Supreme Court Is About To Give Trump Even More Power

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

Hi it’s Monday, December 8, 2025, you’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller. We need to talk about what’s going down at the Supreme Court today, even though on paper it seems like a bit of a snoozefest, because the consequences of today’s oral arguments and the justices ultimate decision in the case Trump v. Slaughter could have widespread ramifications on longstanding protections of our rights, could lead to dramatic economic instability, and could deeply impact the stability and reliability of all of our elections going forward. I try to avoid being fearmongery on this channel but the potential implications of the court’s decision on this case, if they decide to make a sweeping ruling, kind of make me a bit nauseous. And I think EVERYONE in this country needs to understand what’s going on in this case and what the potential implications are, and it’s a kind of complex area of law that can be really boring and easy to overlook, so grab a cup of something warm and cozy, get your latest craft or mindless task you can do while watching or listening, and settle in, pals, because today we’re talking about how one little boring area of law, known as administrative law, might completely royally fuck us all over in the new year. And just in time for Christmas!!

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Okay so the Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in the case called Trump v. Slaughter. Yes like slaughter as in to kill a pig. Fittingly grotesque for this case and its implications. Slaughter is the last name of one Rebecca Slaughter, a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission or FTC. Slaughter was fired by the Trump administration in March, via an email that said her “continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with the Administration’s priorities.” Now that is a problem, because according to the law, written and passed by Congress way back in 1914, that created the Federal Trade Commission, the President can only fire commissioners for cause, specifically for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” He cannot fire a commissioner willy nilly because he doesn’t like her or she doesn’t align with him politically. He can only fire her for one of those three reasons, for cause. And that’s not what happened here. Saying that her service is “inconsistent with the Administration’s priorities” is not one of the allowed reasons to fire an FTC commissioner. And so Rebecca Slaughter sued the Trump administration to reinstate her to her role.

And now in the last 11 months, Trump has hired and fired a LOT of people, so why do we care so much about this one? Because this is THE test case that the regime was hoping for in order to overturn 90 year old Supreme Court precedent that stands in the way of the central theory of government that the right wing nut jobs running the show in the executive branch all ascribe to: unitary executive theory, a once fringe looney tunes theory that was made main stream because a couple people with Ivy League degrees joined some right wing think tanks that were willing to publish their unfounded theories in official looking ways and push the theory into the mainstream. The idea is that the Constitution and the Founding Fathers actually meant for the President to exercise complete control over the executive branch and that control and power should remain entirely unchecked by the other two branches of government. The reason why this theory has remained fringe up until very recently is because that makes no sense. The constitution and the founders very clearly set up a system of checks and balances between the branches of government so that no one branch was able to have unchecked runaway power like, I don’t know, the king of England they had just fought a war against. But by cherry picking information, using creative word and definition choices, and spinning up a lot of bunk legal theory, a few fringe people have managed to convince a few other fringe people, many of whom have ulterior motives for growing their own power and enforcing their own ideologies, that this whole unitary executive theory thing is valid.

And one of the main thorns in the side of the people like OMB Director Russ Vought and Trump advisor Stephen Miller who vehemently espouse the validity of the unitary executive theory is the so-called administrative state–the body of administrative agencies that has grown exponentially in the last century to execute the laws on behalf of the executive. Everything from the EPA to the FTC to the SEC, those are all agencies, created to execute the laws written by Congress. They are all part of the executive branch. That is where the branch gets its name. The legislative branch, i.e. Congress, writes the legislation, the laws, and the executive branch executes the laws written by Congress, and then the judicial branch adjudicates the resulting issues that arise from that activity, and they interpret what the law says and how it applies to each separate controversy. It is explicitly written in the Constitution that it is the president’s job to make sure that the laws be faithfully executed. Faithfully. Executed. When the laws are executed the president should be faithful to the laws as written. Faithfully executed.

And so the way that works, when you have a HUGE country with 340 million people spread out over more than 2 BILLION acres of land, with a system of 50 different states and numerous other territories, to manage a government comprising of that much space and that many people, in order for the President to be able to faithfully execute all the laws that Congress passes to try to manage all that, Congress, within the laws it passes, gives the President the power to create agencies, regulatory bodies filled with experts who have spent their lives studying the subject matter, and lawyers with specialties in the subject matter, to pass regulations that ensure that the laws written by Congress ARE faithfully executed. So when Congress passes a law saying hey we want to make sure our water stays clean, it empowers a body like the EPA to deal with the details, the individual regulations to ensure the water stays clean, and managing the day to day of trying to enforce the overarching law that created the agency to begin with or that has been entrusted to the agency to manage. THAT is the administrative state, which some have called the 4th branch of government because of how large and powerful it has become, but it technically all lives under the executive branch because they are EXECUTING the laws on behalf of the president.

Within those administrative bodies, Congress has from time to time created some agencies that are meant to be politically insulated, that are dealing with issues so important that Congress intended to shield the agency from any sort of interference from Presidents based on political calculations that could hinder the agency’s ability to do its job. To faithfully. Executive. The laws. As written by Congress. The Federal Trade Commission is one such agency. Its mission is to protect us, the American consumer, from “unfair methods of competition through law enforcement, advocacy, research, and education.” Does it do a good job of this? Frankly no! Frankly we have antitrust laws on the books that no one besides my queen and channel favorite Lina Khan has bothered touching in the decades since Reagan took a hammer to anti-monopoly enforcement in this country. But IN THEORY their role is to protect all of us from unfair trade practices. In order to shield the FTC from the political whim of whomever is in office at any given time, Congress set up the FTC to be headed by a group of 5 commissioners, nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate to serve seven year terms. No more than three can be from the same political party. This means that the commission is bipartisan and, at least in theory, more able to impartially adjudicate issues without a president breathing down their neck and influencing the outcomes to benefit whatever industry or powerful business interest he wants.

And the reason why THIS case, about the FTC and Rebecca Slaughter, is interesting and consequential and was likely hoped and prayed for by this regime when they decided to fire Slaughter earlier this year, is because this exact case was already decided by the Supreme Court 90 years ago in a case called Humphrey’s Executor. In that 1935 case, President FDR fired an FTC commissioner named William Humphrey because FDR determined that the aims of the FTC would be best carried out by personnel of his own choosing–basically FDR wanted to make sure members of the FTC were on board with the New Deal. And that’s important. Because with the current Trump regime, it always goes back to the New Deal. When they say Make America Great Again they’re not thinking about post-world war II prosperity, they’re thinking about pre-New Deal, small government, Gilded Age deregulation. And so what better way to push their agenda and challenge all that has come in the decades since the New Deal than by firing an FTC commissioner with just as flimsy reasoning as FDR had and hoping she sues so that they can challenge the exact scenario that the Supreme Court already decided 90 years ago. Because back then the court found in favor of William Humphreys, the FTC commissioner, who by that point had died and his estate was suing for back pay, hence why the case is called Humphrey’s Executor. Rip William Humphreys you would have hated Trump v. Slaughter. In the 1935 case, the Supreme Court found that Congress was not ambiguous or unclear when it created the FTC as a commission meant to be insulated from political fights and barring the President from removing commissioners except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The court then said “the legislative reports, and the general purposes of the legislation … all combine to demonstrate the Congressional intent to create a body of experts who shall gain experience by length of service—a body which shall be independent of executive authority, except in its selection, and free to exercise its judgment without the leave or hindrance of any other official or department of the government. … And to hold that, nevertheless, the members of the commission continue in office at the mere will of the President, might be to thwart, in large measure, the very ends which Congress sought to realize by definitely fixing the term of office.”

So you can see how this is a separation of powers issue. Congress wrote the law and it says what it says. The President’s job is not to rewrite the laws or determine what the law says, thats the job of the legislative and judicial branches respectively, his job is to make sure the laws are faithfully executed. By going against the express will of Congress and firing someone in a manner he is not allowed to do, he is certainly not upholding his job of faithfully executing the laws, as they are written by Congress. Pretty straightforward. And over most of the last 90 years, lower court after lower court, and the Supreme Court itself, have relied on Humphrey’s Executor when determining the power of the president in interfering with independent agencies. It is one of the key cases you learn in your Administrative Law class in law school. My admin law professor was from I believe Hong Kong and when I think of the case I hear it in my head in her accent, that is how frequently it is brought up in that class. And the Trump regime is arguing in this case that actually Humphrey’s Executor has been wrong this whole time. It was wrong the day it was decided and it’s wrong now and the regime was hoping that Slaughter would bring this case so that the Supreme Court would be given another bite at the apple another opportunity to hear the exact same scenario and overrule itself. Because this Supreme Court under chief justice John Roberts, what do you know, seems really keen to do just that. And even before today’s oral arguments the conservative justices have made that pretty clear in how they’ve handled this case.

The lower courts in this case found in Slaughter’s favor, saying um hello Humphrey’s Executor is directly on point here the President cannot do this it has been established law for 90 years, goodbye. The US district court ordered Trump to reinstate Slaughter to her position at the FTC, the Trump regime appealed that, asking the appeals court to temporary block that lower court order while the case wound its way through court, the appeals court said no, she should be reinstated, because, again, Humphreys Executor, the Trump administration clearly had no likelihood of success arguing that this was somehow different because it’s the exact same case. So then of course the Trump regime through US Solicitor General John Sauer who if you ever listen to oral arguments at the Supreme Court he’s the one with the voice that sounds like 20 grit sandpaper being rubbed against the inside of your ear canal, appealed THAT decision up the big daddy Supreme Court, additionally asking the court to just rush into hearing oral arguments on the merits of the case without allowing the lower courts to make their own decisions, basically saying hey we all know they’re gonna point to Humphreys Executor, might as well just move this along so that you guys can go ahead and overrule yourselves in Trump’s favor per usual. And the Supreme Court stepped in, went against the lower courts and said nope Slaughter’s firing still stands, and yes we’re gonna go ahead and just move forward with the case now instead of waiting for it to get to us under the normal course of events. That in itself indicates the conservative justice’s excitement at the chance to overrule Humphrey’s at least in part. Because it is the typical practice of past Supreme Courts to allow cases to play out in their regular course and to not make emergency docket or shadow docket decisions that completely upend established precedent. That’s not what they did here and that indicates they seriously question the validity of Humphrey’s Executor today and are excited at the chance to review their past work to tweak it to better serve the President.

Because that is ultimately what’s at the heart of the unitary executive theory and the Supreme Court decisions in the last couple years that have concentrated power in the hands of the president: it is all about the President and not the people. The theory is much more concerned with protecting the “constitutional rights” of the president than of all of us. Any attempt to check or balance the president’s power by the other branches of government is an infringement on the President’s constitutional rights. And they try to justify it to all of us by saying that the President represents the will of the people so any unelected agency that attempts to subvert the will of the President is ACTUALLY subverting the will of the American people and we simply cannot have that!!! Which is an argument I’m certain works on Trump’s base because they don’t seem keen on like logical reasoning or critical thinking, but I know my audience and I know you guys are capable of seeing through that flimsy argument. Because it is not the will of some unelected commissioners that is being used against the President. It is the will of Congress, through the laws it writes that creates these commissions, and the commissioners are approved BY CONGRESS, that is what is checking the power of the president, and rightly so based on our clearly established constitutional order. Like there are a LOT of things that are arguable in the constitution, and I frequently argue on this show that putting all your stock in the will of the founders is fucking stupid because they were a bunch of elitist racists like thanks for the starting document but we’ll take it from here I’m not interested in interpreting all laws through the lens of landed white men from the 1700s, that’s fucking stupid. But even if you DO deeply care about being true to exactly what the founders wanted, which many of the conservative supreme court justices claim to, when it suits them, it takes cognitive dissonance and bunk, inept legal arguments based on nothing to try to argue that our constitutional order doesn’t require the President to be subject to checks and balances by Congress and the judiciary. And that Congress doesn’t even more powerfully represent the actual will of the people, because we directly elect them, especially the Representatives, unlike the President who is elected by an electoral college. The Trump regime and all of the proponents of unitary executive theory are willfully lying when they try to argue that is not the case. And it seems like this Supreme Court is ready to use all their many years of ivy league educations and legal experience to take the theory and spin it into believable sounding legal jargon that looks a lot like law but is based on fucking nothing.

Now it could be that the Supreme Court justices take a narrow ruling in this case, and say Humphrey’s Executor as a whole still stands, but the FTC specifically has grown and changed so much in the last 90 years that actually here it is mainly serving an executive function, as opposed to a quasi-legislative or judicial function, and because it is mostly executive, then the President as the head of the executive branch should have full say over hiring and firing. OR the Court could come out and completely overrule Humphrey’s Executor, saying it is actually generally not the case that the President can be barred from hiring and firing anyone in the executive branch at will for whatever reason or no reason, it’s a violation of his constitutional rights and Congress is overreaching its authority. That would be fucking insane. But what do I keep saying? If you think surely they wouldn’t rule that way, that would be so beyond the pale–assume they’ll do it. Assume they’ll do it every time. And maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised if they don’t. But they probably will do the worst possible choice.

And given the Courts excitement about hearing this case, I assume it will be one of those two options meaning I assume they will NOT find in Slaughter’s favor, so it’s really a question of how broadly or narrowly they will rule. But there is the VERY real possibility, that they will rule broadly enough that it will put into question, or answer the question entirely, the independence of all similar agencies. Because if the president can fire a commissioner of the FTC, then he can fire and replace the commissioners at all other multimember independent agencies, the kind Congress attempted to insulate from this exact level of political influence. These agencies touch all aspects of our lives and protect many of our rights and liberties. They include the commission on civil rights, the consumer product safety commission, the national labor relations board, which the court already ruled was not protected from Trump’s will, the national transportation safety board, the securities and exchange commission, and the federal election commission. The federal. Election. Commission. The FEC enforces campaign finance laws and oversees elections. You know, the elections that the Trump regime has been on a mission for the last decade to undermine? Now the FEC doesn’t do a GOOD job of any of this, its leadership is often ineffective and unable to reach decisions because the members are so partisan on either side of the aisle they can’t get anything done, and there are often vacant seats, so like it’s not WORKING. But that is Congress’ job to fix because they’re the ones who write the laws. But my point is, by overruling Humphrey’s Executor, the Supreme Court would open the floodgates for Trump to remove and replace commissioners overseeing everything from safety on our roads to the rights of unions to anti-competitive practices to our elections. And the timing of this all is chilling as well.

Even though the Supreme Court heard oral arguments today, it can take its sweet old time to make its final decision. All decisions for the term have to be finalized and published by June or July of 2026 for this current term. Given the recent history of the court, they’ve been stretching it so probably July. Now they might rush this and come out with a ruling on it in a couple months. Or they might not. This means that it could very well be that the Supreme Court issues an incredibly consequential ruling on Trump’s ability to hire and fire commissioners at will not only in the FTC but also the FEC in July 2026. 4 months before midterms. That’s just enough time to absolutely fuck shit up at the FEC, cause complete chaos, and instate commissioners willing to go down whatever rabbit hole Trump makes up about election fraud moving forward. And you KNOW that the Heritage Foundation or Russel Vought or whatever other creep is behind this scheme already has the list of people at the ready that Trump could name immediately after the ruling comes down to replace commissioners at agencies across the board, especially again at the FEC, so he will exert complete control over agencies that are meant to be independent for a reason, including the one that oversees the money influencing our politics, and could therefore look the other way when it comes to certain candidates and not others, for example, but that also oversees the process of voting. The implications for the stability and trust in the outcomes of all future elections cannot be overstated. And again, I’m not trying to fearmonger it could very well be that the Supreme Court makes a super narrow ruling that ONLY applies to the FTC, which would still suck because we are already monopolized to hell and it will just mean that everything will continue to conglomerate, the wealth will continue to pile into the hands of the 1% while the rest of us get shittier and shittier products and services because there is no competition and we have no other choices. It could JUST be that. But it could also be a hell of a lot worse. And it is, once again, our democracy that will continue to be undermined. Because it will be a president, elected by an electoral college, calling all of the shots with zero say coming from Congress, which is directly elected by the people. What we want doesn’t matter. This is not FOR us. This is for the continued accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of the few and the rest of us will suffer for it. We will just have to wait, potentially until July next year, for the Supreme Court to tell us just how much suffering will come from this case.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from last week about why bombing boats in the Caribbean is definitely a war crime!

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