Donald Trump’s Imperial Presidency

A golden eagle, Supreme Court rulings, and one of the most dangerous days in modern American government.

At 3:29 this afternoon, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, sat alone behind the desk in the Oval Office. There were no Cabinet members standing behind him and no Republican lawmakers waiting to praise him or tell him how historic the moment was. Just the President of the United States, dressed in a dark blue suit, a crisp white dress shirt, and a bright “American flag red” tie with an American flag pin fastened neatly to his lapel. Only hours earlier, the Supreme Court had handed him one of the most dangerous expansions of presidential power in nearly a century, a decision one justice warned gave the presidency authority “unknown even to the English Crown.” And with all of that new power resting beneath his firmly clasped hands, Donald Trump spent fourteen minutes of his afternoon signing an executive order about the right to repair cars, presenting it as part of his effort to make life more affordable for American families.

As he prepared to sign his name, he launched into a story explaining why the order mattered. “I mean, think about it. It came to my attention because I noticed they were arresting people for fixing their car. They were arresting people for fixing. That’s not even believable. Anyway, so it’s right to fix and I think it’s really common sense if somebody wants to fix. Some of these people are better mechanics than the mechanics in the shop. They’re telling the mechanic in the shop how to fix their car or their truck.”

Donald Trump inadvertently let the truth slip out when he said: “That’s not even believable.” He was right. It wasn’t believable. Because it wasn’t true.

Nobody was being arrested for fixing their car. The actual issue involved emissions regulations under the Clean Air Act and automakers restricting access to diagnostic software and repair tools. It was a legitimate consumer rights dispute, a regulatory and licensing matter. But Trump turned it into a story about people being hauled away in handcuffs, and then immediately said his own story was not believable. Right after that, he signed a presidential memorandum to fix a problem he had just invented.

And then a reporter asked him about something real. The bipartisan housing affordability bill, legislation that Congress spent months negotiating to address one of the most painful financial crises facing American families. Housing costs. The bill had bipartisan support. It had cleared Congress. Speaker Johnson had sent it to the White House that same day. And when asked whether he would sign it, Donald Trump said this: “It’s so unimportant compared to the SAVE America Act. When I look at the bill, it’s a bill. When I look at the SAVE America Act, it’s about saving America.” Then he said: “It’s a yawn.”

And in the same breath, he said the only legislation that matters is the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require photo ID and proof of citizenship to vote, eliminate most mail-in ballots, and fundamentally restrict how Americans participate in their own democracy. That is what excites him. Not whether families can afford a place to live, but how much he can restrict the American people’s access to vote.

Donald Trump spent nearly the entire day riding a wave of celebration, frustration, and self-congratulation. But beneath it all was one undeniable reality. This morning, the Supreme Court made him the most powerful president in modern American history. In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that the president has the constitutional authority to fire the leaders of independent federal agencies for any reason, or for no reason at all. In doing so, the Court overturned Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 precedent that had protected independent federal agencies from direct presidential control for ninety-one years. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

It all comes down to what independent agencies are and why they exist. Congress created agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the National Transportation Safety Board, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with a specific design: the people who run them could only be removed “for cause,” meaning for misconduct, neglect, or failure to perform their duties. Not because a president disagreed with their decisions or because they ruled against a donor. Not because they enforced a regulation that made a powerful person uncomfortable. The entire point was to keep these agencies independent from political pressure so they could do their jobs, protect workers, protect consumers, ensure fair competition, oversee nuclear safety, investigate plane crashes, enforce civil rights laws, without fear that the president would fire them for doing something he did not like. That protection is now gone.

Trump fired two Democratic FTC commissioners, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, in March of 2025. He did not cite any misconduct. He told them their “continued service on the FTC was inconsistent with his Administration’s priorities.” Slaughter challenged the firing. The case went to the Supreme Court. And the court ruled that the president’s power to remove executive officials cannot be limited by Congress, overturning ninety-one years of settled law and fundamentally changing how the federal government operates.

Justice Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench, which is something justices do only when they believe a decision is profoundly wrong. She wrote that the court “gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.” She wrote that the Founders had “never intended” to give the president “the complete set of powers” that the English Crown held, “let alone more.” And she warned: “The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before. It is a power, however, that neither the People, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him.”

Rebecca Slaughter, the commissioner Trump fired, said she was “very worried about a future where presidents like President Trump can wield this enormous grant of executive power that the Supreme Court just handed to him in order to reward his friends and punish his enemies and do so with impunity.”

And how did Trump respond? He went straight to Truth Social. At 10:51 AM, minutes after the decision, he wrote: “BIG WIN just moments ago at the Supreme Court, in the Slaughter Case, confirming Presidential Power in our Country to remove Executive Branch Officers and Agency Appointees, or Representatives, under Article II. This Decision was long sought by United States Presidents, dating all the way back to the 1930s. It is such an Honor to be the sitting President who won this Historic and Unprecedented Ruling, one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

At 11:24 AM, just thirty-three minutes later, he posted again: “To show the importance of the Slaughter Case, 90 years of precedent has been COMPLETELY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY OVERRULED, greatly increasing Presidential Power at a time when it is most needed! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

And by 2:40 PM, he was back again: “Today’s Historic Slaughter Decision by the Supreme Court is the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years. Such a Monumental Ruling at such an important time! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

He was not talking about making agencies work better for the American people. He was talking about presidential power. His power. And he is celebrating it the way someone celebrates a personal victory, not a public good. And the danger goes far beyond what Trump does with this power tomorrow or next week.

We need to think about what this ruling tells the rest of the world about the United States of America. Many of these agencies do not just operate domestically. The Federal Trade Commission cooperates with international regulators on trade enforcement. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversees safety standards that affect global nuclear policy. The Federal Communications Commission regulates infrastructure that crosses borders. The Consumer Product Safety Commission sets standards that shape international manufacturing. When foreign governments and international partners work with these agencies, they do so because they trust that the people running them were chosen for their expertise, not their loyalty to whoever happens to be president at the moment. That trust just evaporated.

Because here is what this ruling actually means for the stability of the American government: there is no longer any continuity. Every single time we have a presidential election, the incoming president can now walk into office and fire every agency head across more than two dozen federal agencies on day one. Not for misconduct. Not for incompetence. Just because they want their own people in those seats. That means every four years, or every eight years, the entire regulatory infrastructure of the United States could be gutted and rebuilt from scratch based on the political preferences of one person. That is not how a stable democracy operates. That is not how you build the kind of institutional trust that keeps markets stable, keeps allies confident, and keeps the machinery of government functioning across administrations. That is how you create a government that lurches from one extreme to another every time power changes hands, and it tells every nation on earth that any agreement, any regulatory partnership, any institutional relationship they have with the United States is only as durable as the current president’s mood.

And then there is the dimension of this that we cannot even fully see yet, because we do not know what Trump will do with this power behind closed doors. He can now install loyalists at every single one of these agencies. Not qualified professionals. Not career experts. Loyalists. People who owe him personally. People who paid for the privilege. People who will do whatever he asks in exchange for the position and the power that comes with it. We have already seen how this administration operates. We have seen the contracts. We have seen the deals. We have seen who benefits. Now imagine that pattern applied to the agencies that regulate the safety of your food, the fairness of your workplace, the integrity of your financial markets, the safety of nuclear power plants. We do not know how dangerous this is yet, because we have never been here before. No president in the history of this country has had the ability to simply replace the leadership of every independent agency with people who answer only to him.

In a separate ruling issued at the same time, also written by Roberts, the court ruled 5-4, offering some protection to Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from being fired without hearings and her ability to defend herself. Justice Kavanaugh crossed over to join the three liberal justices and Roberts, finding that Trump had not given Cook the procedural due process she was entitled to before trying to remove her. The court carved out what amounts to a Federal Reserve exception, arguing that the Fed occupies a unique constitutional position rooted in a tradition of central bank independence that traces back to Alexander Hamilton and the founding of the republic. The Fed keeps its independence. Everyone else loses theirs.

Sotomayor saw the contradiction between the two rulings clearly. She called the majority’s reasoning “a half-baked theory of executive power that is simultaneously all encompassing yet also subject to necessary but undefined exceptions.” If the president must have total control over everyone who exercises executive power, why does the Federal Reserve get a pass? And if the Fed is too important to be subjected to political control, then maybe the agencies that protect workers from unsafe conditions, consumers from dangerous products, and communities from nuclear accidents are too important as well. The court is not applying a principle. It is picking favorites.

There were two other significant rulings today. In Watson v. Republican National Committee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett crossed over to write a 5-4 opinion protecting the right of states to count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked on time. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia currently allow this. Barrett wrote that federal election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and the court could not add to the words Congress chose. This was a genuine victory, and it matters for November.

But Trump’s reaction, posted at 11:03 AM, is where the real danger sits. He called it “a tremendous loss” for voter rights and demanded passage of the SAVE America Act. He laid out three requirements: all voters must show photo ID, all voters must show proof of citizenship, and no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment, or travel. Then he called opposition to the bill treasonous, writing that there is “only one reason to oppose” it: “CHEATING!” He described a “powerful Communist Movement taking place in our Country, one more dangerous than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or September 11th.” And then he named five Republican senators individually: Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, and Mitch McConnell, calling them “Hold Outs” and “Dumocrats.”

The court also declined to hear Trump’s appeal in the E. Jean Carroll case. The jury’s finding that he sexually abused Carroll stands. His response, posted at 11:16 AM, was to claim he never met her, despite a photograph of them together. He called the Adult Survivors Act, legislation New York passed to give sexual assault survivors a path to justice when the statute of limitations had expired, a law that was “tailormade” to “nab” him. He wrote that “this Injustice cannot be allowed to stand.” That is the character of the man the Supreme Court empowered today.

And then came the golden eagle that Trump wants to install on the White House itself. At 8:23 PM, as the sun was setting over Washington on the eve of the country’s 250th birthday, the President of the United States posted a photograph of a massive golden eagle, wingspan of at least seven or eight feet, physically mounted on the columns of the White House exterior, hanging between the Truman Balcony and the South Lawn. His caption: “A Golden Gift to the White House for its 250th Birthday Year!”

And if you are finding this unsettling, like I am, there is a reason, and it is not just the tacky gold color. Authoritarian regimes throughout history have used oversized eagle imagery on government buildings as physical assertions of state power. The Roman Empire carried theirs at the head of every legion. The Nazi regime adopted the Reichsadler, massive metallic eagles with fully spread wings, and mounted them on buildings, rally stages, and government offices. Albert Speer designed entire architectural environments around these symbols. The scale was always deliberate. The state is vast. The state is permanent. The state is watching. What Trump mounted on the White House today mirrors that visual language almost exactly: frontal, symmetrical, wings horizontal, talons gripping a central emblem, gold.

We are four months and five days from the midterm elections. Everything that happened today, the ruling, the eagle, the threats, the dismissal of struggling families, all of it continues unchecked unless we change who holds the power of oversight in Congress.

Taking back both chambers is not just about limiting Trump’s rule. It is about subpoena power. It is about hearings. It is about getting to the bottom of everything this administration has been hiding: the Board of Peace, the Epstein files, the contracts, the firings, the abuses of power that have been piling up with no one in a position or power willing to investigate. It is about building the evidentiary record for impeachment and removal. Not just of Trump, but of Vance as well. Both of them.

All day I have been thinking about how we are just over four months away from November. And for the first time in a while, I am not saying that just as a warning that “we have to move faster.” Tonight I am saying it differently. I am saying it as a promise.

There is a very real chance that in four months, we send a signal so loud that it cannot be ignored. And when we do, the dominoes start falling. The enablers who have been holding the line for Trump because it was politically convenient will start to think about jumping ship, because the politics will have changed. The donors who kept funding the machinery will think about the future of where their money goes a little more carefully. The Republicans who stayed silent will suddenly find their voices. And then, just a couple of months after that, the new Congress is seated. And that is when everything changes.

Donald Trump loves to be the first to do things. He brags about it constantly. Well, he might just be the first president actually removed from office. And his vice president along with him. We are closing in on what could be the last six months of his uncontrolled reign of terror. He has more power today than he had yesterday. But in four months, the American people speak. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.

This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Picture of the day: Picture of the Day: I wish there were more hours in the day, because there are so many good books out right now that feel essential to this moment. I am putting aside as much time as I can to read them all. This one is on the nightstand tonight.

Edited: It turns out the golden eagle image Trump shared was AI generated, so it was edited to say “wants to install” instead of “installed.”

Sources:

President Trump Signs Executive Orders, Jun. 29, 2026: YouTube Video

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/supreme-court-trump-dismissal-powers-sonia-sotomayor-dissent/
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/29/nx-s1-5816232/supreme-court-ftc-independent-agencies-humphreys-executor
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/29/supreme-court-trump-slaughter-ftc.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/29/supreme-court-elections-mail-trump-mississippi.html
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/29/politics/e-jean-carroll-trump-supreme-court
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2026/06/29/supreme-court-rejects-trumps-request-to-take-up-e-jean-carroll-case/
https://abcnews.com/Politics/yawn-trump-downplays-bipartisan-landmark-housing-bill/story?id=134323115
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/29/politics/mike-johnson-housing-bill-trump
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/4629329/trump-signs-memorandum-to-break-up-aftermarket-auto-parts-monopoly/
https://www.factcheck.org/2026/06/trumps-inaccurate-anecdote-on-right-to-repair-cars/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/4629952/trump-golden-eagle-white-house/
https://newrepublic.com/post/212473/sotomayor-warns-supreme-court-trump-powers-king-slaughter-ftc