The United States Supreme Court on Monday handed down a pair of rulings that simultaneously expanded presidential control over federal regulatory agencies and preserved the institutional independence of the central bank. In Trump v. Slaughter, the six-justice conservative majority overturned the 1935 precedent Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, ruling that the president may remove members of the Federal Trade Commission and other independent agencies at will, without needing to demonstrate cause. The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, held that “subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him,” a formulation that legal analysts in Washington say effectively ends the bipartisan, expert-led model that has governed bodies from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the National Labor Relations Board since the New Deal era.

Hours later, however, the same court blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices declined to lift a lower-court injunction that keeps Cook in office while she challenges her dismissal. Roberts, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the court’s three liberal members, stressed that the Federal Reserve occupies a “unique historical tradition” of independence and that Trump had failed to afford Cook the procedural protections required by statute. The majority canvassed the history of American central banking, from the Bank of North America to the present Fed, to conclude that governors do not serve at the president’s pleasure but may be removed only for cause after due process.

The contrasting outcomes reflect a deliberate judicial line-drawing exercise. According to the majority opinion in Slaughter, agencies that exercise “heartland” executive power—such as the FTC, which enforces antitrust and consumer protection laws—must be fully accountable to the president. In a sharp dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warned that the ruling grants the president “far greater power than ever before” and dismantles a century-old congressional design intended to insulate regulatory decisions from partisan pressure. The Cook decision, by contrast, carved out the Fed on the grounds that its monetary policy function demands insulation from short-term political interference, a view reinforced by an extraordinary amicus brief signed by every living former Fed chair and six former Treasury secretaries.

Trump celebrated the Slaughter ruling as a “historic and unprecedented” victory, posting on Truth Social that it was “the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years.” He simultaneously vowed to take “appropriate action immediately” against Cook, dismissing the procedural setback as temporary. Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed board, said the ruling “reaffirms a principle that has underpinned sound economic governance for generations.” The court also declined to hear Trump’s appeal of a $5 million civil judgment for sexual abuse and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, and in a separate voting-rights case upheld state laws that permit counting mail ballots received after Election Day if postmarked by that date. The Slaughter ruling takes immediate effect, allowing the president to replace independent agency heads at will; the Cook litigation will now proceed in lower federal courts, where the administration must demonstrate cause for removal with proper notice and an opportunity to respond.