Sotomayor Warns Supreme Court Gave Trump the Powers of a King

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed her conservative colleagues on Monday for making President Donald Trump more powerful than a king.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority scrapped Humphrey’s Executor v. United States—a high court precedent which allowed Congress to limit the president’s ability to fire officials at independent federal agencies—and allowed Trump to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission.

In a scathing dissent, joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, Sotomayor warned that Trump had just become more powerful than the English monarch, whose Parliament “often restricted the Crown’s ability to remove even high-level royal officers.”

“The text of the Constitution, along with its history, the longstanding practices of the political branches, and the precedents of this Court, make clear that Congress may limit the causes for which the heads of Commissions like the FTC can be removed by the President,” Sotomayor wrote. “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.”

Sotomayor argued that there was simply no way that the decision was Constitutional, because the country’s founding framers had “‘never intended’ to give the President ‘the complete set of powers’ that the English Crown held, let alone more.”

America will reach a historic milestone at the end of this week as it celebrates its semiquincentennial, but the people that comprise this storied nation have reportedly never felt so detached from its identity.

An AP-NORC poll published Monday (but conducted in April) found that American pride has dropped significantly over the last decade. Negativity surrounding the government has seeped into public perception of the core components of America’s story, such as its history, its foreign influence and impact, and the way the country’s democracy works.

Pride in American democracy has dropped 14 percentage points since 2017, when it was measured at 42 percent. It is now at 28 percent.

The survey also found that a majority of Americans are disillusioned with the American dream: They are not confident in their current financial situations, do not believe they can find a “good job” in the current market, do not believe they have the ability to purchase new homes if they want, and do not believe they’ll have enough money to retire when the day comes.

A Gallup poll, also published Monday, found that just 33 percent of U.S. adults were “extremely proud” to be an American. That’s the lowest rating since the polling group began asking the question in 2001, when 55 percent of the nation’s adult population answered similarly.

Another 20 percent of U.S. adults said they were “very proud” to be an American, indicating that just over half of the country feels a deep sense of pride in their national identity.

The falloff is represented most extremely amongst self-identified Democrats, of which just 14 percent said they were “extremely proud” to be an American in 2026. Right behind them were registered independents, 28 percent of whom offered the same response. Independents, according to Gallup’s data, have experienced a steady decline in national pride since 2004.

Meanwhile, 70 percent of Republicans said they were “extremely proud” to be an American when polled this year—a sharp uptick from when they were asked the question between 2020 and 2024.

President Donald Trump seems to be catching on that people aren’t impressed by his disastrous Great American State Fair.

“Do you think people appreciate what a fantastic job we did in building and operating the Great American State Fair at the National Mall, packed with happy people, and everybody loving it?” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Monday morning.

“Ask yourself this simple question, ‘DO YOU THINK THAT OBUMA OR SLEEPY JOE BIDEN COULD HAVE DONE IT?’ THE ANSWER IS NO!”

Since Trump’s pet project opened on the National Mall last week, it has been beset by a slate of issues, including technical difficulties and disappointing weather delays. Over the weekend, The New Republic’s Malcolm Ferguson visited the festival in-person and confirmed it was a ghost town, marred by low energy and few attendees.

If you don’t believe us, check out posts from Trump’s allies:

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted pictures from the president’s festival on Sunday. Barely anyone else seemed to be around.

Actor Dean Cain, a vocal supporter of Trump, also posted a picture from the top of Trump’s towering Ferris wheel, revealing thin crowds below.

Oh, and the food really is that overpriced.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled to scrap a key protection and cement President Donald Trump’s power over independent agencies.

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.