The United States Supreme Court issued two sweeping and in some ways contradictory rulings on Monday that dramatically expand the president's authority to dismiss the leaders of independent federal agencies — while carving out a specific and significant exception for the Federal Reserve, the country's central bank. Both decisions were written by Chief Justice John Roberts, and together they mark one of the most consequential reshapings of the balance of power between the executive branch and the regulatory bodies Congress has created to be insulated from political influence.

In the first ruling, Trump v. Slaughter, a 6-3 conservative majority struck down a nearly 90-year-old legal precedent established in Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935), which had held that presidents could only dismiss the heads of certain independent agencies for specific reasons such as neglect of duty or misconduct. The case centred on Trump's removal of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the agency that enforces consumer protection and competition law. Roberts wrote that because the FTC today