Politics

Proving that history does repeat itself, in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to fire an FTC commissioner over ideological disagreements. In that case, called Humphrey's Executor, the court unanimously held that while the president has the power to remove purely executive officers for any reason, that unlimited power does not extend to agencies like the FTC, whose duties "are neither political nor executive, but predominantly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative."

Following that 1935 decision, Congress went on to create many more multimember, independent agencies whose members likewise can only be removed for cause. Since January, Trump has also removed Democratic members from some of those agencies, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.