Supreme Court Set to Consider Trump’s Power to Remove High-Level Bureaucrats

For months, federal judges have been ordering President Donald Trump to reinstate heads of agencies despite his interest in removing them. Their decisions have been based on a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent, known as Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, that says Congress can limit the reasons for which presidents remove officials like members of labor boards. However, that precedent and various legal blocks on Trump’s firings could be removed depending on how the Supreme Court rules in an upcoming case—potentially giving Trump and his successors more flexibility with personnel. On Dec. 8, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter, which focuses on the president’s attempt to remove Rebecca Slaughter as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)....