Donald Trump recently took to his Truth Social platform to celebrate a Supreme Court judgment. In response to the court’s decision in Trump v Slaughter on June 29, he posted: “90 years of precedent has been COMPLETELY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY OVERRULED, greatly increasing Presidential Power at a time when it is most needed!”
The US president is famously hyperbolic, but this time he did not exaggerate. His reading of US constitutional law was entirely correct. The court overruled its own precedent set in 1935 and held that the president had the power to fire federal trade commissioner Rebecca Slaughter “at will”.