The Dictatorship
Supreme Court weighs Trump’s power over independent agencies
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday seemed likely to expand presidential control over independent federal agenciessignaling support for President Donald Trump’s firing of board members.
The court’s conservative majority suggested it would overturn a unanimous 90-year-old decision that has limited when presidents can fire agencies’ board members — in part to try to ensure decision making free of political influence — or leave it with only its shell intact.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the crux of the issue is that the officials who direct the agencies “are exercising massive power over individual liberty and billion-dollar industries” without being accountable to anyone.
Liberal justices warned that a ruling sought by the administration to overturn the decision known as Humphrey’s Executor would give the president, as Justice Elena Kagan said, “massive unchecked, uncontrolled power.”
AP AUDIO: The Supreme Court seems likely to back Trump’s power to fire independent agency board members
AP’s Lisa Dwyer reports the Supreme Court is hearing arguments over presidential removal powers.
Agencies that have been in place for a century or more also would be robbed of their expertise, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said.
“So having a President come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the PhDs and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States,” Jackson said.
No president before Trump has sought to wrest control of the agencies that regulate wide swaths of American life, including nuclear energy, product safety and labor relations. But the six conservatives, including three appointed by Trump, seemed more concerned about issuing a ruling that would endure than handing too much power to Trump.
Their rhetoric was reminiscent of the presidential immunity case in 2024 that allowed Trump to avoid prosecution for his efforts to undo the 2020 election results. The court is writing a decision “for the ages,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said then.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who argued the immunity case for Trump, defended the president’s decision to fire Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter without cause and called on the court to jettison Humphrey’s Executor.
Sauer said the decision “hasn’t withstood the test of time” and had enabled a “headless fourth branch” of government, the administrative state that conservatives and business interests have been taking aim at for decades.
Chief Justice John Roberts referred to Humphrey’s Executor as “a dried husk.”
The conservative side of the court already has signaled support for the administration’s position, over the liberals’ objection, by allowing Slaughter and the board members of other agencies to be removed from their jobs even as their legal challenges continue.
Members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission also have been fired by Trump.
The only officials who have so far survived efforts to remove them are Lisa Cooka Federal Reserve governor, and Shira Perlmuttera copyright official with the Library of Congress. The court has suggested that it will view the Fed differently from other independent agencies, and Trump has said he wants her out because of allegations of mortgage fraud. Cook says she did nothing wrong.
A second question in the Slaughter case could affect Cook. Even if a firing turns out to be illegal, the court wants to decide whether judges have the power to reinstate someone.
Gorsuch wrote earlier this year that fired employees who win in court can likely get back pay, but not reinstatement.
That might affect Cook’s ability to remain in her job. The justices have seemed wary about the economic uncertainty that might result if Trump can fire the leaders of the central bank. The court will hear separate arguments in January about whether Cook can remain in her job as her court challenge proceeds.
Kavanaugh signaled that he is inclined to side with Cook, describing as an “end run” the idea that an illegally fired official would only be entitled to her salary.
Under Roberts’ leadership, the court has issued a series of decisions dating back to 2010 that have steadily whittled away at laws restricting the president’s ability to fire people.
In 2020, Roberts wrote for the court that “the President’s removal power is the rule, not the exception” in a decision upholding Trump’s firing of the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau despite job protections similar to those upheld in Humphrey’s case.
In the 2024 immunity decision, Roberts included the power to fire among the president’s “conclusive and preclusive” powers that Congress lacks the authority to restrict.
The court also was dealing with an FTC member who was fired, by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, who preferred his own choice at an agency that would have a lot to say about the New Deal.
William Humphrey refused Roosevelt’s request for his resignation. After Humphrey died the next year, the person charged with administering his estate, Humphrey’s executor, sued for back pay.
The justices unanimously upheld the law establishing the FTC and limiting the president to removing a commissioner only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is considering ending its collection of corporations’ data on the racial and gender makeup of their employees, potentially undercutting a key federal tool to track employment discrimination.
The move also raises questions as to what data the administration expects to use to carry out its effort to prove anti-white discrimination is a systemic problem worthy of intervention.
According to the Washington Post:
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is considering no longer collecting demographic information including race, sex and national origin from major American companies, departing from a practice that began during the civil rights era of the 1960s and was critical to the agency’s efforts to root out workplace discrimination. The EEOC also wants to ax data reporting rules for apprenticeship programs, unions, state and local governments, and schools, as well as reporting requirements in other civil rights laws that protect workers, including those who are pregnant or have disabilities.
The Post’s report notes that race and gender employment data came under fire in Project 2025the far-right playbook Trump’s administration has been following to enact its agenda:
“Crudely categorizing employees by race or ethnicity fails to recognize the diversity of the American workforce and forces individuals into categories that do not fully reflect their racial and ethnic heritage,” wrote Project 2025 author Jonathan Berry, who is now solicitor for the Department of Labor.
The Trump administration’s gutting of federal agenciesits mass purges of employees that decimated diversity in the government and its assault on diversity in corporate America have pushed many people from marginalized groups, particularly Black womenout of the workforce.
Civil rights activist Noreen Farrell, whose work focuses on fair pay and workplace discrimination, told me last year that Trump’s changes at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and his push to end the agency’s jobs report risked making that problem worse.
“First they dismantled workplace protections. Then they gutted DEI programs. Now, as women abandon careers in record numbers, they want to stop counting,” Farrell said, adding, “This is what systematic discrimination looks like in 2025.”
So continues the Trump administration’s war on reputable government data. If the government can obscure or abandon data about who is working where, it will open the door to potential discrimination and hinder efforts to combat it.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
President Donald Trump announced Monday that he has postponed a planned U.S. military strike on Iran at the request of key Gulf allies who said negotiations with Tehran could produce a deal that “will be very acceptable” to the U.S. and other Middle Eastern countries.
Trump said in a lengthy Truth Social postthat he received requests from the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud and United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan “to hold off on our planned Military attack of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was scheduled for tomorrow, in that serious negotiations are now taking place.”
“In their opinion, as Great Leaders and Allies, a Deal will be made, which will be very acceptable to the United States of America, as well as all Countries in the Middle East, and beyond. This Deal will include, importantly, NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOR IRAN!” Trump said.
Trump said that, “based on [his] respect” of the three leaders, he ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and the U.S. military to stand down from a strike against Iran scheduled for Tuesday.
The president said, however, that the U.S. military had been instructed to remain ready to launch “a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice” if negotiations fail to produce what he described as an acceptable agreement.
The governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have increasingly positioned themselves as intermediaries while also seeking to avoid a direct military confrontation between the United States and Iran that could threaten oil markets and shipping lanes across the Middle East.
Trump told reporters on Monday the U.S. has briefed Israel and other Middle Eastern partners on the delay and cautioned that it remains unclear whether it will lead to a final agreement.
“It’s a very positive development, but we’ll see whether or not it amounts to anything,” Trump said at a healthcare affordability event. “We’ve had periods of time where we had, we thought, pretty much getting close to making a deal, and didn’t work out, but this is a little bit different now.”
The announcement comes amid escalating tensions between the U.S and Iran following months of military threats, regional instability and disputes over Iran’s nuclear program. Trump had warnedSunday that “the clock is ticking” for Iran to accept a deal as Iran has yet to accept the latest peace proposal.
As diplomatic efforts continue, the president has repeatedly threatened military action against Iran in recent weeks before ultimately delaying or pulling back strikes.
The latest postponement follows earlier pauses tied to ceasefire negotiations and talks through regional allies.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
The Dictatorship
At least 3 dead in shooting at Islamic Center of San Diego, police say threat ‘neutralized’
At least three people and two suspects are dead following a shooting Monday at the Islamic Center of San Diego.
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said at a press conference Monday afternoon that officers found three dead victims outside the center after responding to reports of an active shooter in the Clairemont neighborhood of San Diego.
Wahl said the two suspected shooters — identified as teenage boys ages 17 and 19 — also died from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
The victims include a security guard and two staff members from the Islamic school on the center’s grounds, Imam Taha Hassane, the mosque’s director, told MS NOW.
One of the gunmen also fired at a landscaper, who was not injured, according to Wahl.
“Because of the Islamic Center location, we are considering this a hate crime until it’s not,” Wahl said.
Nearby Sharp Memorial Hospital said it is receiving patients.
“Our disaster procedures have been activated and we are coordinating with the County of San Diego and other resources to respond to the incident,” a hospital spokesperson told MS NOW.
“We have never experienced a tragedy like this before. And at this moment all what I can say is we are sending our prayers and standing in solidarity with all the families in our community here,” Hassane told reporters after the shooting. “The other mosques and all the places of worship in our beautiful city should always be protected.”
Hassane called the targeting of a place of worship “extremely outrageous.”
The mosque, the largest in San Diego County, also houses the Al Rashid School, which teaches Arabic language and Islamic studies. All children present at the school are safe and officials established a reunification point for families.
“No one should ever fear for their safety while attending prayers or studying at an elementary school,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, said in a statement. “We are working to learn more about this incident and we encourage everyone to keep this community in your prayers.”
The FBI’s San Diego Field Office will assist local law enforcement with the investigation.
A White House official told MS NOW that President Donald Trump has been briefed on the shooting this afternoon.
President Donald Trump called the shooting at the mosque a “terrible situation” while speaking to reporters at a White House health care event Monday.
“I’ve been given some early updates, but we’re going to be going back and looking at it very strongly,” Trump said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
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