Supreme Court poised to gut century-old law to expand Trump's power: legal analyst

The Supreme Court is expected to gut a century-old legal precedent and expand Trump's power over independent agencies, per a legal expert.

Lisa Graves, a legal investigative researcher and Chief Justice John Roberts biographer, warned in a recent piece about how SCOTUS will rule in Trump v. Slaughter later this month. She fears the court will overturn Humphrey's Executor, the 1931 precedent that bars presidents from firing Federal Trade Commission commissioners without cause.

"This is a choice—an illegitimate one—not a necessity or requirement of the law, no matter what John Roberts and his fellow Republican appointees on the Supreme Court may claim," Graves wrote. "Their edict will be dressed up in the language of 'separation of powers,' but that is merely a costume for this extraordinary power grab."

The Trump v. Slaughter case stems from Trump's firing last year of Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, the FTC's two Democratic commissioners. Lower courts initially reinstated Slaughter, but the Supreme Court intervened through its shadow docket to keep her off the commission while the case proceeded, according to Graves.

Trump's case for firing the two commissioners was based on the unitary executive theory, and claims that all executive power "vests" in him, allowing him to "fire anyone in the executive branch at any time for any reason or no reason at all," Graves explained.

The Supreme Court ruling in Trump's favor would uphold that claim. She pointed to real-world consequences, noting that the FTC has dropped more than three dozen merger investigations since Slaughter's firing, including into a $32 billion acquisition by Google of the startup Wiz.