To understand the profound constitutional earthquake of the modern era, one must recall the tragic sacrifices of the late nineteenth century. President James A. Garfield was assassinated by a delusional partisan who believed he was entitled to a government job under the corrupt “spoils system.” Garfield’s successor, Chester A. Arthur, shocked the nation by abandoning the political machine that created him, signing the Pendleton Civil Service Act to establish a government based on merit rather than absolute personal loyalty. For nearly a century and a half, the United States relied on the principle that the government belongs to the people, and that independent agencies and civil servants must be insulated from the partisan whims of any single executive.
Today, that bedrock principle has been shattered. In a pair of breathtaking decisions—Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook—a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court has fundamentally dismantled the independence of the federal administrative state. By embracing the “unitary executive theory,” the Court has effectively authorized a return to the 19th-century spoils system, decreeing that a president has the nearly unchecked power to purge the government of independent watchdogs and replace them with partisan loyalists. Yet, in a glaring display of judicial hypocrisy, the Court simultaneously carved out a bizarre exception for the institution that controls their own stock portfolios: the Federal Reserve.
The Destruction of Independent Agencies: Trump v. Slaughter The first case, Trump v. Slaughter, revolves around the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an agency Congress created as an independent body to regulate economic competition and protect the public from corporate monopolies. To shield the FTC from political interference, Congress mandated that its commissioners could only be removed by the president for cause—specifically for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office”. This protection was famously upheld by the Supreme Court 90 years ago in the landmark 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which affirmed that Congress could insulate agencies that exercised “quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial” functions.
In March 2025, President Donald Trump brazenly ignored that 90-year-old precedent. He fired FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter without cause, sending an email stating that her continued service was “inconsistent with my administration’s priorities”.
When the case reached the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a 6-3 conservative majority, overruled Humphrey’s Executor and upheld Slaughter’s termination. The Court embraced the “unitary executive theory,” a doctrine championed by the Federalist Society, which posits that Article II of the Constitution vests all executive power in the president alone, meaning he must have absolute control to fire anyone who works under him. Roberts argued that because the FTC enforces laws and regulates the economy, it wields executive power, and thus its commissioners must be removable at will so the president can ensure the faithful execution of the laws.
The implications of this ruling are catastrophic. As former Commissioner Slaughter warned, the decision makes it possible for presidents to “fire watchdogs who won’t put politics over principle and replace them with lap dogs”. Congress has created dozens of independent, multi-member agencies—such as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—to protect Americans from workplace discrimination, unsafe products, and corporate abuse. Following the Slaughter decision, the term “independent agency” is an oxymoron; these commissioners are now effectively at-will employees who must rubber-stamp the president’s agenda or face immediate termination.
The Bespoke Exception: Trump v. Cook If the Slaughter decision was a chilling assertion of absolute executive power, the Court’s ruling on the very same day in Trump v. Cook exposed the arbitrary, “vibes-based” nature of the modern Supreme Court.
In August 2025, President Trump attempted to fire Lisa Cook, the first African-American woman to serve as a governor on the Federal Reserve Board. Displeased that the supposedly independent Federal Reserve, led by Chairman Jerome Powell, would not manipulate interest rates at his command, Trump used Cook as a trial run. Based on a social media post from a political ally accusing Cook of mortgage fraud, Trump declared via Truth Social that Cook must resign, and subsequently issued a letter firing her.
When Cook sued, the Supreme Court was forced to decide whether the president could instantly decapitate the leadership of the nation’s central bank. In a 5-4 decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts (joined by conservative Justice Kavanaugh and the Court’s three liberals), the Court ruled that Cook could remain in office while she disputed the allegations, shielding the Federal Reserve’s traditional independence.
But how could the Court rule that the president has absolute power to fire the head of the FTC, but not the Federal Reserve? Roberts justified this whiplash by claiming the Federal Reserve is a “uniquely structured quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the first and second banks of the United States”. As dissenting Justice Elena Kagan sharply pointed out, this “bespoke Federal Reserve exception” was fabricated out of thin air, relying on a stray footnote from a previous case just to reassure the financial markets. As Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence explicitly admitted, stripping the Fed of its independence could spark “turmoil in the US and world economies”—proving that the Court was willing to protect the institution that safeguards their retirement portfolios, while sacrificing the agencies that protect everyday workers and consumers.
The Echoes of Garfield and Arthur The Supreme Court’s demolition of independent agencies is intimately connected to the tragedies of the Garfield and Arthur administrations. By decreeing that the president possesses the unmitigated power to remove executive branch officers at will, the Court has placed a target on the back of the modern civil service. In her scathing dissent in Slaughter, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the majority’s ruling says nothing about the future of the hundreds of thousands of career civil servants who exercise executive power on the president’s behalf.
Already, President Trump has embarked on a “scorched earth firing rampage,” terminating nonpartisan public servants, inspectors general, and military leaders who refuse to bend the knee to his political demands. By legally validating the unitary executive theory, the Supreme Court has laid the groundwork to undo Chester A. Arthur’s Pendleton Act, threatening to plunge the United States back into the corrupt, dysfunctional morass of the spoils system where government jobs are traded for personal loyalty rather than merit.
Conclusion The decisions in Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook reveal a terrifying reality about the modern judicial and executive branches. The Supreme Court has systematically rewritten the Constitution to consolidate immense, monarchical power within the presidency—except when doing so would crash the stock market. By stripping Congress of its ability to create independent watchdogs, the Court has given the president free rein to install unqualified loyalists and to weaponize federal agencies against his political enemies. We have forgotten the bloody lessons of President Garfield’s assassination, and as the safeguards of a professional, independent government are torn down, the American public is left entirely at the mercy of an unrestrained executive.