BREAKING:”The Supreme Court Is About to Hand Trump a Terrifying Authoritarian Power Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority are undoing the very fabric of American democracy, and they don’t seem to care”…see more here…

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NewsPolitics With Charles P. Pierce

The Supreme Court Is About to Hand Trump a Terrifying Authoritarian Power

Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority are undoing the very fabric of American democracy, and they don’t seem to care.

By Charles P. PiercePublished: Dec 09, 2025 10:19 AM EST

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president trump meets with his cabinet at the white house

Chip Somodevilla//Getty Images

There’s only one reason to continue to follow the activities of the current Supreme Court, and it’s to watch the carefully constructed conservative majority wind itself into knots to explain how its authoritarian-enabling rulings don’t apply to Democratic presidents or the possibly imminent Democratic Congress. Otherwise, the bunch has all the integrity of a “piss-poor bowling team from Memphis,” as the late Dr. Thompson once wrote of an earlier conservative court.

On Monday, the court heard arguments in the case of Trump v. Slaughter. The proximate cause of action was whether the president had the right to fire Rebecca Slaughter, the commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. More broadly, the arguments touched on whether or not the concept of independent agencies created by Congress are a violation of separation of powers, and therefore, the president should be able to fire anyone he damn well pleases. Except, maybe, the members of the Federal Reserve.

What stands in the way, for the moment, is a 90-year-old decision called Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. At SCOTUSBlog, Amy Howe explained the stakes.

A decision in favor of the Trump administration would significantly increase the president’s power over not only the FTC but roughly two dozen other multi-member agencies that Congress intended to be independent. President Donald Trump has also fired members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The Supreme Court has already allowed those firings to take effect in proceedings on its interim docket, but the court’s ruling in the case of FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter will provide a more definitive ruling on the legality of those firings.

By all accounts, Humphrey’s Executor is about to be … executed. The scaffold already has been erected. From The New York Times:

The enormous sweep of last year’s decision granting President Trump substantial immunity from prosecution is apparent in this argument, where there has been repeated reference to that decision’s expansive vision of presidential power.

In addition, the power of independent regulatory agencies to issue directives took a fatal whipping in a case last year knocking down the so-called Chevron defense. The Leonard Leo Appreciation Society really got its libertarian rocks off Monday, calling restrictions on the president’s power to put industry hacks in charge of environmental policy or anti-vaccine fanatics in charge of a key panel at the Food and Drug Administration. Chief Justice John Roberts called Humphrey’s “a dried husk.” Look out below.