Can the President Fire Anyone He Wants?

Grant: Power Check, welcome back. Grant here. Maya: And I'm Maya. Speaker 3: Okay, so we picked a week. Grant: We really did. Speaker 3: The Supreme Court is sitting on what might be the biggest separation of powers ruling in decades, and the clock is running out on this term. Grant: Right; so the case is Trump v. Slaughter, and ABC News is reporting the court looks likely to side with Trump, which would effectively end the independence of bipartisan agencies. Full stop. Speaker 3: The whole structure, not just the FTC. Grant: That's the part that got me. We're talking the NLRB, the EEOC, the SEC, agencies that have operated at arm's length from the White House for decades. Speaker 3: And potentially the Federal Reserve-that one has its own case, Trump vs. Cook, running in parallel. Grant: Yeah, yeah, the Fed question is its own animal, and we'll get into exactly why. Speaker 3: And, plot twist, the court actually tipped its hand back in September before a single word of the opinion was written. Grant: A stay order that told you everything you needed to know. Speaker 3: Exactly; so today we're tracing this from the nineteen thirty five Humphreys Executor decision all the way through oral argument last December: Roberts, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh-the actual quotes Speaker 4: Yes. Speaker 3: from that room are something. Grant: And then we assess whether anything in the current oversight system can hold once the structural insulation is gone. That's the check or no check question at the end. And Maya and I land in pretty different places on it. Speaker 3: We do. Grant: A ruling could drop any day now. Code open starts right here. Sure pass! Speaker 3: March eighteenth twenty twenty five, Rebecca Slaughter, sitting FTC commissioner, term running through twenty twenty nine, gets an email, and the key line reads, "Her continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with this Administration's priorities." That's it. No misconduct, no neglect, just "bye. Grant: And here's what makes that so striking: the FTC Act has been on the books from nineteen fourteen—one hundred eleven years. It says commissioners can Speaker 5: only be removed for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. Grant: Errors can only be removed for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance; Trump didn't claim any of those, not even close. Speaker 3: He didn't even try to check those boxes. Grant: Trump invoked Article II, the constitutional authority of the presidency, full stop. Speaker 3: OK, so get this. SCOTUSblog reported that Trump originally nominated Slaughter back in 2018. He fired someone he put there himself. Grant: The math on that doesn't quite work for the bad actor framing, does it? Speaker 3: Not even a little. And she's not alone, by the way-he fired another Democratic commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, the same day. Grant: Right. Two commissioners, two emails, zero stated clause, and both of them sued. Speaker 3: They did. And this is the part that should stop people cold: two separate courts ruled the firings illegal. A federal district judge in July said Trump's removal Speaker 5: of Cordray was illegal. Speaker 3: Its removal was unlawful and without legal effect the DC Circuit agreed two to one. Grant: two courts, two rulings illegal. Speaker 3: And then? Grant: Chief Justice Roberts issues a stay, Slaughter out anyway while the case climbs to the Supreme Court. ABC News reported the court now looks likely to side with Trump, potentially rolling back ninety years of precedent. Speaker 3: Ninety years? Grant: Yeah, and the ruling's expected before end of June, so we're basically watching Speaker 5: the end of the world. Grant: Watching it happen in real time. Speaker 3: You know what gets me? It's not just the firing, it's that the system, the courts, the statute, all said no, and she still lost her seat while the legal fight played out. Grant: That's the thing about a stay: the president acts, the lower courts push back, and then the Supreme Court essentially says, "hold on, we'll sort this out." Except holding on means the firing stands in the meantime. Speaker 3: So the law said he couldn't do it, two judges agreed. And he did it anyway. Grant: Which raises the obvious question, what exactly was supposed to stop this, what legal architecture was Congress counting on when they wrote that nineteen fourteen statute? Because clearly something broke down. Speaker 3: Or overruled and the answer to that goes back a long way. Grant: So the legal wall that was supposed to stop this, it's 91 years old. And the crazy part, it started at the exact same agency. Speaker 3: Same agency, same fight. Nineteen thirty three FDR fires an FTC commissioner named William Humphrey. No misconduct, no neglect, just "our policy views don't line up. Grant: Sound familiar? A little! FDR literally wrote Humphrey a letter saying, "I do not feel that your mind and my mind go along together. Humphrey said, "No, thanks." Roosevelt fired him anyway. Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay. So the FTC Act already said commissioners could only be removed for inefficiency, neglect, or malfeasance. FDR just ignored that. Grant: Completely, and a Supreme Court unanimously nine to zero said Congress gets to design agencies that way. The logic was that the FTC wasn't exercising pure executive power. It was acting more like quasi legislative. quasi judicial; expert commissioners; bipartisan; staggered terms,--Congress wanted it insulated from whoever won the last election. Speaker 6: Mm hmm. Speaker 3: Right, and that framework became the legal foundation for roughly two dozen independent agencies that exist today-the NLRB, the SEC, the FEC-all built on that same logic. Grant: Your retirement savings run through agencies protected by Humphrey's Executor-the labor rights in your employment contract. Same thing. Speaker 3: Oh, that hits different when you say it like that. This is an abstract constitutional theory; it's the structure behind agencies that actually regulate your job and your money. Grant: Exactly; which is why Seila Law in twenty twenty was such a signal: the Roberts Court struck down removal protections for the CFPB's single director. The majority recast Humphrey's as a narrow exception, not a broad green light for agency independence. Speaker 3: Wait, so five years before Slaughter was ever fired, the court was already shrinking the space that protects agencies like the FTC? Grant: The Roberts Court explicitly said, look at what the actual agency does, not just the label on the door. And SCOTUSblog flagged something interesting in Slaughter's explainer: Roberts himself raised a footnote question in Scalia law asking whether the nineteen thirty five FTC's powers were even accurately described in that original ruling. Wow! Speaker 3: Hmm, so the ground work was already being laid. Grant: made. Maya: The case against Humphrey's Executor wasn't born in 2025. The court spent years narrowing it before anyone made the move this administration made. Grant: And now it goes from doctrine on paper to six justices in a room. The oral argument is where this either survives or gets dismantled out loud. Maya: That's the room we're walking into next. Okay, so the December eighth oral argument, wild from the first minute. Grant: The quotes coming out of that room did the work for us. Maya: Roberts opened things up by calling Humphrey's Executor-and I'm going to read this exactly-"a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was. Grant: That's a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, on the record-not exactly a signal he's inclined to preserve it. Maya: To be fair, Roberts has a point embedded in there. His argument is that the nineteen thirty five FTC had almost no executive power. It was basically an investigative body. The modern FTC sets policy, brings enforcement, issues rules-that's a genuinely different animal. Grant: I hear the logic. But Sotomayor went straight at Solicitor General Sauer. Bauer with something that stopped the room. She said, You're asking us to destroy the structure of government. Maya: And Kagan backed that up. She flagged that a ruling for Trump puts massive, unchecked, uncontrolled power in the executive branch. Speaker 3: Wow. Maya: Those two weren't wrong on the stakes. Grant: Neither were wrong, and yet the stay tells you everything. The Supreme Court granted it back in September 2025, before the oral argument. before any ruling, meaning Slaughter was already out the door while the case was still live. Maya: That's the part I keep coming back to. Two courts said the firing was illegal. Roberts issues a stay. The full court follows. So the stay mechanism itself functioned as the outcome before the opinion was even written. Grant: Right, and that's not nothing, institutionally speaking. So then there's Kavanaugh, and this is where it gets genuinely complicated. Maya: He's the swing on scope, not on the core ruling. Grant: Exactly; he told Sauer directly: I share concerns about what your position does to the Federal Reserve." The Solicitor General's response was basically, "The Fed is sui generis, a one of a kind institution with a separate historical tradition. Maya: Which is an argument, not an answer. Kavanaugh was clearly not satisfied; he pressed the point on how you draw that line with any precision. Grant: And that's the thread hanging out here, Grant-because it's not just the Fed, it's which agencies fall inside the new rule and which ones get carved out. Maya: Sadly the FTC, the NLRB, the EEOC, all of them are in different structural positions. The Fed question is actually being argued in a separate linked case called Trump versus Cook. Grant: So the court is running two removal cases simultaneously? Maya: In parallel. And whether they carve out the Fed and how, probably shapes the scope of everything else. Grant: That map of which agencies survive and which don't-that's where we go next. So we've mapped the legal architecture, now let's talk about what actually breaks. Ward and Smith identified the agencies directly in the crosshairs: the NLRB, EEOC, FERC, SEC and FTC, five agencies that regulate your job, your energy bill, your retirement account. Maya: And the staggered terms at all of them exist for a reason. FERC commissioners serve five-year terms, no more than three from one party. Barry, that's not bureaucratic tidiness. That's institutional memory deliberately designed to outlast any single administration. Grant: Okay, so get this. Imagine you file an NLRB complaint today. Your case is moving. Then the board's members get swapped because the White House changed. Does your case survive? Does anybody at the agency even remember why it mattered? Maya: The math on that is not great for the worker. Grant: Hmm. Maya: And I get the accountability argument. Voters elect a president, the president should steer policy. That's not wrong on its face. Grant: Hmm. Maya: But what we're describing isn't accountability through elections, it's personnel turnover as policy. Those are very different things. Grant: Right, right. Now, the Fed, because Kavanaugh basically drew a hard line there, and it's a separate case entirely. Maya: Trump versus Cook. Trump tried to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in August 2025, citing mortgage fraud. Mortgage fraud allegations she flatly denied, SCOTUSblog reported the January oral argument showed all nine justices skeptical, Grant: Wow. Maya: including conservatives. Grant: All nine? Maya: Kavanaugh told Solicitor General Sauer directly, quote, that would weaken if not shatter the independence of the Federal Reserve. And then he went further, what goes around comes around. A future Democratic president removes every Trump Fed appointee on day one. Grant: Yeah! Kavanaugh doing the political math out loud in open court. Maya: History's a pretty good guide," was his actual line, and Jerome Powell was sitting in the chamber listening to all of it. Grant: That is a lot of pressure to sit through. Maya: And slightly. Grant: So Slaughter opens the door wide for these agencies; but the court carves out the Fed as something structurally distinct. Its own historical tradition going back to nineteen thirteen, the court has already said so in writing. Maya: And no president before Trump had even tried to fire a Fed governor, not one. Slaughter's lawyer made that point directly, from Woodrow Wilson to Joe Biden, an unbroken line. Grant: That context lands differently when you hear it out loud. Switching gears, because this ruling doesn't land alone. Loper Light in 2024 already stripped away court deference to agencies' own legal interpretations. Now Slaughter strips the personnel protection. Speaker 4: protection. Two hits from two directions. Maya: That's the cumulative squeeze. Agencies lose the legal shield on one side, lose the leadership stability on the other. Congress can still build these agencies, but can they actually run independently? That's the question we're sitting with. So, 'Loper Light' last year. Courts no longer defer to agencies on legal interpretation. Now Slaughter removes the personnel protection. Two hits, Speaker 6: Wow. Maya: same target. Grant: Think of it as a pincer: pre-Loper light, an agency could write a rule, a court would challenge it, and the agency's reading of the statute got the benefit of the doubt. That presumption is gone. Courts call the shots on what the law means. Maya: And now, if a president disagrees with the direction a commissioner is taking, he can just swap them out. Grant: Right, so you've lost the deference shield on the rules side. side, and the 10 year protection on the people side, simultaneously. Okay, so get this: Congress techn Technically, Congress creates these agencies; Congress sets their mandates. Maya: Absolutely, the statutory authority doesn't disappear. Grant: But does that actually mean anything if the White House controls who runs them day to day? Maya: That's the real question. ABC News put it plainly. The case could effectively end the independence of roughly 20 dozen bipartisan agencies Congress designed to be insulated from presidential pressure. You can write the mandate in law, you can't insulate the person executing it anymore. Grant: So the accountability argument shifts. Supporters of this ruling say voters elect the president, president controls the agencies, that's democratic accountability. Maya: And the counter is that the whole point of an independent NLRB or FERC was to separate technical regulatory judgment from election cycles; you wanted experience to outlast administrations. Grant: Neither side is wrong; that's what makes it a genuine structural fight, not a partisan one. Maya: Yeah, I don't think anyone's purely the hero here. Grant: No; so Congress can still act, courts can still review. But when the opinion lands, watch the scope. Narrow means FTC commissioners specifically. Broad means... Maya: Humphrey's Executor's gone; every independent agency flips. Grant: And that gap? That's exactly where we're taking this next. Maya: All right. Check or no check, that's what we're here to settle. Grant: Or not settle, which honestly might be the more honest answer. Maya: Fair. So my read, the structural check isn't gone. Congress can still write new removal protections. Courts can still review whether a for-cause determination is actually valid. Future presidents inherit the same tool. The mechanism shifted toward the elected branch, but it didn't disappear. Grant: Okay, but Grant, what Check exactly? The Check was the installation, the Ninety years of accumulated independence that agencies built on top of Humphreys. You can't legislate that back overnight. Maya: That's a real tension, yeah. Grant: If the court removes the structural protection, there's no after-the-fact congressional fix that restores what the NLRB or the EEOC spent decades building. The Check. In this case was the precedent itself. Maya: Which brings us to the thing listeners should actually watch for when the opinion drops and ABC News flag this, too: Scope. Grant: Scope right. Maya: Narrow ruling: FTC Commissioners exercise executive power, therefore removable at will. That's a surgical cut. Broad ruling: Humphreys is fully overruled and every independent agency is on the table. Those are not the same world. Grant: Those are really not the same world; and at argument Alito was actually asking Solicitor General Sauer how you even craft a ruling that reserves judgment on agencies that might not come before the court for years. Maya: Which tells you the court is at least aware it's holding a live wire. Grant: Right. Aware of it maybe. Gripping it anyway. Maya: Yeah, so check or no check? Grant: My verdict: partial check at best. The tools exist on paper. But removing the structural insulation and calling that accountability assumes the next Congress is motivated to restore independence. That's a political bet, not a constitutional guarantee. Maya: Mine is, "check is strained but intact, if the ruling stays narrow." A broad opinion and we're in genuinely new territory for two dozen agencies. Grant: So watch the scope when it lands-that's the actual verdict. Maya: Could be any day now, given the term ends around July. All right, that's a wrap on this one. And honestly, the moment that stuck with me was Maya reading that firing email, inconsistent with administration priorities. Four words that put ninety years of legal architecture on trial. Grant: And what I keep coming back to is the retirement savings point. Your NLRB, your EEOC, your FTC, these aren't abstractions. They're the infrastructure behind real paychecks and real protections. Maya: The core question this episode kept circling is when the structural insulation is gone, what's left? I said maybe a narrow ruling holds something together. Maya's not sure the math works that way. Grant: Jury's still out on that one. Literally. We expect the ruling before end of June. Maya: If this episode helped something click for you, share it with one person who cares. Follow us wherever you listen. Drop a review. It genuinely helps others find the show. Grant: Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week on Power Check.