Slaughter Calls on Congress After 6-3 SCOTUS Loss
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Rebecca Slaughter, former FTC commissioner, called on Congress to reassert authority as a coequal branch and use its "power of the purse and power of oversight" to check what she called an "out of control executive."
- Her remarks came after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that President Trump had authority to fire her last year, expanding presidential power over an independent agency within the executive branch.
- The ruling overturned 91 years of legal precedent set by the 1935 Humphrey's Executor v. United States decision, which originated when President Franklin D. Roosevelt fired FTC Commissioner William Humphrey, a Coolidge appointee, for opposing the New Deal agenda.
- Trump praised the ruling as a "BIG WIN" on Truth Social, calling it "one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers."
- Slaughter said the ruling does not "end the conversation" about the FTC's role in protecting consumers, and expressed hope a future Democratic president would appoint commissioners using the agency's authority against corporate "cheating and lying."
Why it matters: By overturning Humphrey's Executor, the 6-3 ruling gives the president unchecked authority to fire commissioners of independent agencies like the FTC. Whether that power stays unchecked now hinges on whether Congress uses its remaining tools — purse strings, oversight hearings — to constrain the executive, a fight Slaughter is publicly demanding and Trump is already claiming as a "BIG WIN."
Ask SkimNews
