U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) holds a press conference after the House passage of an Immigration bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 9, 2026. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon
The Supreme Court just took "one more big step toward autocracy," Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern argued Monday, and he warned Congress was left in the rubble.
Stern wrote that the court's two same-day rulings on presidential firing power are "almost comically irreconcilable." In Trump v. Slaughter, the 6-3 conservative majority overturned Humphrey's Executor, a unanimous 91-year-old precedent, and held the president can fire the heads of independent agencies at will, clearing President Donald Trump's removal of Democratic FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.
Yet in Trump v. Cook, the same chief justice led a 5-4 ruling shielding the Federal Reserve and blocking Trump from ousting board member Lisa Cook. Roberts, Stern wrote, "barely bothered" to explain the contradiction.
"On what basis could Roberts and Kavanaugh possibly allow Trump to purge Democratic appointees from the rest of the administrative state while zealously protecting members of the Fed?" asked an indignant Stern.
The Slaughter ruling, he said, strips independence from agencies overseeing nuclear energy, consumer safety, unions and much of the economy, handing Trump sweeping control. He called the impact "gobsmacking."
The biggest winner, he argued, is the court itself, which now gets to rewrite the rules of American governance and bend them toward outcomes it prefers.
Stern pointed to fallout already unfolding, including Trump pushing out a postmaster general who balked at his demands and installing one who, Stern wrote, agreed to withhold mail ballots in blue states — part of an effort a federal judge has blocked.
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority had distorted the structure of government to fit a theory of "unitary, total executive control."
"It is tempting to say that the biggest loser is Congress, which just saw its express authority to structure the executive branch nuked from orbit. And certainly, the legislative branch just suffered a massive blow," he said.
But the real casualties, he argued, are Americans who would rather live in a democracy than the autocracy he claimed the court is building.
His closing question: how many more hits before it all comes "crashing down"?
The rulings landed the same day the court rejected an RNC bid to toss late-arriving mail ballots.