On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear a major case called Trump v. Slaughter. Many legal experts believe the result is practically guaranteed. The six conservative justices, who make up a strong majority on the court, seem ready to achieve a long-term conservative goal: taking a huge amount of power away from Congress and handing it directly to President Donald Trump. They are expected to do this by accepting a story that conservative lawyers have pushed for decades—a story claiming that the Constitution gives the president total control over the entire executive branch. Under this idea, the president should be able to fire any federal official at any time, even people who were put in place to act as independent, professional watchdogs. Supporters of this idea say it reflects the “original” understanding of presidential power from the founding era.
But that argument falls apart the moment you look at real history. Actual historians, the kind who study these documents for a living, have repeatedly disproved this version of the past. They have exposed the mistakes and misleading claims behind this theory in detail. Still, it seems almost certain that the Supreme Court’s conservative justices will embrace it anyway in this case. If they do, they will give Trump an extraordinary amount of new power—power that goes against the structure of federal law. The ruling would also confirm one of the biggest criticisms of “originalism,” the judicial philosophy conservatives claim to follow: that it lets judges twist history in whatever way benefits their political side. In this case, the result would damage the balance of power between the branches of government, undermine democracy, and limit Americans’ rights—all based on a myth that cannot survive serious historical scrutiny. This twisted version of originalism allows a false story to replace the truth, giving Trump one more tool for gaining unchecked control over the government.
The Slaughter case is part of a much larger effort by the Trump administration to establish what conservatives call a “unitary executive”—basically, a president with almost king-like authority over the entire executive branch. The plaintiff, Rebecca Slaughter, served as a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency meant to fight fraud and regulate business practices. By law, the FTC has five commissioners. No more than three can be from the same political party, and each one serves a seven-year term so presidents cannot easily control them for political reasons.
When Congress created the FTC in 1914, it purposely decided that the president could only fire commissioners for serious reasons like incompetence or misconduct. The goal was to create a group of experts who could focus on the public’s wellbeing instead of serving political interests. In 1935, the Supreme Court approved these protections in an important case called Humphrey’s Executor, and many federal agencies have operated this way ever since.
But that did not stop Trump from firing Slaughter in March. The firing was blatantly illegal because the administration did not claim she committed any wrongdoing. Instead, Trump simply said she did not align with his political priorities and that he had the power under the Constitution to fire her anyway. He removed other officials in the same way, including a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board. These actions seemed designed to provoke a lawsuit that would give the Supreme Court a chance to overturn Humphrey’s Executor and remove job protections from officials across many agencies.
When Slaughter sued to get her job back, lower courts agreed with her and reinstated her. But the Supreme Court quickly reversed those decisions in a 6–3 ruling, without offering much explanation. The conservative majority also blocked other agency officials from being reinstated after similar illegal firings. They then criticized lower courts for not understanding that Humphrey’s Executor was, in their view, already “basically dead,” even though the Supreme Court had never said so officially. By the time Slaughter’s case reached oral arguments, it was already clear the court had stripped away protections from her and many others. It was only a matter of going through the motions.
Why are the conservative justices so eager to give Trump this level of control? The answer lies in their commitment to the “unitary executive” theory. Supporters of this theory believe the president is not just the leader of the executive branch—he is the entire executive branch. They argue that any executive power belongs to him alone because the Constitution says the “executive power” is vested in the president. Under this logic, agencies like the FTC and NLRB only exist to carry out the president’s wishes. So if the president disagrees with a commissioner’s decisions, he must be able to fire them freely.
But the Constitution never says this. There is no clause saying the president can remove officials at will. The document offers no definition of “executive power” that implies such control. In fact, some parts of the Constitution suggest the opposite. Still, conservative lawyers during the Reagan era started promoting the idea that the Constitution secretly contains this removal power. Justice Antonin Scalia helped make the theory popular with his 1988 dissent in Morrison v. Olson, where he claimed the founders clearly intended a unitary executive. In recent years, the court’s conservative justices have fully accepted this view. They have used it to weaken independent agencies and even to grant Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
But while the court’s conservatives push this historical narrative, scholars have torn it apart. The justices claim that during an event known as the “Decision of 1789,” Congress recognized that the president had an inherent power to fire officials. But new research has shown this interpretation is false. Conservative legal writers cherry-picked quotes, ignored evidence, and distorted historical debates. They claimed James Madison supported unlimited presidential removal power—but records show Madison actually believed some officials should be protected. Alexander Hamilton also stated that the president could not fire executive officers without Senate approval. Chief Justice John Marshall shared similar views.
Many early lawmakers believed in a blended government where power was shared and balanced. Congress even created an early independent agency, the Sinking Fund Commission, whose members the president could not fire. This alone proves that the founders did not imagine a president with absolute removal power. Throughout the 1800s, leading legal thinkers and members of Congress believed the president did not have unlimited firing authority. For more than a century, Congress passed laws creating independent agencies with protections from political pressure, and no one argued this violated the Constitution.
Now Trump wants the Supreme Court to erase all that. He wants the court to say that Madison, Hamilton, Marshall, and many others misunderstood the Constitution. His goal is to gain the ability to fully control agencies like the FTC and NLRB by firing anyone who opposes him politically. The court has already signaled its willingness to give him this power by refusing to reinstate officials he fired illegally. Most experts expect the conservative majority to officially overturn Humphrey’s Executor soon. They might make one exception for the Federal Reserve so Trump cannot cause economic chaos, but the rest of the independent agencies will lose their protections.
If that happens, Trump will be able to use these agencies as weapons. The FTC could investigate businesses or individuals seen as political enemies. The NLRB could weaken workers’ rights. Agencies responsible for the economy, labor protections, energy, and public safety could become tools for punishing opponents and rewarding loyalists. There would be no internal protections left to stop a president from abusing power.
This case also exposes how hollow modern originalism has become. If originalists truly cared about accurate history, they would adjust their views when confronted with new evidence. Scholars have completely dismantled the historical claims behind the unitary executive theory, yet its supporters refuse to acknowledge these errors. Perhaps that’s because accepting the truth would require limiting Trump’s push for unprecedented presidential power. But genuine intellectual honesty would demand it.
Sadly, what we are seeing today is not principled constitutional interpretation—it is the use of history as a political tool. And the price will likely be paid by American democracy.
