A conservative constitutional vision, prominent since the 1980s, holding that Article II of the constitution grants all executive power to the president. The late Justice Antonin Scalia was a leading proponent. Under this reading, supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the electorate, and Congress may not insulate agencies from presidential control.
The theory's principal obstacle has been Humphrey's Executor v United States (1935), in which the Supreme Court ruled that Franklin Roosevelt's firing of an FTC commissioner, William Humphrey, was illegal. Justice George Sutherland wrote that commissioners may be removed only for cause, lest the "mere will" of the president "thwart" Congress's aims. The precedent has protected the independence of some two dozen agencies, regulating everything from nuclear power to credit cards to transport.
America has had agencies that operate independently of the president since its founding. Christine Chabot, a law professor at Marquette University, identifies two from the early republic: the Sinking Fund Commission (Alexander Hamilton's programme to manage the national debt) and the Revolutionary War Debt Commission.
On December 8th 2025 the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump v Slaughter, a case arising from Donald Trump's firing of FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter in March 2025. The court appeared poised to overturn Humphrey's Executor, which would give the president the power to fire heads of independent agencies at will. Justice Elena Kagan warned that undoing the precedent would instantly put two dozen independent agencies under direct presidential control: "Once you're down this road, it's a little bit hard to see how you stop." Even legislative courts, such as the Tax Court, could be deemed part of the executive branch.
Because the ruling would be grounded in the constitution, Congress cannot reverse it by statute. Its only remedies would be withholding funding and, ultimately, impeachment—powers that historians note England's parliament established over the monarch after the 17th-century civil war.
We warn the reader in advance that the proof presented here depends on a clever but highly unmotivated trick.