Supreme Court Expands Trump Power Over US Agencies
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The Supreme Court expanded Trump power in dramatic fashion as its nine-month term concluded, handing President Donald Trump a series of victories that broaden executive control over the federal government while dealing him several high-profile defeats on marquee issues.
The headline ruling overturned a 91-year-old precedent that had long shielded members of independent agencies from being fired at will. In a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines, the conservative majority found that Trump's March 2025 removal of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, without cause, was lawful.
That decision effectively guts Humphrey's Executor, the 1935 case that established Congress's power to insulate regulators at agencies like the FTC, the Federal Reserve's regulatory arms, and other bodies once considered independent of direct White House control. The president now wields far greater authority to remove officials who defy his agenda.
For decades, independent agencies operated on the premise that their leaders could not be dismissed over policy disagreements, a structure designed to keep functions like antitrust enforcement, communications regulation, and consumer protection insulated from partisan pressure. That firewall has now been substantially dismantled.
Legal scholars describe the shift as one of the most consequential reallocations of power between the branches in modern history. Critics warn it concentrates authority in the presidency and erodes checks that Congress built precisely to prevent any single official from dominating the regulatory state.
Yet the term was far from a clean sweep for the White House. In a striking rebuke, the justices dealt a crippling blow to Trump's signature reciprocal tariffs, ruling he had misused presidential emergency powers to override authority the Constitution reserves for Congress.
That tariff decision found the president had exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law that never mentions the words 'tariff' or 'duty.' Trump called the outcome 'deeply disappointing' and responded by imposing a temporary 10% global tariff under a different statute, the Trade Act of 1974.
The court also delivered a defeat on immigration, upholding birthright citizenship and striking down Trump's executive order that sought to deny citizenship to children born to parents in the country illegally or temporarily. The 6-3 ruling reaffirmed a constitutional guarantee dating to the 14th Amendment.
Additional rulings weakened Congress in other ways. After this term, lawmakers can no longer insulate regulators from presidential removal, cannot limit political parties' campaign spending, and cannot require race-conscious voting districts, a trio of outcomes that reshapes the balance of power heading into the 2026 midterms.
Taken together, analysts say the term reveals a clear pattern: even when the court rules against Trump on specific policies, its broader trajectory has been to enlarge the powers of the presidency itself as an institution. The losses were about particular actions; the wins were about structural authority.
Supporters of the rulings argue the Constitution vests executive power in a single president who must be able to direct and, if necessary, remove subordinates. In their view, unaccountable agencies exercising executive authority without presidential oversight were the true constitutional anomaly.
Opponents see a dangerous erosion of independence. They warn that stripping protections from regulators could allow any president to purge officials who resist political direction, undermining the credibility of institutions Americans rely on to be impartial, from financial regulators to election-related bodies.
The consequences will extend well beyond Washington. Businesses that operate under federal regulation, investors weighing policy risk, and state officials navigating federal mandates all now face a landscape in which the White House holds more direct sway over the agencies that write and enforce the rules.
As the justices break for the summer, the decisions leave a lasting imprint on the American system of government. Whether history views this term as a necessary correction to unaccountable bureaucracy or a hazardous accumulation of executive power will depend on how future presidents wield the authority the court has now confirmed.
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