Today
THE SUPREME COURT ERASES 91 YEARS OF AGENCY INDEPENDENCE, HEGSETH STOCKS THE PENTAGON BOARD WITH DEFENSE CONTRACTORS AND A SAUDI LOBBYIST, BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP SURVIVES 6–3 — AND POLICE NOW NEED A WARRANT TO TRACK YOUR PHONE

A 91-year-old wall between the president and the agencies that regulate American life came down on Monday. The Supreme Court voted 6–3 to overturn Humphrey’s Executor v. United States… the 1935 ruling that allowed Congress to protect independent agency heads from being fired over political disagreements.

The case involved Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission. Trump fired her in March 2025. The reason given? Her “continued service” was “inconsistent with this Administration’s priorities.” A lower court ordered her reinstated. The Supreme Court reversed that and let the firing stand.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion: “If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, the Court overrules it.” The ruling gives the president direct control over every multi-member agency Congress created with firing protections… the FTC, the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and more than two dozen others.

Justice Sotomayor dissented from the bench. “The Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted,” she wrote… “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.”

Trump posted on Truth Social: “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.”

The Federal Reserve was spared… for now. In a separate 5–4 vote, the court kept Governor Lisa Cook in place while her case proceeds in lower courts. Roberts noted that “not only the fact of independence but also the appearance of independence is key to the Federal Reserve’s design.” But the principle underlying Monday’s ruling has no built-in limit. If the president controls the agencies that regulate Wall Street, Big Tech, energy, labor, and product safety… the question is not whether those agencies survive. It’s who they serve.
THE FTC, NLRB, EEOC, NRC, AND 20+ OTHER AGENCIES JUST LOST THEIR INDEPENDENCE. ONE RULING. ONE MORNING.

BREAKING

Half the Pentagon’s New Advisory Board Has Defense Industry Ties. The Vice Chair Lobbies for Saudi Arabia.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced 15 new members of the Defense Policy Board on Monday. He had fired everyone on the old board last April. The replacements are supposed to provide “independent” advice on war strategy and force modernization. At least 8 of the 15 have direct ties to the defense industry.

The vice chair is former Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. He is a registered lobbyist for the government of Saudi Arabia. He played a central role in rehabilitating the kingdom’s reputation after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He also helped shepherd Hegseth through his confirmation process… and now Hegseth has returned the favor with a seat at the table where defense policy is shaped.

Marc Andreessen… the venture capitalist whose firm has invested in Anduril, OpenAI, SpaceX, Skydio, and Hadrian… all companies with Pentagon contracts… got a seat. Christopher Williams, whose consulting firm represents Boeing and Northrop Grumman, got a seat. He served on the same board under George W. Bush in the lead-up to Iraq. A Responsible Statecraft analysis found that nine members of Bush’s board had ties to companies holding $76 billion in defense contracts.

The board charter says members must serve “free from conflict of interest.” But when you invest in the companies that build the weapons and then advise the secretary on which weapons to buy… the conflict isn’t hidden. It’s the job description.

EXPOSED

Birthright Citizenship Survives 6–3 — The Same Court That Gave Unlimited Firing Power Yesterday

On Tuesday… the day after handing the president unchecked power over independent agencies… the same Supreme Court struck down Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The vote was 6–3. Chief Justice Roberts wrote both opinions.

Roberts traced an unbroken legal line from the English common law through the Fourteenth Amendment: “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights… to freely participate in our political community.” The court held that children born in the United States to parents who are here unlawfully or temporarily are citizens at birth. The ruling reaffirmed the 1898 precedent United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which had stood unchallenged for 128 years.

Three justices dissented… Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito. Thomas argued the Fourteenth Amendment requires “domicile,” not just birth on U.S. soil. A recent poll found 64% of Americans opposed ending birthright citizenship. Trump called the decision “too bad for our Country” and urged Congress to pass legislation ending birthright citizenship “today.”

Here is the pattern worth watching. On Monday, the court expanded presidential power over every agency that regulates corporations. On Tuesday, it blocked presidential power over who gets to be a citizen. The court did not contradict itself. It drew a line… the president controls the regulators, but the Constitution controls the people.

The agencies that oversee antitrust, labor, consumer safety, and energy? The president now owns those. The question of who belongs in this country? The Constitution still holds that door. The machine advances where money flows. It retreats where the optics cost more than the gain.

“The Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted.”

— Justice Sotomayor, dissenting

DEVELOPING

Supreme Court Rules Police Need a Warrant Before Mass-Tracking Your Phone

In a third ruling Monday, the court held 6–3 that a “geofence warrant” used to sweep up location data from every phone in a geographic area counts as a search under the Fourth Amendment. Police will now need a warrant supported by probable cause before requesting bulk location data from companies like Google.

The case involved a robbery suspect. But the tool itself is far broader. Geofence warrants ask tech companies to hand over identifying data for every device that was near a specific location at a specific time. Google alone processed roughly 60,000 geofence requests per quarter at the program’s peak. Anyone who happened to walk past a crime scene… or attend a protest… or visit a church… could have their data swept into the net.

Justice Kagan wrote the opinion. Both liberal and conservative justices joined the majority. The dissenters argued the data was voluntarily shared with Google and therefore unprotected. The majority disagreed… holding that the scope and sensitivity of geolocation data gives it constitutional protection.

This is one area where the court pushed back against the surveillance state. But note what happened in the same 48 hours. The president gained direct control over the agencies that regulate data collection, consumer privacy, and corporate behavior. The court gave citizens a warrant requirement with one hand… and gave the president the power to fire the regulators who enforce it with the other.
  Connecting the Dots  

▸ The Bigger Picture

In 48 hours, the Supreme Court rewrote the relationship between the president and the government he controls. Independent agencies that have regulated monopolies, labor, consumer products, and nuclear energy for nearly a century now answer directly to the Oval Office. The Pentagon restocked its advisory board with defense investors and a foreign lobbyist. Birthright citizenship held. And police lost the ability to track millions of phones without a warrant.

The press frames Monday as a “win for Trump” and Tuesday as a “loss.” That framing misses the architecture. The court did not contradict itself. It made two precise cuts.

The machine advances where money flows and retreats where the political cost is too high. Corporate regulation… that is where the money lives. The FTC polices mergers. The NLRB protects unions. The EEOC enforces discrimination law. The president now controls all of them. Birthright citizenship? That costs nothing to preserve and everything to revoke. So the Constitution holds the line there while the real power shifts somewhere else entirely. The agencies that stood between corporations and the public just lost their shield. And the people now advising the Pentagon on what to buy are the same people selling it.

The court does not serve one party. It serves the structure. And this week, the structure got stronger. That’s the Seventh Floor.

They rely on the shadows.
It’s time to turn on the lights.