Supreme Court Signals End to Deep-State Insulation
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears ready to dismantle a 90-year-old New Deal precedent that has long shielded the unelected administrative state from presidential control, in a case that could restore the Constitution’s original design of a strong, accountable executive.
At issue is whether President Trump lawfully removed Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter—and, by extension, whether the 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which sharply curtailed presidential removal power over “independent” agencies, should finally be overruled.
“A Dried Husk”: Even Roberts Sounds Ready to Overturn Humphrey’s Executor
During lively oral arguments, even Chief Justice John Roberts—often the court’s swing vote—dismissed Humphrey’s Executor as a “dried husk,” noting the 1935 decision dealt with an FTC that had “very little if any executive power” compared to today’s sprawling regulatory empire.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer, representing the Trump administration, delivered a forceful defense of democratic accountability: “The modern expansion of the federal bureaucracy sharpens the court’s duty to ensure that the executive branch is overseen by a president accountable to the people.”
In contrast, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that restoring presidential authority would give “absolute power to the president” and “destroy the structure of government.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued that allowing a president to replace experts with “loyalists who don’t know anything” would harm the public.
Sauer countered crisply: “We can have a government that benefits from expertise without being ruled by expertise.”
Conservative Justices Expose the Real Stakes
Republican-appointed justices pressed Slaughter’s lawyer, Amit Agarwal of the left-leaning Protect Democracy, on where Congress’s power to insulate agencies would ever end.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh posed the nightmare scenario of a single-party Congress and White House creating permanent, unaccountable super-agencies with decade-long terms expressly to bind future presidents of the opposing party. Agarwal’s response—that Americans should just trust “political accommodation”—failed to reassure the bench.
Justice Neil Gorsuch cut to the core: “The president is vested with all the executive power. You agree that he has a duty to faithfully execute all the laws?” When Agarwal ultimately conceded the president does not need “plenary power of supervision,” conservative justices appeared unconvinced.
Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky, who attended the arguments, told The Daily Signal afterward: “The conservative justices thought the liberals’ ‘chaos and destruction’ talk was ridiculous.”
“Justice Jackson’s plea for rule-by-experts is the same progressive argument we’ve heard for a century. What we saw today was a fundamental liberal distrust of voters and the democratic process itself.”
A decision favoring President Trump would mark one of the most significant victories for constitutional accountability in generations, finally reining in the unaccountable fourth branch of government and returning power to the only federal official every American votes for: the President of the United States.
