Dem
47
GOP
53
Conservatives have long believed that when there is a Republican president, he should be in charge of all federal agencies and be able to fire and hire directors of them at will, even if the law says he can't do that. When a Democrat is president, they tend to emphasize the law and the fixed terms agency heads have. This is known as the Unified Theory of the Presidency (or something).
That theory will get a big test today. The Supreme Court will hear a case in which Donald Trump fired Rebecca Slaughter, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, whose term, by law, does not expire until 2029. But he doesn't like her, so he believes that is sufficient grounds to fire her, law or no law. He has gone to court to argue that Congress does not have the power to create independent agencies at all and the president can fire anyone in the Executive Branch whenever he wants to, for any reason or no reason, even if the law says he can't. If the Court agrees with him, this will mean the end of all independent agencies, like the FBI, FCC, FEC, FDA, FDIC, Fed and FTC, and also those hundreds of agencies whose initials don't start with "F." It will mean effectively that every agency must do what the current president wants. It will also mean that every time a new president is elected, all the agency heads and boards will be replaced and they will all be partisan. As a consequence, will the government be able to find competent people to run agencies if they know it might be for only 4 years? It could greatly weaken the government. For Republicans, this is a feature of the case, not a bug.
A decision for Trump will also change the balance of power between Congress and the president, giving the president much more power over federal policy than he has now. It will also make the agencies much more partisan. Currently, many agencies have boards with members who serve staggered terms, so some members are Democrats and some are Republicans. If the president can fire all agency heads and all boards on Day 1 and replace them with his own people, he will be able to get more done, but policy could radically shift every 4 years when a new president shows up.
The ruling won't come until June, but the conservative justices have been champing at the bit for years, just waiting to do this. Of course, if a Democrat is elected president in 2028 and then fires every one of Trump's appointees, which is almost certain, they may not like it so much. Their goal is probably to make it very difficult for Democrats to get elected, though.
Precedent on this issue goes back 90 years to the 1935 decision in Humphrey's Executor v. United States. In that case, Franklin Delano Roosevelt fired William Humphrey of the FTC over policy disagreements, the reason Trump wants to fire Slaughter. In a 9-0 ruling, the Court said that Congress had the authority to create independent agencies, like the FTC, to keep them out of partisan politics. This authority is what Trump wants the current Court to destroy. (V)