Who controls the executive branch of government? For more than two hours on Monday, the Supreme Court listened to U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer and Amit Agarwal, a lawyer for Protect Democracy and former counsel to the Biden and Harris presidential campaigns, argue over this fundamental question. The issues raised in the case of Trump v. Slaughter implicate basic constitutional principles involving the president, Congress, and so-called independent agencies. A decision in the president’s favor, depending on who you believe, will either correct one of the worst decisions of the Progressive Era, Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S. (1935), which violated basic separation of powers principles and vitiated the constitutional authority of the president as head of the executive branch, or lead to “chaos and destruction” of our governmental structure and give the president who was elected by voters too much “control” over the executive branch (which, of course, is nonsense). The Background This case began when President Donald Trump fired Rebecca Slaughter, a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission and a former counsel to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. She sued, as have commissioners who were fired at other so-called independent agencies including the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, claiming that the president lacked the authority to fire them, relying on Humphrey’s Executor.  In that 1935 case, the Supreme Court upheld a restriction that Congress put into the law limiting the ability of the president to fire a commissioner at the FTC except for cause. Congress placed similar limitations on the president when it created other agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the National Labor Relations Board, whose members, once nominated and confirmed by the Senate, serve for fixed terms. The Arguments Sauer told the Court that the Humphrey’s Executor decision is an “indefensible outlier” that has not “withstood the test of time.” It was “grievously wrong” when it was issued and has led to the creation of a “headless fourth branch” of government that is a direct threat to our constitutional structure. He emphasized throughout his presentation that since Article II makes the president the head of the executive branch, Congress cannot restrict the authority of the president over the principal officers who are the heads of agencies that carry out executive branch functions. In responding to an assertion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor that “Congress emphasized the importance of independent” decision-making by creating these agencies, Sauer said the “prestige of independency is not a constitutional principle.” In discussing the separation of powers principle, Justice Elena Kagan intimated that the government’s position was a violation of separation of powers because, since many agencies engage in rulemaking, it would give the president executive and legislative authority. But Sauer said that rulemaking is execution of the law, not acting as a legislature. In other words, the issuance of regulations is, in reality, agencies announcing how they are going to carry out and enforce the legislation passed by Congress. When Kagan expressed her fear that the “president would have control over everything,” Sauer answered that he will simply have “the executive power the Constitution provides” to a president. Sotomayor spent considerable time on how long the Humphrey’s Executor decision has been in place and kept asking Sauer for other precedent-setting decisions of long duration that have been overturned, repeatedly interrupting him as he tried to answer. He provided many examples, though, and as Justice Amy Coney Barrett later pointed out, some of those cases overruled precedents that had been in place nearly as long as Humphrey’s Executor. These agencies were pushed by progressives who thought federal bureaucrats, so-called “experts,” should be free of the political process and political interference to implement public policy no matter who is in the White House. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pushed that very same idea throughout her questioning, praising the concept of public policy being “handled by nonpartisan experts.” To her, that “makes perfect sense” because it removes them from politics and the “danger of presidential control.” Apparently, accountability to voters is a dangerous principle, at least according to her. Agarwal emphasized the length of time this decision has been in place but also claimed that such independent agencies and commissions have been in place since our start as a country. He said the Court should not “overrule a century of precedent” and shouldn’t abandon what “so much of modern government is based on.” Where Agarwal really got stuck was when several justices started grilling him on how much executive authority an agency has to have before he would consider it to be a violation of separation of powers and the president’s authority over the executive branch. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wanted to know if Congress could convert all of the cabinet departments into multimember-headed agencies. Agarwal responded that Congress can’t limit the president’s authority over officers exercising the president’s “conclusive and preclusive” authority, but he seemed to have trouble delineating what powers that entails, and which departments could be converted and put out of reach of the president. He finally admitted that Congress just taking over some departments was “probably within the realm of possibility.” Agarwal also tried to differentiate between criminal and civil enforcement authority, since the majority of independent agencies have the ability to bring civil enforcement actions against individuals. Agarwal actually claimed that exercising civil enforcement authority doesn’t mean that the agencies are carrying out executive branch duties. Justice Samuel Alito took him to task for that, saying that Agarwal couldn’t say that everything was “on the chopping block” if he couldn’t name which specific departments within the federal government could be converted to multimember agencies with limits on the president’s power to remove their leadership. Agarwal also indefensibly told Justice Neil Gorsuch that presidents don’t, in fact, have a duty to faithfully execute the law—contrary to the clear dictates of the Constitution. There were also questions about Congress hypothetically creating agencies with no partisan balance in the leadership and lengthening the terms of commissioners. At what point would such a term become so long, say 15 or 20 years, that it would start infringing on the president’s removal authority and constitute a constitutional violation of separation of powers? Agarwal had no firm answer to that other than the Court would have to determine that, meaning there could be no standard unless the Court created one. Current Unconstitutional Structure and Practices Federal agencies (like the FTC) with the authority to promulgate regulations that have the authority of law and the power to pursue individuals that they claim have broken the law or violated their regulations are engaging in the very essence of an executive function. In addition to being vested under the Constitution with all executive authority, it is the president who is designated in Section 3 of Article II with the responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” and contrary to Agarwal’s argument that includes both criminal and civil enforcement of the law.  Yet many of the so-called independent agencies are outside the control and supervision of the president. After all, what kind of supervision can a president—any president—exercise if he can’t fire officials who ignore his commands or take policy positions opposite those of his own administration? It was clear from the arguments that the liberal justices on the Court have no concern over that and don’t believe that is a constitutional problem. They want government policies carried out by “experts” supposedly oblivious to politics, but who can, in reality, exercise their own agendas without vital political checks.  It is a very anti-democratic concept that we should have administrative agencies that are not accountable to voters and not accountable to the president the public elected. Unfortunately, after listening to the oral arguments, it seems clear that Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson are prepared to vote to uphold just such a constitutionally problematic arrangement.  The question is whether the rest of the Court will take the needed step of overturning a decision that was, as Sauer said, “grievously wrong” when it was issued and that has led to the creation of a behemoth fourth branch of government largely immune to the democratic process. The justices need to correct the mistake the Court made almost a century ago. Fortunately, from the tenor of their questions, it seems likely they may do just that.  The post Majority of Justices Seem Prepared to Hold that the President Can Control the Executive Branch appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Trump administration has located 62,000 children who entered the U.S. unaccompanied under the previous administration, according to border czar Tom Homan.   “Some of these children were in sex trafficking—we found them. Some were in forced labor, some were being mistreated—I can’t even discuss some of the mistreatment we found out about,” Homan said Sunday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends Weekend.” “President [Donald] Trump, again, proves why he’s the greatest president in my lifetime,” Homan added. “Over 62,000 children rescued by President Trump, again, children that were ignored and weren’t being looked for under President [Joe] Biden.”   Under the Biden administration, hundreds of thousands of illegal alien minors arrived at the southern border alone and were released into the care of sponsors, but the Biden administration did not track the location or status of each child after placement.   Between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, more than 448,000 unaccompanied alien children were transferred from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, and most of those children were placed in the care of a sponsor. A sponsor could be a close or distant family member and sometimes had no direct family relation to the minor.   Among the 448,000 minors to enter the U.S. in recent years, ICE failed to issue more than 233,000 notices to appear in immigration court, Joseph Cuffari, inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, told lawmakers in July. Furthermore, more than 43,000 migrant children who were given a notice to appear in immigration court failed to do so.    The Trump administration is now working to safety return unaccompanied migrant children to their home countries, The Daily Signal previously reported. The Trump backed “Big Beautiful Bill” now provides the Department of Health and Human Services with the ability to repatriate to their home country children who entered the U.S. alone.   Migrant children have consistently been a hot-button issue in recent years. Reports of “kids in cages” spread like wildfire thought the media during the first Trump administration.   In 2018, the Trump administration rolled out the Zero-Tolerance Policy for Criminal Illegal Entry, under which illegal aliens were prosecuted for entering the country illegally. Children cannot legally accompany adults into custody, hence family separation ensued, and minors were held in Border Patrol processing centers.   Facing backlash, the first Trump administration issued an executive order to stop the separation of families at the border.   When Biden took office in January 2021, he ended Trump’s border security measures, and mass migration, including of unaccompanied children, ensued. More than 10 million illegal aliens entered the U.S. in four years, flooding the immigration courts and overwhelming the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which operates under HHS and held responsibility for matching unaccompanied migrant children with sponsors.   A strained system led to poor vetting, rapid placement of minors with sponsors, and even abuses of the sponsor program, such as gang members applying to sponsor a migrant child, as whistleblower Aaron Stevenson previously exposed.   Working as an analyst for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2021, Stevenson began to notice that aliens with gang affiliations were applying to be sponsors for unaccompanied migrant children.   It’s Stevenson’s view that the primary reason gang members were seeking to sponsor children was financial.    “I think advantageous networks saw a situation, and they exploited it,” Stevenson said.    Finding the children placed with sponsors during the Biden administration is challenging, according to Homan, because children do not leave a digital footprint through credit cards, mortgage payments, or other transactions that allow authorities to track their location.   Still, Homan says, Homeland Security Investigations agents are working every day to find the missing migrant children and “make sure they’re safe.”  The post Trump Administration Has Found 62,000 Children, Some Victims of Sex Trafficking and Forced Labor, Tom Homan Reports appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Supreme Court’s conservative-leaning majority seems poised to scrap a 90-year precedent that has insulated the deep state for decades.  Justices are weighing whether an elected president can remove executive branch officials serving on supposedly “independent” commissions or boards, and whether blocking the president from doing so violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers. This specific case regards President Donald Trump’s ouster of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. If the justices uphold Trump’s firing of Slaughter, that might overturn the precedent set Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), which also dealt with the FTC. In the New Deal-era Humphrey’s Executor case, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could enact laws limiting a president’s power to fire “independent” agency executive officials. Even Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee who has occasionally joined the court’s three liberals against his fellow conservatives, called Humphrey’s Executor a “dried husk,” and said the original ruling “was addressing an agency that had very little if any executive power.” Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued, “The modern expansion of the federal bureaucracy sharpens the court’s duty to ensure that the executive branch is overseen by a president accountable to the people.” ?FOURTH BRANCH OF GOVERNMENTJohn Sauer rightly warns "independent agencies" tempt "Congress to erect at the heart of our government a headless fourth branch insulated from political accountability." It's time to overturn Humphreys Executor.https://t.co/BA8WIJCU4o pic.twitter.com/TiT0iGzgPw— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 8, 2025 Slaughter’s lawyer, Amit Agarwal, special counsel at the left-leaning group Protect Democracy, told justices that independent commissions have existed in some form since the 1790s, and added such bodies don’t operate with unchecked power.  “More than two dozen traditional, independent agencies have been established by statutes enacted by the people’s elected representatives and signed into law, all of them, by democratically elected presidents,” Agarwal said. ‘Absolute Power’ Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an appointee of President Barack Obama, said scrapping the precedent would give “absolute power to the president.” “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government, and to take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent,” Sotmayor said.  Sauer said the Trump administration is asking the court to return to a longstanding separation of powers argument that predated the 1935 ruling.  “The fundamental alteration of the structure of the government was ushered in by Humphreys, and then the Congress kind of took Humphreys and ran with it, in the building of the modern administrative state, in the proliferation of independent agencies,” Sauer said.  ?THE SKY WILL NOT FALLD. John Sauer addresses the hyperbolic warnings that the entire government will fall if the Supreme Court returns "independent agencies" to the control of the people's elected president. pic.twitter.com/DgbCp08VQP— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 8, 2025 The so-called “independent” boards and commissions have members appointed by Republican and Democrat presidents who, in theory, operate without political concerns. They serve for a set term, regardless of whether a new president of a different party assumes office during that term.  Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, defended Progressive Era policies. “My understanding was that independent agencies exist because Congress has decided that some issues, some matters, some areas, should be handled in this way by nonpartisan experts,” Jackson said. “Congress is saying that expertise matters with respect to aspects of the economy and transportation, and the various independent agencies that we have. So, having a president come in and fire all the scientists, and the doctors, and the economists, and the PhDs, and replacing them with loyalists, and people who don’t know anything, is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States.” Sauer replied, “We can have a government that benefits from expertise without being ruled by expertise.”  Limits for Congress? The Republican-appointed justices later pressed Agarwal about what limits Congress would have under the natural logic of his arguments.  “Your position would allow Congress to create independent agencies, maybe converting some of the existing executive agencies into independent agencies, with no political balance requirement, with a long term, say, 10 or more years, and with the chairs not subject to removal as chair,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee.   “I just want to give you a chance to deal with the hard hypothetical when both houses of Congress and presidency are controlled by said party, then creating a lot of these independent agencies with or extending some of the current independent agencies into these kinds of situations so as to thwart future presidents of the opposite party,” Kavanaugh continued.  Agarwal said there should be existing protections from that, outside his case.  “The bigger point is that historically, this is a problem, and this is a problem that has been resolved through a process of political accommodation,” Argawal said. “There’s no reason to believe that that process, which has been adequate for a very long time, will not be adequate in the future. But if it is not, the court can keep open the possibility that there will be time enough to decide on new constitutional rules.” Later during the arguments, Justice Neil Gorsuch, also a Trump appointee, asked, “The president is vested with all the executive power. You agree that he has a duty to faithfully execute all the laws?” After some hedging, Agarwal responded, “I would say, no.” “The president does not, under both history and tradition, have to have plenary power of supervision, but, in the case of the FTC, he does have some power of supervision, including, if there’s a demonstrable palpable violation of law, the president could absolutely fire a commissioner of the FTC under the plain language of the statute,” Agarwal argued. Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggests overturning Humphrey's Executor would "fundamentally" alter our "structure of government."D. John Sauer rightly responded that Humphrey's Executor itself fundamentally changed government, making it less accountable to the people. pic.twitter.com/2M6on6prHX— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 8, 2025 ‘Distrust of the Democratic Process’ Agarwal did not have good answers for justices when asked about the limiting principles of his argument, Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal after the arguments. Further, conservative justices seemed dismissive of liberal justices’ concerns about “chaos and destruction” if the Trump administration won the case, von Spakovsky said.  “It was clear the conservatives just thought that was a ridiculous argument,” he noted. He added that Jackson’s argument about government by experts is the argument progressives have advanced for 100 years.   “The liberal justices showed a fundamental distrust of the democratic process,” von Spakovsky said. The Humphreys case revolved around President Franklin Roosevelt’s firing of FTC Commissioner William Humphrey. The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 prohibited the president from firing a commissioner for any reason other than “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”  Humphrey sued but died before the Supreme Court decided the case. Thus, it was named after the executor of Humphrey’s estate. The high court held that Congress can enact laws limiting a president’s ability to remove members of independent boards and commissions.  The post Supreme Court Majority Seems Skeptical of Longstanding Deep State Protection appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ plan to reshape Florida’s congressional map ahead of midterm elections gives the state a “unique opportunity” to augment the Republican majority in Congress, Florida GOP operatives tell The Daily Signal. “Florida will 1,000% play a role in this redistricting fight,” a prominent Florida Republican said. “It’s just going to be a matter of how many seats and what that looks like. South Florida will be an area that will not look the same in 2026 as it did in previous elections.” President Donald Trump has urged Republican majority legislatures to rework their Congressional maps ahead of midterms. Though Trump has not yet commented on Florida redistricting, DeSantis called for a special legislative session next spring for lawmakers to reshape the congressional map. Republicans believe the effort will give the party an additional three to five seats in Congress. The Florida GOP successfully redistricted in 2022, giving the party four additional House seats. The prominent Republican believes the state’s effort to draft an aggressive map is the reason Republicans hold the majority in Congress today. Now, Republicans have a chance to do it again. The question is not a matter of if to redistrict, but when, another GOP operative told The Daily Signal. “Florida wants to redistrict,” the operative said. “It’s just about when.” Redistricting is important in Florida because the current map likely violates the U.S. Constitution, according to the president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, Adam Kincaid. The Florida legislature needs to rework District 20, Kincaid said, a “bizarrely shaped claw of a district” including areas of Broward and Palm Beach County. According to Kincaid, District 20 was designed to be a majority black seat, though the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that racial gerrymandering violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. “Nationally, I think it’s a good thing when a state like Florida looks at its map and says, this district is not in compliance,” Kincaid told The Daily Signal. “It’s pretty clear that some of the districts in Florida, especially south Florida, are problematic and need to be remedied.” If the legislature reworks District 20, a lot of other South Florida districts will have to be revisited as well, Kincaid said. “The map is not as compact as it could be,” he said. “It splits more cities and counties than it probably needs to, and a compact map in Florida would be probably a better map for Republicans, just because the current map is potentially gerrymandered, especially in South Florida, in a way that probably violates United States Constitution.” The prominent Florida Republican expressed confidence that the president will weigh in on the redistricting fight. Two of the most senior people in the White House, chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff James Blair, and Trump himself, are Florida residents. Although DeSantis has called for a special session on redistricting next spring, many Republican state lawmakers want to deal with it earlier in the regular session. The state Senate has agreed to DeSantis’ wishes, but the state House’s Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting has gone forward with holding meetings on the matter. “There are some that just believe, ‘Hey, get the work done. Don’t start the work so late. Do the work and then shift, but don’t just start the work so late,'” a GOP operative said. “Because if you wait for the court case and then get started, you’re just delaying the timeline.” DeSantis argues that if the legislature waits until a special session, an impending Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana will force Florida to redistrict “because the Supreme Court’s VRA [Voting Rights Act] decision is going to impact the current map.” The so-called Fair Districts measure, adopted by Florida voters in 2010, makes it illegal to draw legislative and congressional districts for partisan gain or to help incumbents. But DeSantis is hopeful that the Supreme Court’s ruling on redistricting in Louisiana will lay the groundwork for increasing the Sunshine State’s representation in Congress. If the high court rules that states can’t consider race when drawing district lines, it would “necessitate new congressional redistricting” in Florida, according to DeSantis, particularly in South Florida where racial gerrymandering is suspected. The prominent Florida Republican said redistricting is both a matter of when and how. DeSantis is known to have a tense relationship with members of the state legislature, including the Florida speaker of the House. But “when push comes to shove, all parties will agree that we have to do something,” the prominent Republican said. The post Why Florida Redistricting is a ‘Unique Opportunity’ to Give Republicans an Edge appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello. This is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. We’ve had more melodramas in the news about the relations between the Trump administration, the Pentagon, and interdicting drug transfers, smuggling by sea to the United States. We all know the story that President Donald Trump has ordered these drug boats, which leave, mostly, the coast of Venezuela on their way to, essentially, spread poison in the United States, to be destroyed. What is the point of contention now? One of the drug boats was not completely obliterated, but then a second hit was needed to finish the job. The Left immediately seized on that and said it was an execution of prisoners and that Donald Trump, via War Secretary Pete Hegseth, had ordered—or perhaps Pete Hegseth on his own had ordered—something like to “kill them all.” Even though The New York Times denied that very report from The Washington Post. So, what is going on? We had Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and we had the admirals involved testify. And they said there was no “kill them all” order, but they did testify to what is logical. And what is logical is, if you’re trying to take out a hostile boat or a hostile asset, and you partially take it out, then you always follow up, unless the people that were in there raise their hands or they swim away. But when they’re grabbing on the boat, as the video’s revealed, and the boat is still somewhat viable, then you’re going to do what? Say, “We only get one chance to stop you, and maybe you can get in the boat and go back and try again”? I don’t think that’s how it works in war. If you’re in World War II and you’re in a Sherman tank and you see a Tiger, and you get a shot and you knock off the tracks, and all of a sudden you see people coming out of the tank and they don’t have their hands up and they’re clinging to the tank, you just say, “Well, we only had one chance to get them. I can’t shoot them now because they’re not as capable as they were before I first hit the … ” I don’t think that’s how it works. But more importantly is the Left’s attitude. Two or three senators were suggesting, once again, that the military and the officers at the Pentagon and the regional commanders should think very carefully about obeying an order from Donald Trump. And the implication is: You can disobey them if you feel, in your considered opinion, as legal or psychiatric scholars, that they are unconstitutional. This is very dangerous. We saw the “Seditious Six,” the congresspeople who ordered, basically, 1.3 million in the military to consider very carefully the lawfulness or the legality of every order they receive from every commander, which would create chaos and destroy the military if anybody were to take them up on their views. But now we’re getting senators that are telling individual high-ranking officers, “You can disobey an order coming out of the White House.” This is deja vu. Does anybody remember the first administration? Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley did precisely that. He appointed himself as a lawyer and a psychiatrist, and he said, “If I get an order from Donald Trump that I feel is dangerous—i.e., existential—I’m gonna call up my PLA, People’s Liberation Army, counterpart in China.” And that’s what he did, perhaps on two occasions. And he said, essentially, and he bragged about this, “If I get an order, I will tell you first.” So, basically, under pressure from the Left, he said, “Well, I told our communist enemies that if I ever get an order I disagree with and think is dangerous, I’m gonna tip off the communists that we may be attacking and therefore, I won’t attack.” That was high treason, if you think about it. We had two lieutenant colonels in the first Trump administration, retired lieutenant colonels, who actually wrote and said that the military should remove Donald Trump from office and that they felt that Trump’s “little green men” would not be able to withstand the 82nd Airborne Division. So, you can see what they were envisioning, some kind of armed conflict over the succession of the presidency. Then we had a number of high-ranking four-star generals and admirals who said things in the first administration that were absolutely contrary to Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: “Donald Trump is a liar,” “Donald Trump is Mussolini,” “Donald Trump is Hitlerite,” “Donald Trump should be removed sooner than later.” That set the precedent, and now we’re seeing an exaggeration, an amplification, an increase in that very dangerous rhetoric. And the fact is that no one has ever shown that anybody in the military got a “kill prisoners” order from the secretary of defense or the presidency. On the other hand, as the admirals and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs have testified, if you are supposed to take out an enemy who is conducting offensive operations against your country—and that’s what smuggling dangerous drugs that have killed 70,000 people a year is—and you hit them and it blows a portion of the boat up, and then you see people still on the boat and trying to get away, what do you say then? “Marquess of Queensberry Rules apply”? “We only get one hit and therefore, because you escaped us, we can’t do it again”? No. We don’t do that. It wasn’t as if people swam off in the middle of the water and raised their hands up and said, “I surrender.” What is going on here? It’s a deliberate effort by the Left to undermine the chain of command and ultimately, the commander in chief itself. And the irony is, all of these senators and representatives and the media are talking about unconstitutionality. What they’re doing is unconstitutional. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post The Real Unconstitutionality? Undermining the Commander in Chief appeared first on The Daily Signal.