Victims of Trump purge call supreme court ruling a ‘dagger in heart’ to civil service

Summary

Rebecca Slaughter, who was fired by Trump from the FTC in 2025, worries agencies will be undermined by threat of removal if a decision is contrary to president’s favor Federal officials fired by the Trump administration are calling the recent supreme court decision a “dagger in the heart” of the civil service that will open independent federal government agencies to corruption and manipulation at the whim of the president. Since Donald Trump took office again in January 2025, he has fired more than 50 officials from federal agencies as the Trump administration openly sought to have the supreme court overturn a landmark 1935 ruling that limited the president’s power over independent agencies, known as Humphrey’s Executor. Slaughter said she received the email notifying her that she was fired by Trump in March 2025 as she was helping with rehearsal for her child’s elementary school play, a performance of Beauty and the Beast. “My stomach just dropped,” she said, noting she wasn’t surprised given similar firings were occurring at other agencies with statutory protections. “I was really hoping that it would avoid us, both because I love my job, but really more because I love the agency. In September 2025, the supreme court allowed Trump to remove Slaughter from the agency as the case continued and agreed to take up the case. “That was not a great sign,” said Slaughter. “If they did not want to overturn a 91-year-old precedent, they would have not taken the case, so we knew that boded poorly for our prospects, but I still felt really strongly that even if I thought what the administration was doing was wrong, they weren’t going to do it with my permission. I wasn’t going to cede to something that I thought was wrong on law, wrong on policy, wrong on principle. I was going to do the best I could fighting it out.” On 29 June 2026, the supreme court ruled i n a 6 to 3 vote to increase the president’s authority over independent federal agencies. It’s hard to understand how “the civil service survives at all”, said Slaughter. “That’s not just government leadership, that’s all protections for all of the government workers, the employment protections for government workers that ensure that we don’t have a wildly swinging, entirely politicized government workforce.” Slaughter said she worries about a future of expanding pay-to-play politics where wealthy donors are rewarded with political favors, and agencies that promote a fair and free economy are undermined by the threat of removal if a decision or ruling is contrary to the president’s favor or that of his donors. “Are companies going to be excused from lying and cheating because they’ve donated to the ballroom or to the president’s inauguration? She also criticized the conservative and business proponents supporting the supreme court’s decision as short-sighted. “The precedent that the supreme court just overturned was the precedent about protecting the pro-business conservative voice in these independent agencies,” she added. “I think that the same businesses that have been perfectly happy to say yes, let’s give President Trump broader deregulatory authority, will really not necessarily like the results when that power is turned around in a future Democratic administration.” “If the people who adjudicate whether civil service rules are being followed are themselves politically accountable only to the president and removable by the president, then those rules might as well not exist,” concluded Slaughter. “Rules that cannot be enforced are rules that have no effect.” Following the supreme court decision, the court denied a review of the case of Cathy Harris, who was fired from her position at the Merit Systems Protection Board, a federal agency dedicated to protect merit based hiring and systems from partisan political and other prohibited personnel activities. Harris also spoke with the Guardian about her case and the impacts of the supreme court decision. “I think it seriously points a dagger at the heart of the civil service,” Harris said. “ I think it means that unless Congress takes action to shore it up, and I hope that will happen, that people aren’t going to want to go work for the federal government, because they’re going to be concerned that they could be fired for political partisan reasons, all the things that the MSPB was there to prevent against.” She also said she was not surprised when she received a termination notice, but was hopeful the agency’s independence would be preserved. “Undermining the independence of the Merit Systems Protection Board means a civil service that returns to the patronage system, returns to a non-merit-based system, and returns to a system that can easily be corrupted and manipulated by any administration,” said Harris. “I think it’s going to be a sea change in how our government works, how it operates, and we’re going to see it across the board.” She cited a report from the New York Times in June 2026 that the Trump administration secretly swayed the board at the agency she was fired from to rule in its favor on a constitutional argument over presidential power that contradicts the agency’s existence. “I think what it shows is exactly how this Slaughter decision is going to impact federal agencies. There won’t be these restrictions and guardrails that were, I think, reasonably put up by Congress to prevent that kind of interference.” Other fired federal officials have been left in legal limbo awaiting rulings.