The BLUF - June 30th

Good morning everyone,

This is Atlas, and you’re reading the Bottom Line Up Front, where we cover the top geopolitical stories from around the world every Tuesday!

Today’s topics:

• 91 Year Old Decision Overturned By SCOTUS, Allows Trump To Fire Executive Branch Employees At Will

• Afghan Officials: Pakistani Airstrike Kills Dozens Of Civilians In Afghanistan

• Australia Inks Pact With Vanuatu, Blocks China From Building Military Base

91 Year Old Decision Overturned By SCOTUS, Allows Trump To Fire Executive Branch Employees At Will

_{By: Atlas}

The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a nearly century-old precedent and granted President Donald Trump broad authority to fire the leaders of independent federal agencies at will, one of the largest shifts in the operation of the federal government in decades.

In a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines, the justices upheld Trump's firing of Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter and overruled Humphrey's Executor v. United States, the 1935 ruling that had let Congress shield certain agency heads from removal except for cause. In a separate decision the same day, the court blocked Trump from removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, drawing a line at the central bank.

The FTC Ruling

The case centered on Slaughter, a Democrat Trump first appointed to the FTC in 2018 and whom President Joe Biden renominated in 2023. Trump fired her without cause in March 2025, telling her that keeping her on would be inconsistent with his administration's priorities rather than citing the inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance the FTC statute requires.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, held that the removal protection violated the Constitution's separation of powers. The president, he wrote, must have the assistance of officers he can trust, and neither Congress nor the courts may force him to keep subordinates with whom he cannot work. Only when those who wield the president's power are subject to removal by him, Roberts reasoned, can they remain accountable to the president and the president to the people.

The decision turned on whether the FTC exercises significant executive power. The court found that it does, noting the agency enforces some 80 statutes, conducts investigations, runs in-house adjudications, and files civil suits on behalf of the United States. Because of that, Roberts concluded, Slaughter served as the president's subordinate and could have her tenure cut short.

Roberts was blunt about the fate of the older precedent. Humphrey's Executor, he wrote, had been tethered to an almost fictional view of the FTC as exercising no executive power, and what remained of it the court was now discarding. The 1935 case had itself involved the FTC, when the court blocked President Franklin D. Roosevelt from firing a commissioner who opposed his New Deal agenda.

The Reach of the Decision

The ruling extends well beyond one commissioner. It affects roughly two dozen multimember agencies that Congress designed to operate with some independence from the White House, among them the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The decision effectively ratifies a series of firings Trump carried out after returning to office, when he removed Democratic appointees across the government and faced lawsuits arguing he lacked the authority. Lower courts, bound by Humphrey's Executor, had largely ruled against him, though the Supreme Court had repeatedly allowed the firings to proceed on its emergency docket while the cases continued.

Roberts took care to mark the limits of the ruling. Not every office created by Congress carries executive power, he wrote, and the decision did not resolve the status of officials not before the court, including federal judges without lifetime tenure. He also singled out the Federal Reserve as following a distinct historical tradition tied to the First and Second Banks of the United States, neither of which was subject to full presidential control.

Trump celebrated the outcome on Truth Social, calling it historic and describing it as the greatest increase in presidential power in the last 100 years. America First Legal, a pro-Trump group, said the decision reaffirmed that those who exercise executive power must answer to the president.

The Dissent

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote a lengthy dissent and read a summary of it from the bench, a step justices reserve for cases of strong disagreement. She argued the majority had discarded the democratic structure created by the Constitution in favor of a theory of total executive control, leaving a president with far greater power than ever before.

The majority, she wrote, had given the president a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the founders revolted, transforming the duty to faithfully execute the laws into a license to act in defiance of them. She warned the ruling would convert dozens of independent commissions into purely executive agencies, shifting authority over broad areas of American life into the president's hands. Justice Neil Gorsuch, in a concurrence, went the other way, urging the court to go further and restore legislative and judicial powers he said the agencies had absorbed.

The Fed Exception

The second ruling cut against Trump. By a 5-4 vote, with Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the three liberals in the majority, the court blocked the president's attempt to remove Cook while her lawsuit proceeds. Trump had moved to fire her not over policy but for cause, citing allegations of mortgage fraud tied to applications she signed before joining the Fed. Cook has denied wrongdoing.

Roberts wrote that Cook was entitled to notice and some opportunity to respond before her termination, and that allowing her ouster now would turn for-cause protection into little more than at-will employment, out of step with the statute Congress enacted and the nation's tradition of insulating central banking from political interference. He added a footnote making clear that nothing prevents Trump from trying again, provided Cook receives proper notice and a chance to contest the charges.

The dissenters in the Cook case, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, with Gorsuch joining Alito, disagreed on separate grounds. Thomas argued Cook held no property interest in her office, while Alito criticized the court for deferring its ruling and leaving the lower-court proceedings at a standstill for months.

Trump downplayed the loss as strictly procedural and vowed to take action against Cook immediately. She, in turn, said the decision affirmed that the Federal Reserve must make its decisions on evidence and independent judgment, free from political pressure. The administration is appealing the lower-court ruling in her favor, and the dispute is being closely watched on Wall Street for its potential impact on interest rate policy.

Subscribe to the BLUF to read the rest.