Supreme Court Empowers Presidency, Weakens Congress
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- The Supreme Court stripped Congress of key powers this term, ruling it cannot insulate regulators from the president, limit political parties' coordinated spending, or require race-conscious voting districts.
- Unitary executive theory prevailed as the court let the president fire independent agency heads while preserving FTC powers Congress had granted—a combination Boston University's Jed Shugerman called a "line-item veto."
- Chief Justice John Roberts authored all three major rulings against Trump—blocking emergency tariffs, sparing Fed Governor Lisa Cook, and rejecting his birthright citizenship order—while four justices were nonetheless willing to uphold that birthright order.
- The shadow docket increasingly handled Trump's most contested moves—immigration crackdowns, frozen foreign aid, mass federal worker firings, voting maps, and transgender passport restrictions—often via unsigned, unexplained orders.
- The court permitted Trump to continue withholding $4 billion in congressionally-appropriated foreign aid, which critics called an encroachment on Congress' power of the purse.
- Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett rejected the court's distinction between FTC independence (ended) and Fed independence (preserved) as an unprincipled "contradiction."
- Georgetown Law's Steve Vladeck said the term's real headline is "Supreme Court rules for itself, 6–3," adding that justices use textualism "the way a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not for illumination."
Why it matters: Decisions over people's money, jobs, votes and health are shifting toward the president and nine life-appointed justices, while Congress loses its ability to insulate regulators, cap campaign spending, or enforce Voting Rights Act challenges. Four justices' willingness to overturn birthright citizenship—deemed fringe a decade ago—shows the constitutional ground could shift much further still.
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