence of execution of the law, precisely the president's constitutional role. The FTC unquestionably exercises executive power and must therefore be controlled by the chief executive in whom such power is vested. It follows then that slaughter served as the president's subordinate at the FTC and that the And there you have it. And this victory is not exactly small. It sounds technical, and it sounds a bit into the weeds, but this is actually one of those monumental legal shifts that you look back and it might be the thing that helped to transform what the country looks like 50 years from now. Because it's exactly this setup which prevented incoming presidents from being able to fully take hold of the executive branch. You basically had leaders at the top of those different independent agencies which were untouchable, which on the one hand, in the positive sense, created a type of continuity within the government, preventing wild swings from one administration to the other. But at the same time, it made those agencies not as accountable to the citizens as they theoretically should be. And especially with how, as John Roberts mentioned in that opinion piece, how large and powerful these agencies have become over the past 100 years, they're almost branches of government onto themselves. They have legislative roles and they have executive roles. They're able to create rules and regulations that all of us have to follow. They can investigate you if they think you're not following them. If they find you're not following them, they can actually prosecute you in courts. And at the same time, you couldn't do anything about the leadership if you thought that they were acting in a politically motivated manner or anything like that. But now, basically, overnight, with the Supreme Court precedent, new precedent now in place, the leadership of all these different independent agencies, well, they woke up to find themselves suddenly to be at-will employees of the chief executive, which, at least according to this Vox article, makes Trump the most powerful president in generations. If you'd like to read the most recent decision in full for yourself, I will throw the link to the PDF version of it. You can find it down in the description box below. What I did, by the way, in this episode is I pulled some excerpts from John Roberts' overall opinion. But if you want to read the thing in its entirety, which is interesting, it has a lot of history, has a lot of rationale of the so-called unitary executive theory of the Constitution. So if you want to check it out, it's a little long, but if you have nothing else to do on, let's say, a Friday night, it's good to get a cup of coffee and dive into it. It makes for interesting reading. So it'll be down there in the description box below. Two other things. Please do smash those like and subscribe buttons so this video can reach ever more people, so they can know about this change in independent agencies throughout the federal government. That's the first thing. And then the second thing is if you'd like a full primer of all the different decisions that the U.S. Supreme Court made in its previous session, in its previous term, well, we put it together here at The Epoch Times. It's a full magazine detailing the most impactful decisions that came out of the Supreme Court. We stripped away all the legalese and the things that made them inaccessible to the general public. We basically explained the background of the case, what the case was about, what the decision was, and most importantly, how that decision applies not only to the people in the case, but everybody. You, me, and everybody else in the country. So if you want to check it out, there's a link in the description box below. Subscribe to The Epoch Times using that link, and not only will you get that magazine with all of those Supreme Court precedents, what they mean to you, but moving forward, you'll be a subscriber to The Epoch Times so you can, on an ongoing basis, read our analysis pieces so you'll know how the Supreme Court decisions impact your life moving forward. So you get the past, you get the future, and of course all the other great content in The Epoch Times. The documentaries, the video series, the infographics, the other analysis pieces, all the news content we're putting out there, you'll get access to everything. So check it out. The link to subscribe will be right there at the top of the description box below. Hope you do so, and then until next time, I'm your host Roman from The Epoch Times. Stay informed, and most importantly, stay free.