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Primary focus

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Norms Impact

A Ludicrous New Supreme Court Decision Could Grant Trump Presidential Power Not Seen Since King George III

The Court used the shadow docket to let presidents sidestep Congress’s removal limits, hollowing out independent agencies and pushing our system toward unchecked executive control.

Judiciary

May 23, 2025

Sources

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a64864735/supreme-court-trump-v-wilcox-amy-coney-barrett/

Summary

The Supreme Court’s shadow-docket action in Trump v. Wilcox allowed the president’s firings of congressionally protected agency heads to remain in effect while litigation proceeds. The move signals a willingness to discard the 1935 framework that permits independent agencies to exist within the executive branch under statutory limits on removal. In practice, it shifts immediate control of key regulatory and enforcement institutions toward presidential patronage and away from congressional design.

Reality Check

This kind of judicially enabled removal power rewires accountability by letting one person effectively seize control of institutions Congress deliberately insulated from political retaliation. Nothing in the described conduct reads as a clean fit for a prosecutable crime; it is a structural breach—an erosion of separation of powers and anti-patronage norms—rather than a bribery or obstruction fact pattern. When statutory “for-cause” protections can be neutralized by interim orders, our rights become contingent on presidential favor, not durable law.

Detail

On Thursday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett participated in a shadow-docket decision in Trump v. Wilcox et. al.. The Court ruled that the president’s firing of the heads of executive agencies created by Congress should stand while their cases are adjudicated, even where Congress has mandated that removal is not at the president’s discretion.

The decision left the fired officials out of office during ongoing litigation. A dissent by Justice Elena Kagan criticized the majority for disregarding long-standing precedent and for not addressing the controlling 1935 decision, Humphrey’s Executor, which recognized statutory limits on presidential removal power for certain independent agencies. The dissent also highlighted an exception the majority created for the Federal Reserve Board.

The action followed Barrett’s earlier recusal the same day from a separate Supreme Court matter involving Oklahoma’s effort to use public funding to help establish a religious charter school; that recusal produced a 4–4 split, leaving a lower-court block in place.