5 takeaways on divided day for Trump at Supreme Court 

It was a mixed bag for President Trump at the Supreme Court on Monday. 

The justices tightened the president’s grip on executive power in ruling independent agency leaders may be fired, while rejecting a key pillar of Trump’s political agenda aimed at restricting mail-in voting. They ruled he must give a Federal Reserve governor due process before she may be fired, and they rebuffed the president’s appeal in a civil lawsuit.

Here are five takeaways from the court’s penultimate opinion day: 

Major expansion of presidential power

The 6-3 decision allowing Trump to fire Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member Rebecca Slaughter marks a major expansion of the president’s firing power.

It accomplishes legal conservatives’ long-sought goal by casting aside 91 years of precedent that has provided certain agencies with a degree of independence from the White House. 

Trump himself called it the “greatest increase” in presidential power in a century.

The conservative majority cast the decision as returning the presidency to its proper form. Chief Justice John Roberts said Trump’s expansive firing power is by design.

“When power is exercised well, the people know whom to thank; when power is exercised poorly, they know whom to blame—and whom to fire,” Roberts wrote. “That is the very premise of our system of government.”

The decision allows the president to fire officials at a broad swath of agencies beyond the FTC. More than a dozen others across the executive branch have enjoyed similar protections. They regulate nuclear energy, plane accidents, product recalls, credit unions and more.

The liberal justices insisted it gives Trump a power “unknown even to the English Crown.”

“Today, the Court discards that democratic regime in favor of one that distorts the structure of Government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control. The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote.

To hear Justice Neil Gorsuch tell it, Congress can fix that.

“The power to write new regulatory crimes still exists, but now the pen ultimately rests in the President’s hand. The ability to judge disputes in-house remains, but now the house is white,” Gorsuch wrote in a solo opinion. 

Acknowledging it........

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