The Supreme Court is signaling it may be ready to end nearly a century of bureaucratic independence, in what could become the most consequential reassertion of presidential authority since the New Deal.

During explosive oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, a case challenging whether President Donald Trump can remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission, Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered a forceful rebuke to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — a sharp exchange that captured the deep constitutional divide at the heart of the case.

The dispute centers on the 1935 precedent Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which created the modern “independent agency” framework and limited the president’s ability to remove federal officials.

For decades, that ruling has allowed commissions like the Federal Reserve, FTC, SEC, and NLRB to operate as semi-autonomous bodies, often pursuing regulatory agendas at odds with elected administrations.

But the Court’s conservative majority now appears ready to declare that system unconstitutional.

Justice Jackson pressed the Trump administration’s legal team with a heated question: “I don’t understand why the president gets to control everything and outweigh Congress’s authority and duty to protect the people!”

 

Kavanaugh immediately cut through the argument with a pointed rejoinder that crystallized the constitutional issue. “When both houses of Congress and the President are controlled by the same party,” he said, “they create a lot of these so-called ‘independent’ agencies — or extend current ones — precisely to thwart future presidents of the opposite party.”

The exchange underscored two starkly opposing visions of executive power. Jackson framed her concern as one of congressional oversight, while Kavanaugh warned that such arrangements amount to political entrenchment — a way for the party in power to handcuff future administrations.

Legal observers described Kavanaugh’s remarks as an “intellectual pummeling” of the DEI-appointed justice’s argument, exposing what conservatives view as a structural assault on Article II of the Constitution.

Justice Neil Gorsuch signaled that the Court’s patience with that arrangement has run out.

“Maybe it’s a recognition that Humphrey’s Executor was poorly reasoned and that there is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government,” Gorsuch said, echoing sentiments shared by several of the Court’s conservative justices.

Legal analysts say the Court’s tone suggests it may be prepared to overturn the 90-year-old precedent outright.

Doing so would restore direct presidential control over agency leadership and dismantle the legal fiction of “quasi-legislative” and “quasi-judicial” power that has enabled bureaucrats to operate outside the executive chain of command.

The ideological clash on display Monday reflects broader political fears in Washington. Democrats and radical commentators have warned that overturning Humphrey’s Executor could lead to an “imperial presidency.”

But conservatives argue that such rhetoric masks the true concern — a loss of unelected power. “Independent agencies have allowed Congress to outsource controversial decisions and then blame the President for the results,” one constitutional attorney told reporters. “Overturning Humphrey’s ends that game.”

The Trump v. Slaughter arguments made clear that the conservative majority views the precedent as incompatible with modern governance. Even the more cautious justices appeared reluctant to defend the idea that executive officers can exercise power the President cannot oversee.

“The Constitution vests all executive power in the President,” Kavanaugh said during one exchange. “That’s not a partisan principle — that’s the structure of the Republic.”

The potential impact of the Court’s ruling could be enormous. Overturning Humphrey’s Executor would allow presidents to remove commissioners and agency heads at will, effectively bringing once-independent regulators under direct executive control.

It would mark the end of the bureaucratic “fourth branch” that has dominated Washington policymaking since the Roosevelt era.

For legal conservatives, this moment has been decades in the making — a final showdown over whether the federal bureaucracy serves the Constitution or the other way around.

The oral arguments made clear that a majority of justices, led by Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, see the question not as political but structural: who actually runs the executive branch — the elected President or unelected regulators?