Supreme Court Signals It Backs Trump on Firing Agency Heads

The US Supreme Court signaled it’s poised to give the president control over potentially dozens of traditionally independent federal agencies as the court’s dominant conservative wing cast doubt on a 90-year-old precedent.

Hearing arguments in Washington Monday, the justices suggested they will let President Donald Trump permanently remove Rebecca Kelly Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission despite a law that says commissioners can be fired only for specified reasons. Slaughter’s ouster would leave the consumer-protection agency without any Democratic commissioners.