Supreme Court Gives Trump More Power to Fire Anyone He Wants

The Supreme Court ruled Monday to scrap a key protection and allow President Donald Trump to fire whoever he wants, whenever he wants.

In a 6–3 decision along ideological lines, the Supreme Court found that the “for cause” removal provision for the Federal Trade Commission violated the separation of powers, allowing Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the FTC.

In the process, the high court voted to overturn Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 Supreme Court case that established Congress’s ability to limit the president’s ability to fire executive officials of independent federal agencies.

“If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, the Court overrules it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority ruling.

The decision grants the president broad firing powers across independent federal agencies. However, in a separate 5–4 decision on Monday, the Supreme Court found that the Federal Reserve was a different kind of entity, and blocked the removal of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

In a scathing dissent in the FTC case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor insisted that Congress could limit the reasons for removing the head of a federal agency.

“In holding otherwise, the Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”

The court previously issued a 6–3 ruling along ideological lines approving Trump’s emergency request to remove Slaughter from the FTC. Trump attempted to fire Slaughter in March, leading the commissioner to challenge the move, as presidents may only legally remove FTC commissioners for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” In July, a federal court blocked Trump’s “unlawful” attempt to remove Slaughter, citing the Humphrey decision, which was upheld by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump from firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, preserving the central bank’s independence for now.

In a 5-4 decision Thursday split across ideological lines, the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s attempt to become the first president to remove a Federal Reserve official since it was created in 1913.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberal justices to rein in Trump.

Last August, Trump declared that he was booting Cook—the first Black woman on the Federal Reserve board—over claims she committed mortgage fraud with two primary residencies. Cook refused to step down, and sued, stating that “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so.”

A lower court ruled that Cook could not be dismissed while her case proceeded. The Department of Justice then requested that the Supreme Court stay that ruling, so that Cook could be removed from her position. The Supreme Court refused.

“No matter the precise definition of cause, or the scope of our review of any such determination, the President failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute,” wrote Roberts, who wrote the majority’s ruling.

The case will now return to a lower court, where Cook will fight to save her job. Cook was appointed by former President Joe Biden, and her term was set to expire in 2038.

In a separate decision Monday, the Supreme Court gave the president more power over independent agencies, ruling that Trump had the authority to fire Rebecca Slaughter. The ruling shifted quite a lot of power from Congress to the president, and has ushered in one of the largest changes to the federal government in decades.

This story has been updated.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s appeal of the E. Jean Carroll verdict, in which he was found guilty of sexually abusing and then defaming Carroll.

This means Trump will still be required to pay Carroll $5 million.

Carroll, a former writer, accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996. When she spoke out publicly against him, he posted on social media that the case was “a complete con job” and a “Hoax and a lie.” In 2022, she sued him for both sexual abuse and defamation, seeking damages, and the jury agreed with Carroll that Trump was liable.

Trump’s lawyers appealed the case, arguing that the jury heard “highly inflammatory” evidence—including testimony from two other women who claimed Trump assaulted them, and the infamous Access Hollywood tape.

The Supreme Court justices did not provide any explanation for why they rejected Trump’s appeal. But, they may consider another similar case. A separate jury found Trump liable for defaming Carroll in 2024, and he was ordered to pay the writer $83.3 million—Carroll’s lawyers argued that a significant settlement was the only way to get Trump to stop attacking her. Trump’s lawyers have said they plan on appealing that verdict to the Supreme Court as well.

However, that case is solely focused on defamation. Carroll’s claims that Trump sexually abused her in the ’90s have been affirmed by a jury, and Trump has now run out of ways to contest them.

This story has been updated.

The Supreme Court has demolished Republicans’ efforts to delegitimize mail-in ballots, upholding a Mississippi law that allows a grace period to count ballots received after Election Day.

In a 5-4 decision Monday split across ideological lines, the court ruled that ballots are valid up to five days after Election Day, so long as they were postmarked before it. Justice Amy Comey Barrett and Chief Justice Roberts were the two conservatives who sided with the liberal justices, and Barrett authored the majority opinion.

Eighteen states and territories, including Mississippi, currently allow for mail-in ballots to be received after Election Day. That includes big Democratic states like California, Illinois, and New York. The ruling also protects states and territories that allow a grace period for ballots returning from overseas, such as for military service members.

“The Constitution’s Elections Clause empowers state legislatures to ‘prescrib[e]’ the ‘Times, Places and Manner of holding’ congressional elections. Congress may ‘override’ most of these choices,” Barrett wrote for the majority. “By ‘default,’ however, ‘responsibility for the mechanics of congressional elections’ belongs to States. As Alexander Hamilton put it, the Constitution lodges power over congressional elections in state legislatures ‘primarily’ and in Congress ‘ultimately.’”

Mail-in voting is a very basic, safe tactic that Trump himself has even used, despite crusading against it as fraudulent. By upholding it, the court has protected voting rights for thousands of Americans voting at home and abroad.

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump and his family continue to dominate the field when it comes to corruption, with two new scandals exposed just within the last 24 hours.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the Trump family stands to reap the financial benefits of a deal that gives the U.S. access to one of the earth’s largest reserves of tungsten, a metal needed to make fighter jets, computer chips, and missile warheads.

American company Kaz Resources was awarded $1.6 billion in federal financing to mine tungsten in Kazakhstan. Just weeks after the deal was made, a firm partly owned by Trump’s sons joined up with other partners to take a 20 percent stake in a “corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project,” the Times reported.

And it’s not just the Trumps—the sons of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was also involved in the deal, raised capital for one of the project’s investors, a move that is expected to net them millions of dollars.

Between the Trumps and the Lutnicks, one or both families have ties to at least 14 companies that are working with the federal government on mining deals, the Times reported.

And on Monday, CNBC reported that the president bought up to $5 million in shares of Axon Enterprise, a company that makes tasers, body cameras, and other policing software, just two weeks before ICE sought a $220 million contract that only a company like Axon could fill.

Though the ICE notice doesn’t name Axon specifically, the company makes 90 percent of all U.S. tasers, and experts told CNBC that the weapons called for in the notice would only match Axon products. If ICE buys the roughly 17,800 tasers it seeks, it would quadruple its total tasers.

According to a White House spokesperson, there are “no conflicts of interest.” The White House has said that Trump’s investments are managed by independent, third-party firms, and that his children control his assets—as if his children aren’t routinely profiting off of government deals.

The amount which the Trump family has personally profited off of the presidency is unprecedented.