SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES — The Supreme Court signaled Monday that it may finally acknowledge what the Constitution has stated for centuries: the president controls the executive branch.
During oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, a majority of justices seemed receptive to the Trump administration’s defense of President Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, an FTC commissioner appointed by Democrats. The case tests presidents’ power to remove members of so-called “independent agencies” and could lead the Court to overturn Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S. (1935), which previously upheld statutory limits on presidential removal authority. Yes, that old precedent might be on the chopping block — long overdue, some would say.
U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer framed his argument around the unitary executive theory: the president must have real control over the executive branch. Sauer bluntly urged that Humphrey’s “must be overruled,” calling it “a decaying husk with bold and particularly dangerous pretensions.” He echoed Justice Thomas’s warning from Seila Law that Humphrey’s threatens the constitutional structure and, by extension, the liberty of the American people — especially as the federal bureaucracy grows.
Unsurprisingly, the Court’s Republican appointees generally warmed to Sauer’s position, while the Democratic appointees made clear they were not persuaded. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan voiced concerns about how much power a president would wield if the Court embraced Sauer’s theory, worrying about presidential authority over rulemaking and other powers that Congress has delegated to the executive. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson mounted a vigorous defense of the “experts” who currently manage many of those functions.
Slaughter’s attorney, Amit Agarwal, countered that the president’s duty to execute the law doesn’t give him a license to break it. He argued that multi-member commissions have enjoyed some removal protections since the founding era and warned the Court against abandoning the precedent on which modern governance relies. In short: don’t toss out centuries of practice on a whim — let Congress and the political branches work it out.
But the Court’s conservative justices pressed hard for clarity. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas sought definitive answers, and Justice Samuel Alito challenged Agarwal to explain the practical limits of his position. Alito even walked through hypotheticals — Cabinet departments like Veterans Affairs, Interior, Labor, EPA, Commerce, and Education — to probe whether those agencies could be run by multi-member commissions beyond presidential removal. That’s a fair question: if the president can’t control who runs key departments, who does?
Agarwal noted that many executive departments exercise conclusive authorities — criminal investigations, national security, foreign relations — and agreed that some functions might warrant a different structure. He conceded that Congress and the president, acting together, could craft multi-member expert bodies for particular tasks. So he wasn’t asking the Court to categorically rule out that possibility — just to preserve the longstanding protections for commissions.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett expressed skepticism about abandoning history, pressing Slaughter’s counsel on the lack of historical grounding for his position. Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised concerns that if commissioners enjoyed unchecked removal protections, they could thwart future presidents by extending terms or creating new agencies — a recipe for bureaucratic entrenchment. And Justice Neil Gorsuch pierced Agarwal’s logic at one point, suggesting Humphrey’s might be poorly reasoned and questioning whether the Constitution really allows a quasi-fourth branch of government.
The oral arguments made one thing clear: a majority of the Court appears inclined to restore the president’s control over the executive branch — and to rein in decades of decisions that have insulated bureaucrats from presidential accountability. That prospect terrifies the critics and excites the constitutionalists. Either way, the Court is taking up a fundamental question about who ultimately runs the executive branch.
If the justices follow through, the result would reaffirm presidential responsibility and accountability — and that’s a win for democratic governance and the people the president is elected to serve. Ending on a positive note: recognizing that presidents run the executive branch would strengthen clarity, accountability, and the constitutional balance the founders intended.
