US Supreme Court is set to rule on cases that will define the limits of presidential power

The nine justices who sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, are set to issue several consequential rulings this week starting on Monday before they go on a nearly two-month summer recess. Their decisions will shape the future of Donald Trump’s presidency, redraw the boundaries of separation of powers between the executive and the legislative, set a new limit on presidential authority and determine the very nature of the nation.

Birthright citizenship

In recent years the justices have left some of their most consequential cases for the final week of June. This year is no different. The court is expected to rule on Trump v. Barbara, involving the president’s attempt to roll back birthright citizenship, which grants U.S. nationality virtually automatically to anyone born on U.S. soil.

The case was heard on April 1, when a majority of the justices expressed skepticism about Trump’s order to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants. The court’s decision could affect more than 250,000 babies a year—or nearly 3 million children over the next decade—who could be deprived of U.S. citizenship.

It is one of the most politically charged cases on the docket. In an unprecedented move, Trump showed up in the courtroom to hear the oral arguments in April. No sitting president had ever attended an oral argument before—it was without precedent in U.S. democratic history. Trump’s presence was widely seen as an effort to pressure and influence the justices’ independence, weeks after they had rebuked him by striking down his reciprocal tariffs on the world.

Although the conservative court is often aligned with Trump’s policies, the justices have expressed some skepticism in the birthright case. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a line likely to shape the opinion: “It’s a new world, but the same Constitution.”

The Fed’s independence

Another controversial case before the nine justices concerns Trump’s attempt to remove Lisa Cook, one of the governors on the Federal Reserve Board whom he has accused—without evidence—of mortgage fraud. The court faces a fraught choice: the Fed is an autonomous, independent agency accountable only to Congress. It was designed that way to prevent government interference in monetary policy. History shows presidents typically pressure the institution to lower interest rates during election seasons. But federal law allows the president to remove a Fed official “for just cause.”

The president posted the termination letter on social media—an unsigned, letterhead-free document alleging irregularities the official strongly denies. About 500 prominent economists signed letters backing Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s board. She was appointed by Joe Biden in 2022 and is one of the policy hawks opposed to the broad rate cuts that Trump seeks. At oral argument in January, a majority of the justices seemed reluctant to allow Cook’s removal.

Trump’s maneuver is interpreted as a strategy to undermine the Fed’s independence and would blur the thin line separating executive and legislative power.

The firing of Rebecca Slaughter

The justices must decide whether the occupant of the White House can remove Rebecca Slaughter, one of five members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), without sufficient cause. At oral argument the justices appeared inclined to side with the president and allow Slaughter’s dismissal.

The rules governing the FTC prevent the president from removing commissioners except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” None of those grounds were mentioned in the letter Slaughter received. Instead, the letter said her remaining in office was “incompatible with the Administration’s priorities.” During the oral argument, when the court seemed poised to rule for Trump, judges debated whether a ruling for Slaughter would grant Congress disproportionate power.

Voting by mail

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on two other major decisions that will affect the upcoming midterm elections in November, which will serve as a kind of referendum on Trump’s tenure. In Watson v. Republican National Committee, the justices must review a challenge to a Mississippi law that allows ballots mailed by Election Day to be counted if they are postmarked and received within five days after Election Day. At oral argument, a majority of the justices appeared willing to uphold a lower court’s view that federal law requires all ballots to be received by Election Day.

During argument, most justices sided with Mississippi Republicans and the state Libertarian Party, who brought the challenge. A majority of the justices agreed the state law appears to conflict with federal statutes that designate the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as Election Day and therefore do not permit ballots to be received afterward.

A conservative majority court

Although the justices can rule against the president in some of these cases, the court has repeatedly shown alignment with the Trump administration, which appointed three current justices. Last Thursday, for example, it issued a ruling that allows the president to terminate Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, potentially paving the way for their deportation. The decision could affect nearly 1 million people from other countries who rely on the program to avoid removal from the United States. That same day the conservative majority upheld a Trump-backed federal rule that bars asylum applications at the U.S.–Mexico border. The order allows migrants reaching the border to be expelled without an opportunity to present their claims to officials.

The rulings endorse the tightening of immigration laws by the Trump administration, which has made combating immigration a central plank of its policies. The government has expanded the resources of ICE and the Border Patrol with aggressive campaigns of harassment against undocumented immigrants in order to carry out mass deportations. These policies represent a dramatic shift toward nationalism in a country whose founding DNA is rooted in successive waves of immigrants from around the world: the United States was built on waves of newcomers from every corner of the globe.

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