The President Can Now Fire Anyone in the Federal Government. That Should Alarm You.

On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that President Trump's firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter without cause was lawful. In doing so, the Court overturned a 91-year-old precedent that had prevented presidents from removing members of independent agencies at will. The decision represents the most significant expansion of presidential power over the federal government in nearly a century.

Independent agencies were designed by Congress to function as a check on executive power. The FTC, the FCC, the NLRB, the CFPB. These agencies regulate industries, enforce consumer protection laws, adjudicate labor disputes, and oversee financial markets. Their leaders serve fixed terms and, until this ruling, could only be removed for cause. The logic was straightforward: if the president can fire a regulator at will, the agency cannot be independent. It becomes an extension of the executive branch.

That is now precisely what it is. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution's vesting of executive power in the president requires that he be able to direct and remove those who exercise that power. The dissenting justices, joined by the Court's three liberals, argued that this reading of the Constitution eliminates a structural protection that Congress built deliberately and that has functioned for nearly a century.

The Federal Reserve presents the sharpest test case. Trump threatened to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell and attempted to remove Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed's board of governors. The Court, in a separate 5 to 4 decision that included Justice Kavanaugh joining the liberal wing, ruled that Cook can stay for now. But the majority also signaled that the Fed's independence may not be as legally protected as economists, markets, and the international financial community have long assumed.

The consequences of this ruling extend beyond any single agency or official. When the president can fire regulators who make decisions he dislikes, those regulators face a structural incentive to make decisions he will like. That is not independence. It is a performance of independence. And the industries those agencies are supposed to regulate know the difference.

The FTC under Slaughter had been pursuing significant antitrust enforcement actions against some of the largest companies in the country. Her removal, now ratified by the Supreme Court, sends a message to every remaining agency head: your tenure is contingent on the president's satisfaction with your work. That message will shape decisions that never make the news, in ways that the public will not easily be able to trace back to this ruling.

The framers of the Constitution were deeply suspicious of concentrated executive power. They divided authority between three branches precisely because they understood what happens when a single actor controls too many levers of government at once. The Supreme Court's ruling on June 29 moved the needle significantly toward concentration. What that means for the next two years of this administration, and for every administration that follows, is a question with no reassuring answer.