Trump Just Won A 91-Year Supreme Court Battle: ‘This Is Historic’

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a historic victory for President Donald Trump last week, ruling 6-3 that presidents may remove officials from independent federal agencies without being blocked by decades-old firing protections created by Congress.

The decision gives Trump the authority to remove Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic appointee whose case became a major test of whether unelected agency officials can be insulated from the president’s constitutional authority.

In reaching its decision, the Court overturned its 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, ending a precedent that had long allowed Congress to shield certain executive branch officials from at-will removal.

The ruling is expected to reshape the federal bureaucracy. According to The Hill, it could affect independent agencies overseeing labor relations, federal employment, workplace discrimination, consumer protection, aviation safety, financial regulation, and other major areas of government power.

Commentator Ben Dyke called the ruling a “bombshell,” adding, “This is historic.”

He also argued that the Court’s conservative majority was right to return constitutional authority to the president, who leads the Executive Branch and should not be blocked by Congress from exercising executive power.

“If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

The decision is expected to affect roughly two dozen multimember independent agencies across the federal government. Going forward, presidents will have broader authority to replace commissioners and board members with officials who support their elected agenda.

For constitutional conservatives, that is the point. The president is the only nationally elected officer charged with executing federal law. If agency officials can ignore or resist the president while exercising executive power, then voters lose control over the government they elected.

The liberal justices saw it very differently.

“The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, according to The Hill.

“It is a power, however, that neither the People, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him,” their dissent continued.

“In granting the President this unbridled authority, the Court upends its precedent, misconstrues our history, and sheds any pretense of judicial modesty,” the dissent added.

But the dissent clashes with the plain text of the Constitution.

As Dyke noted, Article II begins with a clear command: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

That language does not vest executive power in independent commissions, career bureaucrats, or agency heads protected from accountability. It vests that power in the president.

Dyke argued that the Founders intended the president to control the Executive Branch, not merely supervise it from a distance while officials created by Congress slow-walk, resist, or ignore his policy direction.

Sotomayor read her dissent aloud from the bench, a step justices often take when they want to emphasize strong disagreement.

For years, conservative legal scholars and advocacy groups have argued that Humphrey’s Executor wrongly limited the president’s authority over the Executive Branch and distorted the separation of powers. In several recent cases, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority had already narrowed the 1935 precedent before formally overturning what remained of it.

Trump celebrated the decision in a Truth Social post.

“This Decision was long sought by United States Presidents, dating all the way back to the 1930s,” he wrote.

“It is such an Honor to be the sitting President who won this Historic and Unprecedented Ruling, one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers,” he added.

After returning to the White House, Trump set the stage for the showdown by removing leaders of several independent federal agencies despite statutory protections against dismissal.

Those officials largely won in lower courts, which were still bound by Humphrey’s Executor. But the Supreme Court has the authority to revisit and overturn its own precedents, and the conservative majority has now done exactly that.

The ruling is more than a win for Trump. It is a major blow to the permanent administrative state.

For decades, Washington’s unelected bureaucracy has operated with enormous power and limited accountability. This decision restores a basic constitutional principle: executive power belongs to the elected president, not to insulated officials who answer to no one.

Voters elect a president to govern. They do not elect independent commissions to quietly block the agenda they voted for.