type: timeline_event
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Cook (No. 25A312), a case examining presidential removal authority over independent agency officials that closely parallels the December 8, 2025 arguments in Trump v. Slaughter regarding FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. The consolidated cases threaten to overturn Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935), the unanimous 90-year precedent upholding statutory removal protections for independent agencies as constitutional.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the President must have unconstrained removal authority over all executive branch officials because "the president is answerable to the voters" while independent agencies "have no boss." Sauer characterized independent agencies as a "headless, out-of-control fourth branch accountable to no one," seeking broad executive power to fire commissioners at will regardless of statutory good-cause protections enacted by Congress.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson challenged this framing, stating "I really don't understand why the agencies aren't answering to Congress. Congress established them and can eliminate them. Congress funds them and can stop." Her intervention highlighted how the Trump administration and conservative justices systematically ignore congressional authority in their constitutional analysis, treating administrative agencies as purely executive rather than congressionally created entities.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh acknowledged "unaccountable independent agencies raise enormous constitutional and real-world problems for individual liberty" while noting the Court has already "taken great steps" to limit congressional delegations through the major questions doctrine. The arguments signal a coordinated conservative legal campaign to dismantle independent regulatory capacity across multiple doctrinal fronts—removal power, major questions, nondelegation—simultaneously attacking agency independence.
The case represents a fundamental threat to regulatory agencies including the FTC, SEC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, and dozens of others structured with for-cause removal protections. A ruling eliminating these protections would consolidate unprecedented presidential control over economic regulation, financial oversight, and consumer protection, enabling political interference in enforcement actions and policy decisions Congress designed to insulate from partisan manipulation. Decision expected June 2026.