EDITORIAL: Firing Power — The Dream of an Executive Branch Without Checks and Balances

Maxime Marquette

2026-06-27 15:57:41

How Trump Fired an FTC Commissioner with a Single Email

In March 2025, shortly after returning to power, Donald Trump sent an email to Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission—a woman he himself had appointed during his first term. The message was terse: her presence on the commission was “incompatible” with the administration’s priorities. No grounds for misconduct. No allegations of negligence. A simple declaration of ideological incompatibility. That’s all. That’s enough, argues the Trump administration.

However, the federal law governing the FTC since its creation in 1914 is explicit: a commissioner may be removed by the president only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or misconduct.” Trump did not cite any of these grounds. The lower courts ruled in Slaughter’s favor, citing the 1935 precedent Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. But the Supreme Court, through its “shadow docket”—its emergency orders issued without a full adversarial hearing—immediately suspended these rulings in Slaughter’s favor, effectively barring her from returning to her post until the proceedings are concluded.

Humphrey’s Executor, a 91-Year-Old Constitutional Cornerstone

The decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States is, in the words of Professor Michael Dreeben on LawFare Media, “the cornerstone of independent agencies and the administrative state.” It was handed down in 1935, when Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to remove William E. Humphrey, an FTC commissioner appointed by his Republican predecessor, solely for political reasons. The Supreme Court was unanimous: Congress had the constitutional right to protect certain officials performing “quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial” functions from the political whims of the White House. For nine decades, this decision served as the legal foundation for independent regulation in the United States.

Today, according to numerous legal analysts, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears determined to dismantle this framework. During oral arguments in December 2025, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that Humphrey’s Executor was now nothing more than “a dried-up husk” of what it once represented. This remark was no idle comment: it foreshadowed a potentially devastating ruling for U.S. regulatory independence. According to Octagon AI, prediction markets assigned a 91% probability to a Trump victory in this case.

Roberts describing Humphrey’s Executor as a “dried-up carcass”—that phrase says it all about the mindset of a judicial majority determined to move in a specific direction. I am not judging Roberts on his legal competence, which is indisputable. I am questioning the political choice to erode a nine-decade-old institutional safeguard at the very moment when an unpredictable and authoritarian president occupies the Oval Office. The timing is, to say the least, troubling.

The Theory of the Unitary Executive: When an Idea from the Reagan Years Becomes a Presidential Weapon

Young Reagan-era Lawyers on the Supreme Court

The theory of the unitary executive did not originate with Trump. It was forged in the corridors of the Reagan-era Department of Justice in the 1980s by a generation of ambitious young lawyers—among them a certain John Roberts, then in his twenties—who were seeking tools to counter decades of Democratic dominance in Congress and federal agencies. The central idea is as simple as it is radical: since the Constitution “vests executive power” in the president through Article II, he holds absolute control over the entire executive branch, including the right to remove any official at his discretion.

Justice Antonin Scalia, in his famous minority opinion in the 1988 case Morrison v. Olson, laid the groundwork for this argument: the Constitution grants the president “the entirety of executive power,” not “a portion of executive power.” According to Reason Magazine, this solitary 1988 opinion “has only grown in stature and influence on the legal right” over the years, and the Trump administration’s brief in the Slaughter case cites it extensively. What was once a marginal dissent is now the official position of a presidency and a judicial majority.

From Reagan to Trump: The Rise of a Controversial Doctrine

The advancement of the unitary executive theory within case law has been steady but gradual. In Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2020, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that an agency headed by a single director “insulated from Presidential control” lacked foundation in historical practice. In that decision, the Court ruled that Trump could fire the CFPB director at will. It was a turning point, but a limited one: the agency itself survived, and the decision concerned only a single director, not a board of commissioners.

The case of Trump v. Slaughter takes a further, potentially decisive step. It asks the Court to subject to presidential discretion not only sole directors but all multi-member commissions—the FTC, NLRB, FERC, and SEC—that is, the entire architecture of independent U.S. regulation. According to Misha Tseytlin, an attorney at Troutman Pepper Locke quoted by Law.com, such a ruling would be “a major earthquake for previously independent agencies.”

What strikes me about this trajectory is its inexorable logic. Each decision paves the way for the next; each victory calls for a broader claim. Trump did not invent this dynamic—he is simply its most aggressive beneficiary to date. The question is not whether this constitutional evolution is desirable in theory. The question is whether it is desirable now, with this man, at this precise moment in American history.

The Cook Case: Targeting the Federal Reserve, Striking at the Heart of the Global Economy

A Firing Announced on Social Media

In the summer of 2025, Donald Trump attempted to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board and the first Black woman to hold that position, via a letter posted on social media. The reason given: allegations of mortgage fraud involving documents related to a loan taken out before her appointment to the Fed, allegations made by Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Cook strongly denied any wrongdoing. Evidence obtained by NBC News appears to contradict these allegations.

The Federal Reserve Act stipulates that Board governors may be removed only “for cause”—that is, based on tangible evidence of wrongdoing. Cook challenged her dismissal in court, and the courts have blocked her removal pending a final ruling. She continues to serve in her position. But the battle has cost her more than $1.2 million in legal and security fees, according to an ethics disclosure made public in June 2026 and reported by Reuters—expenses covered largely by nonprofit organizations dedicated to defending democracy.

Why Even Conservatives Are Hesitant to Touch the Fed

The Cook case reveals an interesting rift within the Supreme Court’s conservative majority itself. According to the Los Angeles Times, a majority of six out of nine justices seemed ready, during the January 2026 oral arguments, to block Cook’s dismissal—not out of commitment to a democratic principle, but because allowing the president to control the U.S. central bank’s monetary policy would amount to “blowing up the economy,” to borrow the Brennan Center’s colorful phrasing. The Federal Reserve is a “unique, quasi-private” institution with a historical tradition dating back to the nation’s first banks.

This dichotomy is revealing: the conservative judicial majority supports the expansion of executive power when it serves to deregulate markets, but recoils from presidential takeover that could undermine investor confidence in U.S. monetary stability. It is less a matter of principle than of economic pragmatism. This dividing line—protecting the Fed but abandoning the FTC, the NLRB, or the CFPB—is constitutionally arbitrary. It reveals that even its proponents do not fully believe in the coherence of the theory they are preparing to impose.

Lisa Cook spent more than a million dollars defending her right to a job she had legally obtained—and which no one could accuse her of performing negligently. That figure appalls me. This is not a legal anecdote: it is the real price of institutional resistance in the face of an unscrupulous executive branch. Few civil servants have the resources or networks needed to fight for so long. This is precisely what Trump is counting on: the exhaustion of resistance.

The "shadow docket" as a political weapon: winning even before the verdict

Emergency Orders That Shift the Balance of Power

One of the most troubling aspects of this legal saga is the way the Supreme Court has used its “shadow docket”—those emergency orders issued without a full adversarial proceeding—to allow Trump to fire protected civil servants while the litigation was ongoing. The Court thus effectively authorized the removal of members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and FTC Commissioner Slaughter, long before any decision on the merits was reached.

Justice Elena Kagan, in her dissenting opinions, vehemently denounced this practice: “The emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent prohibits… nor to transfer governmental authority from Congress to the President, thereby reshaping the nation’s separation of powers.” ” In other words, the Court has already granted Trump much of what he is formally seeking, even before officially ruling on the matter. The upcoming ruling in Trump v. Slaughter will merely retroactively legitimize what has already occurred in practice.

Democracy by proxy: when emergency procedures replace debate

Under Trump, and with the complicity of the conservative majority, the shadow docket has become a tool for silent constitutional transformation. Decisions that would normally have required months of deliberation, full hearings, and in-depth opinions are made in a matter of days, often without detailed written reasoning, making any substantive criticism extremely difficult. According to LawFare Media, the Court has used this mechanism to allow a political reality to take hold—an administration that fully controls its agencies—which its formal ruling will merely enshrine.

This is a form of incremental constitutional engineering. First, the president’s unilateral action creates a fait accompli. Next, the lower courts attempt to resist. Then the Supreme Court, via the shadow docket, neutralizes that resistance. Finally, a ruling on the merits validates the entire process. The end result is identical to a constitutional revolution, but it occurred without anyone ever being able to clearly pinpoint a specific moment of rupture. This is the perverse genius of the system: altering the institutional order without ever having to openly take responsibility for it.

I must admit that the mechanics of the shadow docket fascinate me as much as they frighten me. Fascinating because it reveals how the law can be used not to resolve disputes, but to shape reality even before the dispute is resolved. Frightening because it eludes almost all direct democratic control. American citizens do not vote for members of the Supreme Court, and have little recourse to challenge its emergency orders. It is a power exercised behind the scenes by officials appointed for life.

The Myers Precedent and the Long-Running Constitutional Dispute Over Removal

A debate that dates back to the origins of the American Republic

The dispute over the president’s power to remove officials is not a Trumpist invention: it is as old as the Constitution itself. John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers, considered that dismissing a public official for purely partisan reasons would be “harsh and odious,” indicative of an “irritable, hasty, and vindictive temperament.” Yet the Constitution itself is silent on this specific point. According to law professors cited by the Brennan Center, this gap has been “filled since the nation’s earliest years by a cacophony of disagreements and competing positions.”

The 1926 decision in Myers v. United States had recognized broad presidential authority to remove officials performing executive functions. But the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor qualified this precedent by distinguishing between purely executive functions and the “quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial” functions exercised by independent commissions. This distinction helped preserve technical expertise and regulatory continuity beyond electoral cycles. It is precisely this distinction that the Trump administration intends to abolish.

Constitutional Theory Versus the Practical Reality of Governance

The most powerful argument against the theory of the unitary executive is not legal but practical: a modern federal state as complex as the United States cannot function if every change in administration leads to the potential removal of all independent regulators. The expertise accumulated over the years at the SEC, the FTC, the NLRB, and the FERC represents decades of irreplaceable technical knowledge in the areas of financial markets, consumer protection, labor law, and energy. Allowing a president to purge these institutions according to his political preferences amounts to relinquishing the government’s ability to regulate effectively.

Professor Caleb Nelson, quoted by the Brennan Center, offered the most forceful critique: “The ‘Take Care’ clause does not imply that the President must be able to dismiss all executive officials at will, any more than it guarantees the President the ability to imprison officials who do not do as he says.” ” He adds that a strong version of the unitary theory would confer upon the President “more power, I believe, than any sensible person should want to entrust to anyone.”

This constitutional dispute over removal reminds me of a principle I’ve learned through my years of covering international politics: institutions are only as good as their respect—even, and especially, by those who have the power to circumvent them. The U.S. Constitution is a brilliant document, but it is also an incomplete one, full of gaps that successive generations have filled through practice, case law, and institutional good faith. Trump is the man who is systematically testing each of these gray areas.

The Institutional Impact: Fifty Independent Agencies in the Crosshairs

Beyond the FTC and the Fed: The Entire Regulatory State Is Under Threat

A Trump victory in Trump v. Slaughter would not affect only the FTC. It would potentially threaten the independence of some 50 federal regulatory agencies: the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and many others. According to Octagon AI, a pro-Trump ruling “could have repercussions for approximately 50 independent agencies by 2027.”

These agencies are not bureaucratic abstractions. They investigate plane crashes, monitor recalls of dangerous products, arbitrate labor disputes, regulate financial markets, and set food safety standards. Their independence is not a corporatist privilege: it is the necessary condition for them to carry out their missions without being subject to the electoral whims of a president who, tomorrow, might decide not to recall products marketed by his donors.

A Silent Transformation of the American Institutional Order

What is striking about Trump’s strategy is its systematic nature and long-term perspective. It is not simply a matter of dismissing an inconvenient commissioner or a troublesome federal governor. It is about establishing a legal precedent that will allow any future president—whether on the right or the left—to exercise direct political control over the entire federal administration. This dynamic of concentrating executive power extends beyond Trump himself. In terms of institutional legacy, this is perhaps the most enduring risk.

According to LawDork, if the Court overturns Humphrey’s Executor, it will be a “dam-breaking decision that would destroy the very foundation that has allowed government expertise to develop as the federal government has expanded and become more complex—in the fields of economics, but also science, health, security, and more.” This is not incremental reform. It is a structural overhaul of the U.S. government, carried out not through legislation but through the courts, at the behest of an administration whose time in office is, by definition, limited.

Fifty agencies. That number has stuck with me ever since I read it. Fifty agencies that play a role in the daily lives of Americans—the safety of their food, the quality of their water, the fairness of their labor market—potentially subject to the whims of a single man. I don’t know what troubles me more: the extent of this potential power, or the fact that this prospect does not seem to provoke more outrage in the American public debate.

Congress Stripped of Its Powers: A Reversal of the Separation of Powers

The Legislative Branch Powerless in the Face of Executive Demands

The separation of powers is the founding principle of American democracy. The framers in Philadelphia in 1787 designed it precisely to prevent the concentration of excessive power in the hands of a single institution. Congress makes laws, the executive enforces them, and the judiciary adjudicates. Independent agencies were created by Congress precisely because it wished to delegate certain regulatory functions to experts insulated from short-term electoral pressure, while maintaining legislative oversight of their missions and budgets.

The theory of the unitary executive, in its most aggressive form, overturns this logic. It asserts that Congress cannot create truly independent agencies because doing so would encroach on the president’s executive power. But in doing so, it deprives Congress of a tool of governance that it has used for over a century with the courts’ blessing. According to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and other Democratic lawmakers who called out the administration in June 2026, the Trump administration is “gutting independent agencies, blocking Democratic appointments, and filling bipartisan oversight positions with die-hard Trump loyalists.”

Independent Agencies as an Expression of Legislative Will

It is crucial to recall that the Federal Trade Commission was created by Congress in 1914 to protect consumers and prevent anti-competitive practices. The agency’s founding legislation explicitly stipulated that its commissioners could be removed only for cause—precisely to protect them from the influence of large corporations that tended to control successive administrations. The very structure of the FTC was an institutional response to the history of American political corruption in the early 20th century.

By asserting that this statutory protection is unconstitutional, the Trump administration is not defending the president’s original powers: it is challenging Congress’s right to structure its legislative creations as it sees fit. This is a profound rewriting of the American constitutional balance of powers. And as the Brennan Center notes, this reinterpretation has no basis in historical tradition: “The Constitution says that executive power belongs to the president. It does not say that the president can imprison civil servants who refuse to obey him.”

There is something deeply ironic about the fact that advocates of a strong executive branch claim to be upholding an “originalist interpretation” of the Constitution, when the Founding Fathers themselves were deeply divided on this point, as evidenced by the records of the First Congress’s debates. Originalism, in this context, is not historical rigor—it is strategic selection in the service of a predetermined political conclusion. It is an intellectual method that deserves to be called what it is.

The Shadow of Jerome Powell: The White House vs. Monetary Policy

Trump vs. the Fed: A Standoff That Has Lasted for Years

The attempt to fire Lisa Cook cannot be viewed in isolation from a broader context: the simmering war that Donald Trump has been waging against the Federal Reserve since his first term. Trump has repeatedly stated, publicly and on numerous occasions, that he wanted the Fed to lower interest rates and that he considered its chairman, Jerome Powell, to be incompetent. During his first term, he had considered firing Powell but backed down in the face of warnings from the markets. In his second term, he opted for a different strategy: attacking the members of the Fed’s Board of Governors.

Firing Lisa Cook—the first Black woman on the Fed’s board—under pretexts of mortgage fraud that the press has widely deemed implausible amounts to sending a signal to the entire board: tolerating the central bank’s independence comes at a personal cost. If the Supreme Court upholds this approach in the Cook case—even partially—the signal sent to global financial markets would be devastating for the credibility of U.S. monetary policy. Even the most conservative justices, who are generally supportive of expanding executive power, have understood this.

Central Bank Independence as a Bulwark Against Financial Instability

Central bank independence is not a technocratic whim. It is the product of decades of painful experience in countries where governments have used the printing press to finance their political deficits, with catastrophic results for the real economy. The Fed’s credibility in its anti-inflationary mission rests on market participants’ conviction that its decisions are not dictated by the electoral needs of the occupant of the White House.

If Trump had succeeded in firing Cook, then Powell—as he reportedly considered doing, according to sources cited by CNN—and appointing loyalists in their place who were willing to cut rates to boost the economy in the short term ahead of the midterm elections, the consequences for the dollar’s credibility and for the financing of U.S. debt could have been severe. That is why, according to the Los Angeles Times, even the Court’s conservative majority “wanted to preserve the Federal Reserve’s independence”—not out of a love for democracy, but out of financial pragmatism.

I remember covering crises in countries where presidents took control of their central banks. It never ends well. Not for the markets, not for inflation, not for the people. The United States is the heart of the global financial system. If the Fed becomes a political tool, it’s not just America that suffers—it’s the rest of the world, too. Europe, emerging markets, and savers all over the globe. That is the true cost of this presidential “firing power.”

The West Facing the Mirror: When Democracies SOW the Seeds of Their Own Collapse

The American Model Under Pressure, From Within

The West has long held up the American model of institutional checks and balances as a universal example to follow. The separation of powers, an independent judiciary, independent regulation, and freedom of the press—these elements formed the backbone of a system that was actively exported, sometimes by force. Today, this model is cracking from within, under the blows of an administration that explicitly claims the right to concentrate power in the hands of a single individual.

This decline in America’s role as a model has direct geopolitical consequences. Whenever Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, or the Iranian mullahs point to American institutional failings to justify their own authoritarian practices, they now find ample ammunition in the United States’ own legal controversies. The West cannot export liberal democracy if its leading power is itself dismantling it piece by piece. This is a credibility issue, but it is also a fundamental strategic problem.

The United States’ Special Responsibility Toward the Liberal World Order

The United States is no ordinary democracy. It is the de facto guarantor of the post-1945 liberal international order—the security, economic, and normative architecture that enabled Europe to rebuild itself, Asia to develop, and emerging democracies to have a model to follow. This role imposes special responsibilities in terms of institutional coherence. When Washington weakens its own safeguards, it weakens the entire system it is supposed to embody.

Trump may be a “necessary evil” for the West on certain fronts—his firm stance toward China, his support for European rearmament, and his pressure on NATO to ensure that allies shoulder their share of the security burden. But his policy of concentrating executive power poses a direct threat to the values the West claims to defend. We cannot combat the authoritarianism of Beijing or Moscow while allowing a form of unchecked presidentialism—one that borrows its mechanisms—to take root in Washington.

This is the fundamental contradiction of the Trump era that I still cannot fully resolve: how can we support sound American policies—firmness toward China, support for Ukraine, and the rebalancing of alliances—while denouncing the authoritarian drift of domestic institutions? The honest answer is that we must do both simultaneously, even if it’s uncomfortable. We must distinguish between what deserves support and what deserves criticism, without one negating the other. That is the only intellectually defensible stance.

Is the Supreme Court Complicit? The Question of the Judiciary’s Role in Executive Overreach

A conservative court that is moving in the same direction as the executive branch

The U.S. Supreme Court is supposed to be the ultimate check on abuses of executive power. In this case, however, it appears instead to be an actor that actively facilitates the expansion of that power. The majority of the six conservative justices—three of whom were appointed by Trump during his first term—used the shadow docket to allow controversial firings even before ruling on their legality, granted the president near-total presidential immunity for his official acts in a 2024 decision, and seems poised to overturn nine decades of case law protecting regulatory independence.

Legal scholar Noah Feldman, interviewed by NPR in June 2026, put it bluntly: “The power of the presidency has increased significantly over the past decade because of Supreme Court decisions. It seems that strengthening the presidency is a priority for the current court. ” It is no longer a court that arbitrates conflicts of power—it is an institution that deliberately takes sides. Trust in the Court’s institutional impartiality is one of the first casualties of this dynamic.

When the judicial check on executive power becomes a lever of power

The ultimate paradox of the current situation is this: the institutional mechanism meant to limit executive power has itself become the vehicle for its expansion. By allowing Trump to fire protected civil servants even before any decision on the merits has been made, by granting presidential immunity unprecedented in American history, and by paving the way for the abolition of “Humphrey’s Executor,” the Supreme Court is not fulfilling its role as a check on power—it is functioning as a multiplier of power for the executive branch.

Jesse Wegman of the Brennan Center points out that the irony is stark: “The Court is forging its agenda of executive expansion at the very moment the White House is controlled by the most unlawful, erratic, and corrupt president in the nation’s history.” ” One may disagree with this partisan phrasing, but the timing issue it highlights is real: expanding presidential power within the constitutional framework is one thing; doing so while that power is wielded by a figure who challenges the legitimacy of his rivals, attacks the independent press, and normalizes defiance of judicial rulings is quite another.

I find it hard not to conclude that something has fundamentally changed in the relationship between the Supreme Court and the American system of checks and balances. This institution was supposed to be impervious to the political preferences of the moment—that is why its members are appointed for life. But because it has consistently been populated by presidents who selected their nominees precisely on the basis of their ideological leanings, it has become what it was meant to prevent: a political instrument serving a particular vision of power.

Comparative Lessons: What Europe and International Institutions Are Observing

Europe is watching with concern, but also with a certain degree of hypocrisy

The United States’ European partners are observing this institutional drift with growing concern, though not always without a touch of guilt. For some of the dynamics currently unfolding in Washington have already manifested themselves, in different forms, in Hungary, Poland, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe. The concentration of executive power, the takeover of public media, and the undermining of judicial independence—these processes are not unique to the United States. What makes the situation in the United States particularly serious is the global scope of its potential consequences.

International institutions, for their part, are observing in silence but taking note. The Bank for International Settlements, OECD partners, and NATO allies—all are now factoring into their analyses the possibility of a U.S. administration that is less predictable and less constrained by its own institutional structures. The risk premium associated with this uncertainty is already evident in certain moves to diversify global currency reserves away from the dollar. These are not signs of doom and gloom—they are reasonable adjustments in the face of a new political reality.

Democracy is measured by its institutions, not just by its elections

The fundamental distinction between a liberal democracy and an illiberal democracy does not lie solely in the fact of holding elections. It lies in respecting the institutions, checks and balances, and rights that exist between elections. Trump was elected. This confers upon him indisputable democratic legitimacy. But this electoral legitimacy does not give him the right to dismantle the institutions that Congress has built over the course of a century to carry out public functions in a professional, continuous, and impartial manner.

Elections are merely the visible tip of a massive institutional iceberg: freedom of the press, judicial independence, independent regulation, the protection of civil servants from political pressure, and the right of access to information. If these foundations crumble, elections themselves lose their meaning—because they take place in an institutional environment increasingly shaped by those who already hold power. This is the path that many democracies have taken before gradually ceasing to be democracies.

When I hear Trump supporters respond to institutional criticism by saying, “But he was democratically elected,” I always feel the same frustration. Yes, he was elected. So was Orbán. And Erdogan. An election is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for democracy. What makes the difference are the institutions that limit and regulate power between elections. That is precisely what Trump is attacking. And that is precisely what his supporters seem either not to see or to refuse to see.

What Can Still Hold Out: The Counterforces That Remain

The States, Congress, and Civil Society as Lines of Defense

It would be excessively pessimistic to conclude that all is lost for the American institutional balance. Countervailing powers are holding their ground, even under pressure. The states have demonstrated their ability to challenge federal policies in court and to maintain independent regulations at the local level. Congress, despite partisan pressure, has at times resisted—on public spending and on certain appointments. American civil society, remarkably active, has funded the legal battles of public officials such as Lisa Cook and Rebecca Slaughter, demonstrating that institutional resistance can find resources outside the government.

Independent media continue to report, investigate, and expose. The vast majority of the American legal profession upholds professional standards that limit the most flagrant distortions of the law. Federal judges appointed for life have ruled against the administration on several fronts. These acts of resistance are fragmented and insufficient in the face of the Trump administration’s strategic coherence, but they exist. American democracy is not dead—it is under intense strain.

The Next Step: What the Supreme Court’s Final Ruling May Still Limit

Even if the Supreme Court overturns Humphrey’s Executor in the Slaughter case, the final outcome will depend on the conditions and exceptions the justices might establish. Some analysts believe the Court might opt for a limited approach, allowing the president to remove FTC commissioners while preserving protections for the Fed and other institutions deemed particularly sensitive from an economic or national security standpoint. Such a “surgical” decision would be less devastating than a complete overturn.

Furthermore, a future Democratic administration could use the same expanded powers to restructure agencies in the opposite direction, if the courts confirm that the president can indeed appoint and remove their members at will. This is the ultimate irony of the unitary executive theory: by granting the president this absolute power, we grant it to all future presidents, including those Trump might fear. The precedent is a double-edged sword. It may be the only argument that could still temper some of the theory’s most enthusiastic proponents.

I’ll conclude with this thought that I can’t shake: the question isn’t so much whether Trump is constitutionally correct—even though he’s probably wrong. The question is what kind of society Americans want to build. A society where the federal government is effectively overseen by independent experts who resist political pressure? Or a society where each administration can reshape the entire government as it sees fit—for better or worse, depending on who is in power? That second option is not freedom—it is institutionalized chaos. And chaos, historically, always benefits the strongest.

Conclusion: The Dream of a Totalitarian Regime, the Nightmare of a Democracy

A Pivotal Moment for U.S. Institutions

It is June 2026, just days or weeks away from court rulings that could reshape the architecture of American power for generations to come. Trump v. Slaughter and Trump v. Cook are not mere administrative disputes: they are battles for the soul of American institutions. If the Supreme Court overturns Humphrey’s Executor and upholds the president’s right to remove officials without cause from all independent agencies, it will have empowered a single man to exercise unprecedented control over the regulatory machinery of the world’s most powerful nation. This is a transformation that the Founding Fathers, according to their own correspondence, would have described as alarming.

It is not that Trump is fundamentally different from his predecessors in his desire to control the federal executive branch—any president would prefer to have more power than less. What is different is the combination of his determination, his legal strategy coordinated over several years, and a Supreme Court ideologically aligned with his goals. This convergence is historically rare and institutionally dangerous.

Preserving the West also means preserving its internal safeguards

The West must win the systemic competition pitting it against China, Russia, and authoritarian regimes of all kinds. But it cannot win by gradually becoming the very thing it claims to be fighting against. The concentration of executive power, the subordination of experts to political loyalists, and the bringing of regulatory institutions into line—these are clear symptoms of the authoritarian dynamic that the West is fighting abroad. Addressing them at home is not a weakness: it is a prerequisite for credibility.

Trump is and will remain a controversial figure in American and Western history. His record of standing firm against revisionist powers deserves recognition. But his tendency to concentrate power in defiance of institutional checks and balances poses a real threat to the democratic model the West seeks to defend. Criticizing one does not invalidate the other. That is precisely what it means to think like an adult amid the complexity of the present moment.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist