WASHINGTON (AP) — A conservative law professor known for his expansive views of presidential power and for decades-old memos that justified harsh interrogation techniques after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks says he will be advising a team of prosecutors investigating whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired against President Donald Trump.

John Yoo confirmed in an email to The Associated Press on Monday that he would be assisting Joe diGenova, the former Justice Department prosecutor who was assigned in April to investigate whether officials, who over the last decade scrutinized Trump, participated in a criminal conspiracy against the Republican president.

“He’s a lawyer. He’s going to be helping us,” diGenova said in a brief telephone interview about Yoo. He did not elaborate.

A law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Yoo was a senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration who served as a lead author of the so-called “torture memos” that government officials used to justify using “enhanced interrogation” techniques on potential terror suspects. The Justice Department later rescinded the memos.

In the years since, he’s remained a prominent proponent of broad executive authority, telling the AP in a 2020 interview that he had told Trump administration officials multiple times that a Supreme Court ruling which rejected Trump’s effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, opened the door to enormous new presidential power.

The conspiracy investigation is being conducted in Florida, but the scope is unclear, as is whether any criminal charges will be brought.

Prosecutors have centered at least part of the probe on the long-concluded investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Investigators have issued a broad swath of subpoenas for records and conducted interviews related to the creation of an intelligence community assessment, released in January 2017, that found that Russia engaged in wide-ranging election interference to boost Trump over his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

A 2019 report by special counsel Robert Mueller affirmed that Russia interfered on Trump’s behalf and that the Trump campaign repeatedly welcomed the assistance, but it did not find sufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the campaign.

Several subsequent investigations into the Russia probe have identified multiple errors into how it was conducted, and a former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty in 2020 to doctoring an email during the course of the inquiry. But none of the reviews have identified criminal misconduct by any senior law enforcement or intelligence official involved in the investigation.

Trump has nonetheless continued to demand retribution and has sought to punish top officials from that time at the FBI and CIA.

Asked in a Fox News Channel interview in May what the Justice Department had done to address claims of a long-running conspiracy to bring down Trump, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “That’s exactly what we’re investigating right now.”

Yoo’s involvement in the investigation was earlier reported by Politico and CNN.

(SRN NEWS) – The High Court has rejected a Trump administration challenge, the Court says states CAN count late-arriving mail-in ballots: 

The Supreme Court ruling 5-4 that the State of Mississippi can count late ballots that arrive after Election Day. Justices ruling the ballots must be postmarked on or before Election Day and show up within 5 business days. 

The decision rejected a Republican-led attack on laws in more than half the states and the District of Columbia that permit mailed ballots to arrive and be counted some number of days after the election, provided they are postmarked by Election Day. The outcome spares officials the headache of changing their ballot rules just a few months before the 2026 midterm congressional elections.

In just over half those states, the more forgiving deadlines apply only to ballots cast by military and overseas voters.

The court heard arguments in March in a case from Mississippi pitting the state against Trump’s Republican administration and the Republican and Libertarian parties. At issue was whether federal law sets a single Election Day that requires ballots to be both cast by voters and received by state officials.

The federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down a Mississippi law allowing ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of the election and are postmarked by Election Day.

June 29 (Reuters) – The Nasdaq and the NYSE will ring the opening bell from the Oval Office for the first time together to launch Trump’s much-touted government-backed investment program for children next week, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Monday.

“We’re having a big opening bell ceremony next week. They’re doing that to celebrate the accounts to make sure everybody knows it’s time to get an account for your kid, even if it’s not born this year,” Hassett told CNBC in an interview.

U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year unveiled Trump Accounts, a new tax-deferred investment vehicle for U.S. citizens under 18, which is scheduled to be officially launched on July 4.

Under the scheme, the U.S. Treasury will deposit $1,000 as seed money into an investment account for each child with a valid Social Security number born between 2025 and 2028.

The Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

(Reporting by Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru and Hyunsu Yim in Barcelona; Editing by Pooja Desai)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states can count ballots that arrive after Election Day, a persistent target of President Donald Trump.

The 5-4 decision rejected a Republican-led attack on laws in more than half the states and the District of Columbia that permit mailed ballots to arrive and be counted some number of days after the election, provided they are postmarked by Election Day. The outcome spares officials the headache of changing their ballot rules just a few months before the 2026 midterm congressional elections.

In just over half those states, the more forgiving deadlines apply only to ballots cast by military and overseas voters.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the court’s majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices.

Federal laws setting a single Election Day “leave open when those votes must be received,” Barrett wrote.

Congress could change the law, she said. “If varied deadlines for ballot receipt similarly call for a national solution, the American people must choose it through their elected representatives,” Barrett wrote.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent for four justices. “Not only is today’s decision inconsistent with statutory text, legal context, historical practice, and precedent; it also threatens to produce lamentable consequences,” Alito wrote. “The majority’s holding spawns a slurry of troubling election-law questions and risks further undermining Americans’ confidence in election integrity.”

The legal challenge was part of Trump’s broader attack on most mail balloting, which he has said breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and years of experience in numerous states. Trump has repeatedly claimed that his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 resulted from fraud even though more than 60 court decisions and his own attorney general said that argument had no merit.

Trump called the court ruling a “tremendous loss” and renewed his call for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which has made it through the House of Representatives but not the Senate.

“There is only one reason to oppose — CHEATING!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Among other changes, the legislation would limit who is able to receive a mail ballot and impose a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement for registering to vote.

“If we want fair and secure elections, Election Day should mean exactly what it says, which is why this decision makes it even more imperative that Congress pass the SAVE America Act,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said in a statement.

The court heard arguments in March in a case from Mississippi pitting the state against Trump’s Republican administration and the Republican and Libertarian parties. At issue was whether federal law sets a single Election Day that requires ballots to be both cast by voters and received by state officials.

The federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down a Mississippi law allowing ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of the election and are postmarked by Election Day.

The outcome is a “sigh of relief” for a lot of election administrators, said Stephen Richer, a Republican and the former top election administrator in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.

A ruling in favor of the Republican National Committee “would have created a whole host of administrative challenges for the affected states,” said Richer, who is now a legal fellow at the Cato Institute.

RNC officials did not immediately respond Monday to email and telephone requests for comment.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court refused Monday to revive a $300 million defamation lawsuit filed against CNN over its coverage of a prominent attorney’s remarks made while defending President Donald Trump during his 2020 impeachment.

The majority declined to take up the case in a brief, unexplained order. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented, calling on the court to reconsider the legal standards for public figures who claim defamation.

Alan Dershowitz said the news network aired only a portion of the comment made during his defense of the president, distorting his meaning to make him look like he’d “lost his mind,” according to court documents.

The network said that multiple outlets had interpreted his remarks in a similar way, and Dershowitz couldn’t show CNN was trying to mischaracterize what he said.

In his appeal, Dershowitz had urged the court to reconsider New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. The landmark First Amendment case that made it harder for public figures to win libel lawsuits because it requires proof that an outlet knowingly published something false, or showed a reckless disregard for the truth.

Dershowitz, a retired Harvard Law School professor and legal commentator, was part of Trump’s defense team during his impeachment trial over allegations that Trump wanted political favors from Ukraine in return for U.S. military aid. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.

Dershowitz responded to a question at one point by saying, “the only thing that would make a quid pro quo unlawful is if the quo were somehow illegal.” Providing arms to Ukraine, he said, isn’t illegal.

He alleged that CNN only played what he said moments later: “Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest and, mostly, they are right, your election is in the public interest, and if the president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”

Dershowitz said the edit made it seem like he was arguing a president could avoid impeachment for illegal acts as long as he was doing it to get reelected – a concept his original suit called “preposterous and foolish on its face.”

CNN countered by saying it did air his full remarks during its live coverage, and invited him on twice more to expand on his meaning.

Lower courts tossed out the suit, finding that Dershowitz hadn’t shown CNN acted with “actual malice” in its reporting, making it fall short of the standard set by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider a Republican push to enforce strict Arizona voting laws passed in the swing state after the 2020 election.

The high court has allowed some similar rules to take effect temporarily before, including Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirement for state and local elections and a Virginia purge of voter rolls that the state said was aimed at keeping noncitizens from voting.

President Donald Trump’s Republican administration joined the appeal after lower courts found the measures violated federal voting laws.

The high court is expected to hear arguments in the fall and hand down an opinion after the midterm elections.

The Republican-controlled legislature passed the laws in 2022, part of a wave of similar proposals around the country after Trump falsely claimed widespread voter fraud was responsible for his narrow defeat there to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump reclaimed the state in 2024, helping secure his return to the White House.

The case reached the Supreme Court’s emergency docket in 2024. The justices gave the GOP a partial victory, allowing Arizona to require proof of citizenship for registration in state and local elections but not federal races.

Also that year, the high court allowed Virginia to continue a purge of voter rolls shortly before the election.

Citizenship is required to vote across the country, and people must attest they are citizens under penalty of perjury to register. Arizona is among only a handful of states that require additional proof, like a driver’s license or passport. Data indicates that voting by noncitizens is rare.

Arizona tried to impose proof requirements for national elections in 2013, but the law was struck down by the Supreme Court. Now, people can register as “federal only” voters without providing proof of citizenship, but Arizona requires additional proof for state and local election participation.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court is set to issue the final rulings of its nine-month term on Tuesday, including cases involving President Donald Trump’s bid to limit birthright citizenship, a Republican challenge to campaign finance limits and a dispute involving a crackdown by states on transgender athletes.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)

By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Monday to let Donald Trump fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook as it stood firm to preserve the central bank’s cherished independence against an unprecedented challenge by the Republican president.

The court, in a 5-4 ruling, blocked Trump’s bid to become the first president to remove a Fed official since Congress created the central bank in 1913. In his second term as president, Trump has tested the limits of presidential power in numerous other ways as well.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh were in the majority, along with the court’s three liberal justices. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented.

Roberts, who authored the ruling, said Trump “failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute. Without such protections, she could not properly dispute the charges the president laid against her.”

Canvassing the history of the Federal Reserve System and its predecessor central banks since the founding, including the Bank of North America and the First and Second Banks of the United States, Roberts emphasized that all have featured independence from the president.

“Like the directors of its three predecessors, however, the Federal Reserve’s Governors do not serve at the president’s pleasure – they instead serve staggered 14 year terms, and may be removed only ‘for cause,'” Roberts added.

Trump last August had cited unproven mortgage fraud allegations in trying to oust Cook, the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, while she called that a pretext to remove her for monetary policy differences.

‘I REFUSED TO BOW’

In a statement on Monday, Cook welcomed the court’s decision, saying it affirms the Fed’s obligation to make policy decisions independently, free from political interference.

“This was never about mortgage documents signed years before I became a Federal Reserve governor. It was an attempt to remove me on a manufactured pretext because I refused to bow to political pressure and continued to set interest rates based only on what would best serve the American people,” Cook said.

The justices denied a request from Trump’s Justice Department to lift a judge’s order barring ​him from immediately firing Cook while her legal challenge to the termination continues to play out in a lower court. Cook denied Trump’s allegations.

The court said its ruling was not deciding the validity of the factual dispute in the case, which can now return to lower courts where action has been stalled while the Supreme Court weighed in.

“It at least remains an open question what precisely happened here, and indeed whether Cook committed ‘gross negligence,’ let alone ‘deceitful and potentially criminal conduct,’ as the president’s letter alleges,” Roberts wrote, adding that Cook must be able to respond to the charges made against her.

‘APPROPRIATE ACTION’

Trump reacted to the decision in a social media post.

“The Cook Lawsuit, having to do with her suitability in sitting on the Board of the Federal Reserve, was sent back by the Supreme Court on a strictly procedural basis, we will take appropriate action immediately to make sure that someone who has committed wrongdoing will not be making vital decisions concerning the Welfare of the United States of America!” Trump wrote.

In another ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court backed Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic Federal Trade Commission member, expanding his powers over the government and overturning its 1935 precedent that had recognized the authority of Congress to protect leaders of certain regulatory agencies from presidential removal at will.

Trump in separate comments on social media called the Slaughter ruling “one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers.”

Monday’s Cook ruling follows the February 20 decision by the justices in another case with major economic ramifications to strike down most of Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, a ruling that elicited a vitriolic condemnation of the court by the president.

The Fed is the world’s most important central bank, an institution that determines the cost of credit for the United States and beyond and which has been in Trump’s crosshairs since his return to the presidency in January 2025.

Cook’s term in the job was due to run until 2038. She was appointed by Democratic former President Joe Biden in 2022.

Trump’s targeting of Cook and ‌a separate criminal investigation his administration launched in January, but later dropped, against then-Fed Chair Jerome Powell together represented the biggest challenge to the central bank’s independence since its founding.

May 15 was the final day of Powell’s eight years as Fed chair, though he remains a member of its Board of Governors. The U.S. Senate on May 13 voted to confirm Trump’s nominee Kevin Warsh as Powell’s successor, and he was sworn in on May 22.

When the justices in October agreed to hear the case involving Cook, they left her in the post for the time being. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in January, with Cook and Powell in attendance.

THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT

In creating the Fed in 1913, Congress passed a law called the Federal Reserve Act that included provisions to shield the central bank from political interference, requiring governors to be removed by a president only “for cause,” though the law does not define the term nor establish procedures for removal.

While Monday’s ruling did not define exactly what could constitute “cause” under which a president could fire Cook or other board members, Roberts said that the central bank’s history and independence suggested it should be a “substantial threshold.”

“Without such constraints in place, any perceived or alleged misstep (past or present) could provide a ready pretext for a governor’s removal — a fact that he would surely know, and that would surely weigh on him as he decided what to say and how to vote,” Roberts wrote. “Nothing could be more corrosive of the independence that Congress sought to preserve.”

Roberts said that while, short of impeachment, only the president can decide whether to remove a member of the Federal Reserve Board, “that does not mean that he may make that decision for any reason, or no reason.”

“Congress could of course afford the president the power to remove Federal Reserve Governors at will,” Roberts wrote. “Or Congress could exempt the president’s removal of governors for cause from judicial review. But Congress has done neither.”

Trump sought to fire Cook on August 25, 2025, by posting a termination letter on social media citing the allegations disclosed by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, a Trump appointee, involving homes owned by her in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Atlanta.

Pulte wrote on social media on Monday, “As I have repeatedly said, I believe Lisa Cook will be indicted for mortgage fraud.”

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in September ruled that Trump’s attempt to remove Cook without notice or a hearing likely violated her right to due process under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. The judge also said the allegations made against Cook likely were not a legally sufficient cause to remove her under the Federal Reserve Act as they relate to conduct that occurred before she served in the post.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined Trump’s request to put Cobb’s order on hold. 

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, in a dissenting opinion, said Monday’s ruling had wrongly allowed Cook to remain in her position and exercise “executive power” after being removed by Trump.

Thomas criticized the ruling for expressing concern that a board member was being removed for the first time in the Federal Reserve’s 111-year history, saying “it expresses no such concern that it today upholds an injunction against the president’s removal of an executive officer for the first time in the Constitution’s 237-year history.”

“The court makes many policy arguments for an ‘independent’ banking agency that exercises executive power free from accountability,” Thomas wrote, “but those are ultimately arguments against the Constitution.”

THE WISHES OF POLITICIANS

Trump has heaped pressure on the central bank to cut interest rates more rapidly and more deeply than it has been willing to do as it combats persistent inflation, and lashed out repeatedly at Powell for not complying with his wishes.

The Cook case has ramifications for the Fed’s ability to set interest rates without regard to the wishes of politicians, widely seen as critical to any central bank’s ability to carry out tasks such as keeping inflation under control.

As a Fed governor, Cook helps set U.S. monetary policy with the rest of the central bank’s seven-member board and the heads of the 12 regional Fed banks.

In prior cases, the Supreme Court chipped away at the independence of various federal agencies from presidential control, and could soon overrule a key precedent that has shielded the heads of independent agencies from removal since 1935. 

But the court last year signaled it may view the central bank as an exception, noting in a May 2025 ruling that let Trump remove two Democratic members of federal labor boards that the Fed possesses a unique structure and historical tradition.

PRESIDENTIAL POWER

Both Cook’s case and the fight over tariffs involved the legal fallout from Trump aggressively pushing the limits of presidential power since returning to office in January 2025.

Trump has also used executive authority to quickly transform policies on immigration, military service, federal employment and beyond. To date, the Supreme Court has allowed most of those policies to go ahead despite legal challenges, on a preliminary basis, though the tariffs decision was a major exception.

In the tariffs ruling, the court repudiated a signature piece of Trump’s economic agenda by invalidating his tariffs imposed on nearly every U.S. trading partner under a 1977 law meant for use in national emergencies – also something no other president had done.

Trump reacted furiously to that ruling, saying he was “absolutely ashamed” of some of the justices and called the court’s Republican appointees – including two of his own – who ruled against him “fools” and “lapdogs” for Democrats.

As in other legal disputes, the administration argued for an expansive view of Trump’s power in Cook’s case, saying that so long as the president identifies a cause for removal, that is within his “unreviewable discretion.”

Cook’s lawyers argued that granting him that power would eviscerate the Fed’s independence, disrupt markets and create a roadmap for future presidents to direct monetary policy.

THE POWELL INVESTIGATION

Like Cook, Powell called the administration’s action against him – an investigation involving cost overruns in a project to renovate two historical buildings at the Fed’s Washington headquarters – a pretext aimed at gaining influence over monetary policy. A judge on March 13 blocked subpoenas issued in the Powell investigation by a prosecutor appointed by Trump, agreeing with Powell that the probe was an improper attempt to intimidate the central bank into cutting interest rates. The prosecutor dropped the investigation on April 24.

Trump has publicly called Powell a “numbskull,” a “major loser” and “very incompetent.”

Trump in January nominated Warsh, who previously served on the Fed’s Board of Governors and whose father-in-law is wealthy Trump booster Ron Lauder. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas administered the oath of office for Warsh during his swearing-in ceremony, and fellow conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh was in attendance.

The Justice Department dropped the Powell investigation after Republican Senator Thom Tillis called the inquiry a frivolous assault on the ​Fed’s independence and vowed to block Warsh’s confirmation until ⁠it was ended.

In what is called a criminal referral, Pulte asked the Justice Department last year to open a criminal investigation into Cook and others over alleged mortgage fraud. There has been no indication of any such criminal investigation moving forward.

As Pulte pushed the accusations, Reuters found that his father and stepmother declared the same status as Cook on two homes in two different states. These “homestead exemptions” for residences are meant to give a discount to homeowners on taxes for properties they use as their primary residence. The property tax authority in Ann Arbor told Reuters that Cook had not broken rules for tax breaks on her home despite Pulte’s allegations.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by John Kruzel, Nate Raymond, Katharine Jackson, Daphne Psaledakis and Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Will Dunham)

By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court backed on Monday state laws that allow mail-in ballots received after Election Day to be counted, rejecting a Republican-led challenge to a five-day grace period in Mississippi and dealing a setback to President Donald Trump. 

The justices in a 5-4 ruling overturned a lower court’s decision that had deemed Mississippi’s law inconsistent with U.S. statutes that set the timing of federal elections — for the presidency, Senate and House of Representatives. Trump last year vowed to end the use of mail-in ballots nationwide before this November’s midterm elections, when his fellow Republicans are seeking to retain control of Congress.

The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberals in the majority. Barrett authored the ruling. 

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the decision. 

Mississippi’s law permits mail-in ballots to be counted if they were postmarked on or before Election Day but received up to five business days after a federal election. Absentee voting by mail in Mississippi is limited to a few categories of voters including people age 65 and above, the disabled and those living away from home. 

About 30 states and the District of Columbia accept at least some ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day but received afterward.

The Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in 2024 seeking to invalidate Mississippi’s law. 

Trump’s administration backed the challenge. Restricting mail-in ballots would stand to disproportionately benefit Republicans given that Democratic voters traditionally have been more likely to use mail-in ballots than Republican voters.

‘TREMENDOUS LOSS’

After the ruling, Trump again called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a partisan federal elections bill that would require photo identification to vote and proof of citizenship to register to vote. 

Republicans have been unable to overcome Democratic opposition in the U.S. Senate, where 60 votes are required to advance most legislation in the 100-seat chamber. Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority.

Democrats have accused Trump of pursuing measures that would make it harder for people to vote, especially groups that tend to favor Democratic candidates. 

“In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump wrote.

Trump added, “There is only one reason to oppose — CHEATING!”

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer welcomed Monday’s ruling.

“As the midterm elections approach, Trump and his allies are working overtime to silence Americans’ votes. Senate Democrats will continue to do everything we can to protect free and fair elections, where everyone’s voice is heard,” Schumer said.

Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO of the Fair Elections Center voting rights group, said the ruling “affirms a basic principle: voters who follow the rules and mail their ballots on time should not lose their voice due to delays beyond their control.”

“By upholding postmark rules, the court protects millions who rely on mail voting — in particular senior citizens, rural voters, people with disabilities and military and overseas voters,” Caruthers said.

A SKEPTICAL VIEW

Republicans have taken a skeptical view toward mail-in ballots. Trump has sought to cast doubt on the security of these ballots, although evidence of voter fraud is rare. Trump issued an executive order in March to restrict mail-in ballots nationwide, but a federal judge in Boston on June 25 blocked its implementation.

Trump has continued to make false claims of widespread voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

During the first year of the COVID pandemic, the Republican-controlled Mississippi legislature in 2020 passed the law on mail-in voting on a bipartisan basis. 

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2024 ruled in favor of the Republican challengers. It declared that the measure was preempted by federal laws setting Election Day for federal elections as the “day by which ballots must be both cast by voters and received by state officials.” 

The 5th Circuit did not immediately block Mississippi’s procedures, but instead sent the case back to a trial judge for further review. The litigation was placed on hold pending the Supreme Court’s consideration. 

During Supreme Court arguments in the case in March, some of the conservative justices expressed concerns that permissive mail-in ballot practices could cause the appearance of voter fraud. Some of the liberal justices said the arguments made by the challengers also would jeopardize the widespread practice of early voting prior to Election Day. 

Though the 5th Circuit’s action applied only in the three states where the regional federal appeals court has jurisdiction — Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas — it called into question the voting practices in the other states with similar mail-in ballot policies.

OTHER ELECTION-RELATED DECISIONS

Acting in other election-related cases, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in April gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, blocking an electoral map that had given Louisiana a second Black-majority U.S. ​congressional district.

The ruling makes it harder for minorities to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory under the 1965 civil rights law and represented a victory for Louisiana Republicans and Trump’s administration. 

That decision prompted several Republican-led states to pursue redrawn electoral maps ahead of the midterms in an effort to put at risk U.S. House seats considered safely Democratic-held.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Nolan McCaskill and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Will Dunham)

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday backed Donald Trump’s firing of a Democratic Federal Trade Commission member, expanding his powers over the government and overturning its 1935 precedent that had recognized the authority of Congress to protect leaders of certain regulatory agencies from presidential removal at will.

The justices, in a 6-3 decision powered by the court’s conservative majority, invalidated tenure protections for FTC members enacted by Congress more than a century ago. In doing so, the justices overruled the court’s pivotal decision in a case called Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. Trump last year dismissed the FTC’s Rebecca Slaughter over policy differences.

The court, however, signaled that Monday’s decision should not be seen as undermining the Federal Reserve’s independence, with the justices describing the U.S. central bank as possessing a unique historical tradition.

In another landmark ruling on Monday, the court refused to let Trump fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook as it stood firm to preserve the central bank’s independence.

In the FTC case, the court ruled that removal protections for FTC members unlawfully encroached on presidential power under the U.S. Constitution.

‘THE VERY ESSENCE’

Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored a decision joined by his five fellow conservatives, said Trump’s authority to dismiss Slaughter last year over policy differences “is not a close case.” The court’s three liberal justices dissented.

“The FTC’s for-cause removal provision violates the separation of powers,” Roberts wrote. “In its present form, the FTC enforces and administers some 80 statutes, which cover almost every facet of our Nation’s economy. The tasks it undertakes are ‘the very essence of execution of the law’ — precisely the president’s constitutional role.”

Slaughter, appointed to her post by Democratic former President Joe Biden, was one of two Democratic FTC commissioners who Trump moved to fire in March 2025 from the consumer protection and antitrust agency. Slaughter’s term was due to run until 2029.

A 1914 law passed by Congress permitted a president to remove FTC commissioners only for cause – such as inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office – but not for policy differences. Similar protections cover officials at more than two dozen other independent agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.

It was not immediately clear whether the independence of these other agencies would be stripped as a result of Monday’s ruling.

While the court’s majority said its decision should not be read as determining the fate of officials other than Slaughter, the liberal justices in a dissent said that the ruling had given the president “a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted.”

“Put simply, today the majority reshapes our Government. Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the president’s hands,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by fellow liberal justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

TRUMP HAILS ‘BIG WIN’

On social media, Trump welcomed the ruling concerning Slaughter as a “BIG WIN.” Trump said the decision was “confirming Presidential Power in our Country to remove Executive Branch Officers and Agency Appointees, or Representatives, under Article II,” the constitutional provision laying out presidential powers.

“This Decision was long sought by United States Presidents, dating all the way back to the 1930s,” Trump wrote, calling the decision “one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers.”

Slaughter, in an appearance on CNBC, said she was disappointed with the Supreme Court’s ruling and “shocked when the court overturns a unanimous 91-year-old precedent that has been used to shape so much of our government institutions.”

“I think why it really matters is exactly as President Trump said, it is unprecedented,” Slaughter said. “And it hands a massive amount of power away from Congress and to the president to shape economic decision making in a way that will reward the rich and powerful and at the expense of ordinary Americans.”

Democratic senators and antimonopoly groups voiced concern that Trump with the firings sought to eliminate the agency’s scrutiny of big corporations.

Washington-based U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in July 2025 blocked Trump’s firing of Slaughter, rejecting his administration’s argument that the tenure protections unlawfully encroached on presidential power. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit the following month in a 2-1 decision kept AliKhan’s ruling in place.

But the Supreme Court in September allowed Trump’s ouster of Slaughter to go into effect – an action that drew dissents from its three liberal justices – while agreeing to hear arguments in the case.

The lower courts ruled that the statutory protections shielding FTC members from being removed without cause complied with the Constitution in light of the Humphrey’s Executor precedent.

The court in Humphrey’s Executor rebuffed Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt’s attempt to fire an FTC member over policy differences despite tenure protections given by Congress.

In the 1935 decision, the court said restricting a president’s removal of commissioners was lawful because the FTC performed tasks more closely resembling legislative and judicial functions rather than those belonging squarely to the executive branch, headed by the president.

The Trump administration argued that the modern FTC grew to wield substantial executive power in the decades since the Humphrey’s Executor decision, draining that ruling of its force. 

The arguments advanced by Justice Department lawyers representing Trump in the case embraced the “unitary executive” theory. This conservative legal doctrine sees the president as possessing sole authority over the executive branch, including the power to fire and replace heads of independent agencies at will, despite legal protections provided by Congress for these positions.

The Constitution set up a separation of powers among the U.S. government’s coequal executive, legislative and judicial branches as part of a system of checks and balances.

The Supreme Court in recent decades had narrowed the reach of Humphrey’s Executor but stopped short of overturning it. In a 2020 ruling, it said the Constitution’s Article II gives the president the general power to remove heads of agencies at will but that the 1935 precedent had carved out an exception that allowed for-cause removal protections for certain multi-member, expert agencies.

The Slaughter case represents the latest instance of the Supreme Court overturning one of its major precedents. For instance, the court in 2022 overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had recognized a woman’s constitutional right to have an abortion, and in 2024 it overturned a 1984 precedent that had given deference to government agencies in interpreting laws they administer.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Will Dunham)