{"id":1142,"date":"2026-07-21T13:24:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T13:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/07\/21\/supreme-court-ruling-hands-trump-sweeping-new-powers-and-limits-congressional-oversight\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T13:24:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T13:24:52","slug":"supreme-court-ruling-hands-trump-sweeping-new-powers-and-limits-congressional-oversight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/07\/21\/supreme-court-ruling-hands-trump-sweeping-new-powers-and-limits-congressional-oversight\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court ruling hands Trump sweeping new powers and limits Congressional oversight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump recently took to his Truth Social platform to celebrate a Supreme Court judgment. In response to the court\u2019s decision in Trump v Slaughter <\/a> on June 29, he posted<\/a>: \u201c90 years of precedent has been COMPLETELY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY OVERRULED, greatly increasing Presidential Power at a time when it is most needed!\u201d<\/p>\n

The US president is famously hyperbolic, but this time he did not exaggerate. His reading of US constitutional law was entirely correct. The court overruled its own precedent set in 1935 and held that the president had the power to fire federal trade commissioner Rebecca Slaughter \u201cat will\u201d. <\/p>\n

Slaughter was one of two Democratic members of the commission sacked by Trump. The president invoked his powers<\/a> under Article II<\/a> of the constitution and said that their continued service was \u201cinconsistent\u201d with the \u201cadministration\u2019s priorities\u201d. <\/p>\n

She sued Trump and other administration officials on the grounds that Congress, by statute<\/a>, had said that a commissioner of the independent agency could only be fired \u201cfor cause\u201d, meaning there had to be a proven reason to terminate her.<\/p>\n

In 1935, in Humphrey\u2019s Executor v United States<\/a>, the court held 9-0 that then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt did not have the power to fire Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioner William Humphrey. Roosevelt had asked Humphrey to resign<\/a> because he believed that his administration\u2019s agenda for the FTC would be \u201cmost effectively carried out with personnel of my own selection\u201d.<\/p>\n

But when Congress established<\/a> the FTC, it insulated the agency\u2019s political independence by design. Commissioners could only be fired for \u201cinefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office\u201d.<\/p>\n

Overruling the precedent set by Humphrey\u2019s Executor gives the president individual authority over great swaths<\/a> of the administrative state. Since the FTC was established, Congress has created dozens of \u201cindependent agencies\u201d operating under the same \u201cfor cause\u201d rule to protect their independence.<\/p>\n

The decision is a triumph for the US Supreme Court\u2019s conservative supermajority of six justices. Their aim is to restructure the US government according to the \u201cunitary executive\u201d theory of the constitution. This theory holds that when the framers of the constitution \u201cvested\u201d<\/a> the power of the executive in a president, they intended that the power and responsibility for executing the laws of the United States would ultimately be held by one man.<\/p>\n

Under this theory, the president must be able to control the entire executive branch, including its independent agencies. Ironically, given the No Kings protests<\/a> against Trump, the version of history promoted by this Supreme Court under the leadership of the chief justice John Roberts, maintains that the framers did this because only a single, all-powerful president could resist a return to a monarchy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump posted<\/a>: \u201cThe Republican Party was treated very fairly by the United States Supreme Court. Thank you for your attention to this matter!\u201d Overruling Humphrey\u2019s Executor was included in Project 2025, the blueprint drawn up by ultra-conservative thinktank<\/a> the Heritage Foundation for Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n

The conservative legal movement<\/a> could be confident that this aim would be well received by the court. Roberts had championed the unitary executive agenda since his days<\/a> in Ronald Reagan\u2019s justice department in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Unprecedented power<\/h2>\n

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by justices Kagan and Jackson, dissented from the Slaughter decision. She wrote in her dissenting opinion<\/a> the court \u201cgives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted\u201d. In the dissenters\u2019 view, for at least the past 140 years Congress and the president, together, had set up independent agencies that did not rely \u201con who is disfavored or owed a favor by those in office\u201d.<\/p>\n

The US Supreme Court had approved \u201cfor cause\u201d requirements in statutes as constitutional in 1935. But only now did the court decide that the president, congress and the court had all been \u201cacting in open defiance of the Constitution all this time\u201d.<\/p>\n

Under the guise of upholding the principle of \u201cseparation of powers\u201d, the court reinterpreted the constitution and shifted power away from Congress to the president. <\/p>\n

Already in Trump\u2019s second term, the court has given the president unprecedented power at the expense of Congress<\/a>. Following on from its decisions on abortion and voting rights, the court has continued to overrule its own precedent and reinterpret the US constitution in line with the public policy objectives of the conservative legal movement. <\/p>\n

In two years, Trump will be out of office and a Democrat might even replace him. But the court\u2019s decisions will remain, and the only check on presidential power will be the president\u2019s own morality and self-restraint.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Andrea Loux Jarman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump recently took to his Truth Social platform to celebrate a Supreme Court judgment. In response to the court\u2019s decision in Trump v Slaughter on June 29, he posted: \u201c90 years of precedent has been COMPLETELY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY OVERRULED, greatly increasing Presidential Power at a time when it is most needed!\u201d The US president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}