President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is seeking to overturn a landmark Supreme Court case in an effort to give the president greater control over independent three-letter agencies.

In a move that could allow Trump to more easily fire officials who refuse to implement his policies, the acting U.S. solicitor general sent Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin a letter on Wednesday, notifying him of the Justice Department’s plans to ask the Supreme Court to overturn a key precedent that limits the president’s power to remove independent agency members. 

The letter, penned by Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris, says the DOJ has determined ‘that certain for-cause removal provisions’ that apply to certain administrative agency members are unconstitutional, and the department would ‘no longer defend their constitutionality.’

Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the case in question, is a 1935 Supreme Court case that narrowed the president’s constitutional power to remove agents of the executive branch. 

Harris cited a previous case, Myers v. United States, which held that the Constitution granted the president sole power to remove executive branch officials. 

‘The exception recognized in Humphrey’s Executor thus does not fit the principal officers who head the regulatory commissions noted above,’ Harris wrote in the letter. 

‘To the extent that Humphrey’s Executor requires otherwise, the Department intends to urge the Supreme Court to overrule that decision, which prevents the President from adequately supervising principal officers in the Executive Branch who execute the laws on the President’s behalf, and which has already been severely eroded by recent Supreme Court decisions,’ Harris continued. 

Durbin called the letter a ‘striking reversal of the Justice Department’s longstanding position under Republican and Democratic presidents alike,’ in a statement to Fox News Digital. He added that the request is ‘not surprising from an administration that is only looking out for wealthy special interests – not the American people.’ 

However, conservative legal theorists supported the Trump administration’s move, arguing that overturning Humphrey’s Executor would move the federal government closer to the original intent of the Constitution’s framers. Trump notably posed his presidential campaign against former President Joe Biden as a contest between the ‘deep state’ and democracy, saying at the time, ‘Either we have a deep state or we have a democracy. We’re going to have one or the other. And we’re right at the tipping point.’

‘Congress makes the laws, it’s the president’s duty to carry out and enforce those laws under the unitary executive theory,’ Hans von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital. ‘That means that the president, since he’s the head of the executive branch, has complete control over the executive branch, and that includes the hiring and firing of everyone in the executive branch, most particularly, and most importantly, the heads of all the different offices and departments within the executive branch.’

Von Spakovsky says the exception carved out by the Court in Humphrey’s Executor ‘does not apply to these federal agencies.’ In her letter, Harris specifically mentioned the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). 

Earlier this month, a former NLRB member sued Trump over her termination, arguing that federal law protects her from being arbitrarily dismissed. The Trump administration has also become the target of various other lawsuits involving federal employee dismissals. 

‘My take on what’s going on with the Trump agenda right now is that they’re itching to get up to the higher federal court level, including the Supreme Court, to press just this kind of question,’ Ronald Pestritto, Graduate Dean and Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College, told Fox News Digital. 

Pestritto says some of the administration’s actions ‘contradict existing civil service law, existing protections, for example, against removing the NLRB commissioners.’

‘And so, clearly, they know they’re going to lose a lot of that at the lower court level. And they want to push them up into the Supreme Court, because they think they might get a reconsideration of it,’ Pestritto said. 

Von Spakovsky stated that independent agencies are ‘unaccountable’ as a result of Humphrey’s Executor, saying ‘you make them accountable to voters by putting them back where they belong, which is under the authority of the president.’

Trump’s lawyers are likely to lose in the lower court, Pestritto says, where he expects judges to apply the Supreme Court’s precedent in their own decisions. But even so, the Trump administration can appeal higher and higher to attempt to get Supreme Court review, where Humphrey’s Executor could be overturned. 

[Democrats] are going to win injunctions very often, first of all, because they know it’s easy to judge-shop for sympathetic district judges. And number two, the district judges are basically going to go by the existing Supreme Court precedent,’ Pestritto said. ‘And so the real tale of the tape will be when these initial rulings get appealed up the appellate ladder and ultimately up to the Supreme Court, which certainly has many justices who I think understand Article II of the Constitution properly and may be open to a reconsideration of Humphrey’s.’

SpaceX workers will visit the Air Traffic Control System Command Center on Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy noted in a Sunday post on X, in which he also mentioned former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with whom he recently engaged in a social media spat.

‘America deserves safe, state-of-the-art air travel, and President Trump has ordered that I deliver a new, world-class air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world,’ Duffy declared, noting that he’d welcome assistance from American developers or businesses.

‘To do that, I need advice from the brightest minds in America. I’m asking for help from any high-tech American developer or company that is willing to give back to our country.

‘Tomorrow, members of @elonmusk’s SpaceX team will be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in VA to get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system.’

He then brought up Clinton.

‘Because I know the media (and Hillary Clinton) will claim Elon’s team is getting special access, let me make clear that the @FAANews regularly gives tours of the command center to both media and companies.’

In the post on Sunday, Duffy also said that he will visit the FAA Academy this week.

‘Later in the week, I will travel to the FAA Academy in Oklahoma to meet with air traffic controller instructors and students to learn more about their education and how we can ensure that only the very best guide our aircrafts,’ he noted.

‘My door at @USDOT is open to any and all patriotic developers or companies who want to help our country in this incredible, game-changing mission. I hope to hear from any company committed to ushering in America’s golden age of travel!’

President Donald Trump tapped business magnate Elon Musk to spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency, an effort to uncover federal government waste, fraud, and abuse.

‘The safety of air travel is a non-partisan matter. SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer,’ Musk wrote in response to Duffy’s tweet.

Earlier this month, Clinton and Duffy engaged in a back and forth on X after Duffy noted that the DOGE team would help upgrade the aviation system.

President Donald Trump and his administration are set to have another busy week as negotiations over ending the Russia-Ukraine war get underway. 

Trump is sending a handful of U.S. officials to Saudi Arabia this week to begin negotiating a potential peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, told Fox News on Sunday morning that he and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz will travel to Saudi Arabia on Sunday evening, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also set to travel to Saudi Arabia after his attendance of the international Munich Security Conference last week and meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Sunday. 

The meeting in Saudi Arabia comes after Trump announced last Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to ‘immediately’ begin peace talks.

‘Next week, there’s a meeting in Saudi Arabia,’ Trump told the media during a press conference on Thursday. ‘Not with myself nor President Putin, but with top officials. And Ukraine will be a part of it, too. And we’re going to see if we can end that war. That was a horrible war. It’s a vicious, bloody war. We want to end it.’

Russia and Ukraine have been at war since February 2022, when Russia first invaded its neighboring nation. Trump had said while on the 2024 campaign trail that he would end the war if re-elected, while claiming it would never have begun if he had been in the Oval Office at the time. 

Trump charged his team of U.S. officials to hold the peace meetings at his direction in Saudi Arabia, Witkoff said on Sunday to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. 

‘I am going tonight. I’ll be traveling there with the national security advisor, and we’ll be having meetings at the direction of the president. And hopefully we’ll make some really good progress with regard to Russia, Ukraine,’ Witkoff said. 

Stateside, Trump spent his weekend in Mar-a-Lago in Florida before heading to the Daytona 500, where fans erupted into cheers when Air Force One flew over Daytona International Speedway. Trump is the first sitting president to attend two Daytona 500 races at Daytona International Speedway, previously attending the 2020 race.

Trump’s schedule this week could also include meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who requested a visit with the president at the White House. 

Trump told the media on Friday that he did speak with the U.K. prime minister and that he accepted a request to meet at the White House. 

We’re going to have a friendly meeting, very good. We have a lot of good things going on. But he asked to come and see me, and I just accepted his asking,’ Trump said. 

Trump said the meeting would be held ‘very soon,’ suggesting it would happen either this coming week or the following week. No details have been revealed as to what the upcoming meeting will focus on, though it comes on the heels of Trump announcing a ‘reciprocal tariff’ plan on Thursday that will impose ‘fair and reciprocal’ tariffs on all major U.S. trading partners. 

‘On trade, I have decided for purposes of fairness that I will charge a reciprocal tariff, meaning whatever countries charge the United States of America, we will charge them, no more, no less. In other words, they charge us a tax or tariff, and we charge them the exact same tax or tariff, very simple,’ Trump said at the White House of the tariff plan. 

On the energy policy front, Trump created the National Energy Dominance Council on Friday, which is expected to ‘unleash’ energy independence. 

‘We have more energy than any other country, and now we are unleashing it,’ Trump said Friday from the Oval Office when he signed an executive order establishing the energy council. ‘I call it liquid gold under our feet, and we’re going to utilize it.’

Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council under the second Trump administration, previewed that the council will quickly work to make the U.S. energy dominant, even with actions as early as this coming week. 

‘What I expect you to see, sir, is action as early as next week that is going to shock people about how good it is for Americans,’ Hassett told Trump from the Oval Office on Friday. 

Trump’s fourth week in office follows him already signing 65 executive orders, including 26 on his first day in office alone.

President Donald Trump spoke about his plans to end the Russo-Ukrainian War during a press gaggle on Sunday, stating that he believes the leaders of both countries ‘want to stop fighting.’

Speaking on the tarmac at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday afternoon, Trump said that he’s currently in the process of ‘trying to get peace with Russia, Ukraine.’

‘And we’re working very hard on it,’ he said. ‘It’s a war that should have never started.’

When asked if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to be involved in the conversations, Trump replied in the affirmative.

‘He will be involved, yes,’ Trump said. When asked by a reporter, Trump also said he would allow Europeans to purchase American-made weapons sold to Ukraine.

The Republican president went on say that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin, who began the war in February 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and escalated it in February 2022 by invading Ukraine, wants to bring the war to an end.

‘I think he wants to stop fighting,’ Trump said. ‘They have a big, powerful machine, you understand that? And they defeated Hitler and they defeated Napoleon. You know, he’s been fighting a long time…I think he would like to stop fighting.’

‘Zelenskyy wants to end it, too.’

Talks between the U.S. and Russia are expected to begin in Saudi Arabia this week, though it was previously reported that Ukraine was not expected to be directly involved. Trump’s national security advisor Michael Waltz said on ‘Fox News Sunday’ that negotiations will involve ‘key tenants,’ in order to guarantee a ‘permanent end to the war.’

‘The United States and Europe have supported [the Ukrainian] effort, but the United States unquestionably has borne the brunt of that support over the years, but now President Trump is clear it needs to come to an end,’ Waltz said Sunday. 

 Trump’s comments came shortly after a ‘Meet the Press’ interview with Zelenskyy aired on NBC, in which the Ukrainian leader discussed Putin and claimed that he ‘fears’ Trump.

‘I said that [Putin] is a liar,’ Zelenskyy said of a recent phone call to Trump. ‘And he said, ‘I think my feeling is that he’s ready for these negotiations.’ And I said to him, ‘No, he’s a liar. He doesn’t want any peace.”

‘But I think he’s really a little bit scared about the President Trump,’ Zelenskyy added. ‘And I think the president has this chance, and he’s strong. And I think that really, he can push Putin to peace negotiations. Yes, I think so. I think he can, but don’t trust him. Don’t trust Putin. Don’t trust just words about ceasefire.’

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton, Danielle Wallace and Brooke Curto contributed to this report.

As the Trump administration moves to negotiate the end of the Ukraine-Russia war, national security advisor Michael Waltz rejected the notion that European allies are not being consulted on the matter. 

Talks between the U.S. and Russia are reportedly to begin in Saudi Arabia this week, while French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly to host what is being billed as an emergency summit on Ukraine between European leaders in Paris starting Monday. Trump said he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, reportedly doing so without consulting NATO members. 

In an appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ Waltz said that in back-to-back calls, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin separately agreed that ‘only President Trump could get them to the table, only President Trump could drive peace.’ 

Waltz noted that Trump spoke to Macron last week and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has an upcoming trip to the United States. 

‘We had no less than our vice president, our secretary of state, our secretary of defense, our secretary of treasury, who was in Kyiv personally, and our special envoy {Keith} Kellogg all in Europe this week, all engaging our allies,’ Waltz said. ‘Now, they may not like some of the sequencing that is going on in these negotiations, but I have to push back on any notion that they aren’t being consulted. They absolutely are.’ 

‘At the end of the day though, this is going to be under President Trump’s leadership that we get this war to an end,’ he added. 

Among the critics of the Trump administration’s handling of the negotiations was Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who said the president’s inability to ‘even identify Ukraine as an equal bargaining power, after the blood Ukraine has shed, [is] just a shocking surrender of American values and interests.’ Noting how Zelenskyy said he would not be bound by any deal negotiated between Russia and the U.S., ‘Fox News Sunday’ host Shannon Bream asked Waltz if Kyiv would have a seat at the table. 

In response, Waltz said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Vice President JD Vance stressed in talks with Zelenskyy ‘entering into a partnership with the United States,’ and being ‘co-invested with President Trump, with the American people going forward.’ 

‘The American people deserve to be recouped, deserve to have some type of payback for the billions they have invested in this war,’ Waltz said. ‘I can’t think of anything that would make the American people more comfortable with future investments than if we were able to be in a partnership and have the American people made whole. And I’ll point out that much of the European aid is actually in the form of a loan. That is repaid. It’s repaid with interest on Russian assets. So President Trump is rethinking the entire dynamic here. That has some people uncomfortable, but I think Zelenskyy would be very wise to enter into this agreement with the United States. There’s no better way to secure them going forward, and further, there was a question of whether Putin would come to the table. He has now done so under President Trump’s leadership, and we’re going to continue those talks in the coming weeks at President Trump’s direction.’

Asked why Ukraine won’t be directly part of the Saudi Arabia talks, Waltz said, ‘The Ukrainian people have fought valiantly. They have seen entire cities destroyed. The United States and Europe have supported this effort, but the United States unquestionably has borne the brunt of that support over the years, but now President Trump is clear it needs to come to an end.’ 

Waltz added that the negotiations will be driven by ‘key tenants,’ including ensuring that there’s a ‘permanent end to the war’ and that the conflict ‘can’t be ended on the battlefield.’ 

‘This has turned into a World War I-style meat grinder of human beings,’ he said, adding that economic integration going forward would be the ‘best arbiter of peace’ and long-term military security guarantees have to be European-led. 

‘When a third of NATO members still are not contributing – a third – are still not contributing the minimum they all committed to a decade ago, I think that leaves a lot of Americans questioning the level of their commitment to back the rhetoric we’re seeing,’ Waltz said. 

President Donald Trump’s prowess as a negotiator will help determine if Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday.

Rubio appeared on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation,’ where host Margaret Brennan asked if he could trust that potential negotiations with Russia would be forthright considering how Putin ‘likes to use diplomacy as a cover to distract while he continues to wage war.’

‘I don’t think in geopolitics anyone should trust anyone,’ Rubio responded. ‘I think these things have to be verified through actions. I said yesterday that peace is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s an action. You have to take concrete steps towards it.’

Rubio added that there is ‘no better negotiator in American politics’ than Trump, saying that the president ‘will know very quickly whether this is a real thing or whether this is an effort to buy time.’

‘But I don’t want to prejudge that,’ Rubio said. ‘I don’t want to foreclose the opportunity to end the conflict that’s already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands and continues every single day to be increasingly a war of attrition on both sides.’

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago. The fighting has produced heavy casualties on both sides, becoming Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II. 

Trump had repeatedly said while on the campaign trail that if he was president in 2022, the war would not have broken out — vowing to end it if re-elected.

Trump spoke to Putin in a phone call on Wednesday, telling reporters that he and Putin would likely meet soon to negotiate a peace deal over Ukraine. Trump later assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy he also would have a seat at the table. 

While some officials have indicated that European nations wouldn’t be involved in talks, Rubio on Sunday said that should the leaders reach the point of ‘real negotiations,’ both Ukraine and Europe would be involved.

‘Ultimately, it will reach a point when you are – if it’s real negotiations, and we’re not there yet – but if that were to happen, Ukraine will have to be involved, because they’re the one that were invaded, and the Europeans will have to be involved because they have sanctions on Putin and Russia as well, and they’ve contributed to this effort.’

Rubio emphasized that the phone call between Trump and Putin was only a small step in the process towards opening a negotiation to end the war, and that ‘we have a long way to go.’

‘We’re just not there yet,’ he said. ‘We really aren’t, but hopefully we will be, because we’d all like to see this war end.’

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a ‘little bit scared’ of President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview that aired Sunday.  

Zelenskyy joined NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ recounting that when he spoke to Trump by phone about a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, he told the president that he believes Putin fears the American leader. 

‘I said that [Putin] is a liar,’ Zelenskyy recounted of his phone call to Trump. ‘And he said, ‘I think my feeling is that he’s ready for these negotiations.’ And I said to him, ‘No, he’s a liar. He doesn’t want any peace.’ 

‘But I think he’s really a little bit scared about the President Trump. And I think the president has this chance, and he’s strong. And I think that really he can push Putin to peace negotiations. Yes, I think so. I think he can, but don’t trust him. Don’t trust Putin. Don’t trust just words about ceasefire,’ Zelenskyy told NBC’s Kristen Welker on ‘Meet the Press.’ 

Zelenskyy’s interview follows Trump announcing last Wednesday that Putin had agreed to ‘immediately’ begin peace negotiations to end the war. Trump tapped Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff to lead negotiations with Russia and Ukraine. 

Zelenskyy said during his interview that he trusts Trump’s leadership amid negotiations to end the war that has raged between Russia and Ukraine since 2022, but that he won’t accept a deal that did not include talks with Ukraine. 

‘I believe and trust only in real steps. And I trust President Trump because he’s the president of the United States, because your people, your people voted for him, and I respect their choice, and I will work with President Trump with trust, which I have to the United States,’ Zelenskyy told Welker when asked if he feels Trump values Ukraine at the same level as Russia. 

‘But of course, I want to have [a] real meeting, productive, without just words, with concrete steps, and to hear us, to hear President Trump, to make a common plan, and to share it with allies, then with Russians, and stop this war. I think we need it urgently. We have to do it without basic things, where there are concrete steps.’

Zelenskyy added in his interview that he will not accept any negotiation hashed out by just the U.S. and Russia.

‘I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine. Never.… The war in Ukraine is against us, and it is our human losses. And we are thankful for all the support, unity between USA – in USA around Ukraine support, bipartisan unity, bipartisan support, we’re thankful for all of this. But there is no… leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us about us,’ he said. 

Witkoff joined Fox News earlier on Sunday and reported that he and Waltz are heading to Saudi Arabia on Sunday evening to begin negotiations on ending the war between Russia and Ukraine.