MAKE IT MAKE SENSE: "You're fired!"

Is the Supreme Court ready to dismiss the administrative state?

In today’s letter: In Trump v. Slaughter, there’s a lot more than an FTC commissioner’s job at stake — checks and balances are on the chopping block.

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THE GIST: The unitary executive visits the Supreme Court

“You’re fired!”

The Apprentice catchphrase has been more than a motto for this Trump presidency — mass firings have been an animating principle, a staple of the plan to remake American government.

In March of this year, Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter — a Democrat, appointed by Donald Trump in 2018 — was fired by email, because, Trump wrote, her work was “inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities.”

She sued, arguing that the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor decision, which checked the power of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and barred the firing of the members of “independent agencies” without cause, made her dismissal illegal. And like so many other fired federal employees, she’s been in limbo since — fired, reinstated, and let go again as her case has worked its way through the courts.

That case, Trump v. Slaughter, made it to the Supreme Court yesterday.