CREATORS: Supreme Court Decision Grants Broad Power to the President

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
June 30, 2026

The U.S. Supreme Court handed supporters of the Unitary Executive Theory a huge victory. For decades, many conservative constitutional scholars have argued that the president should have complete control over the executive branch.

Those who advocated for the Unitary Executive Theory argued that the executive branch of government should have the unchecked ability to remove members of agencies like the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and undo laws that restrict the president's ability to make those moves.

The high court ruled that congressional restrictions on the president's power violated the separation of powers. Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution says, "The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America."

The modern push for a unitary executive gained traction during the Reagan administration. Organizations like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation began a decades-long effort to bring the theory into the mainstream.

The debate over executive power dates back to the Founding Fathers. In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton argued for a strong executive leader. He asserted, "Energy in the executive is the leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks ... (and) to the security of liberty."

The facts at issue in the case before the Supreme Court related to a law that barred the president from firing members of the FTC except in cases of "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."

According to SCOTUSblog, during his first term in office, President Donald Trump nominated Rebecca Slaughter to fill one of the Democratic seats on the FTC. She was renominated in 2023 to serve a second term. Last year, Slaughter was informed that she had been "removed from the Federal Trade Commission, effective immediately." The letter did not cite any of the legal grounds that would allow Trump to remove her. Slaughter went to court to stop her removal. The case made its way to the Supreme Court.

By a 6-3 margin, the justices overruled a 91-year-old decision that upheld the law restricting presidential control over executive agencies. According to SCOTUSblog, the Supreme Court gave President Donald Trump "sweeping new authority over approximately two dozen multi-member agencies that Congress intended to be independent."

This ruling brings more room for self-dealing, favoritism and corruption, whatever political party controls the presidency.

Cass R. Sunstein, who once headed the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote in The New York Times, "Now that the White House is in charge of the FCC for example, the president may reward his political friends and punish his political enemies in ways that threaten freedom of expression and that might not be visible to the public."

Chief Justice John Roberts penned the majority opinion. He wrote that "the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust ... (t)hen, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people."

According to The Hill, Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered a sharp dissent. "Put simply, today the majority reshapes our Government," Sotomayor wrote in her 49-page dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

She added, "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."

The Unitary Executive Theory lends itself to abuses of authority. As has been demonstrated in the last 18 months, the concentration of power in a single individual invites abuses of power, undermines legislative and judicial independence, and puts the nation at risk of impulsive or unconstitutional actions.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book, "The Executioner's Toll," 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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SCOTUS requires search warrant for cellphone location history

The U.S. Supreme Court has recently ruled that law enforcement searches for the location history of cellphones near crime scenes are covered by the Fourth Amendment, requiring warrants to obtain the data, reported the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

But the high court left unsettled when searches for the information are reasonable — likely meaning the justices will eventually weigh in again on the privacy rights of Americans in the electronic era.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that police officers conducted a search for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment when they obtained cellphone location history data during an investigation into a bank robbery in Virginia. The amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

“An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information — even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion.

Kagan was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Kentanji Brown Jackson. Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred in the judgment but did not join the majority opinion.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett.

States ask warrants be upheld

Over the past two decades, geofence warrants have become a major tool of law enforcement. At a basic level, they allow police to identify phones within a geographic area for a certain period of time. The data can be tremendously valuable to investigators, offering a way to develop suspects in crimes where their identities aren’t otherwise known. 

Civil liberties advocates warned that geofence warrants ensnare people in digital dragnets, handing the government data on anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They argued that accessing data on anyone within a certain area — the geofence — amounts to a general warrant prohibited by the Constitution.

A broad bipartisan coalition of states urged the justices to uphold the warrants. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia filed a brief with the court arguing that geofence warrants can be more precise than many traditional investigative methods when supported by probable cause and appropriately tailored. In the brief, they urged the justices not to prohibit geofence warrants altogether.

Geofence warrants can generate critical leads when the perpetrators of crimes are otherwise unknown, they wrote. When suspects are unknown but the suspected wrongdoing is linked to a specific place and time, location data provides one of the narrowest available tools for finding leads, the brief argues.

Credit union robbery in Virginia

The case centered on a 2019 robbery of a federal credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. Okello Chatrie was convicted of armed robbery after surveillance footage showed the robber using a cellphone. A detective then obtained a geofence warrant directed at Google for devices within 150 meters of the credit union within an hour of the robbery.

Google initially provided anonymized data in response to the warrant. The detective then requested and received additional location data on nine users. Finally, the detective received de-anonymized information on three users, without obtaining an additional warrant.

While Google has since changed the way it stores location history data to limit geofence warrants, other apps and tech firms collect the data. Lawyers for Chatrie argued that geofence warrants open the door to the authorities requesting information on everyone at a sensitive location — perhaps an abortion clinic or a political convention — at a particular time.

The records serve as a “personal journal of a user’s movements,” Kagan wrote. Location history resembles other private materials like emails, documents, photos and calendars that, even if stored on Google’s servers, users reasonably view as their own, she wrote. Users, in turn, expect the data to be shielded from the “inquisitive eyes” of the government, Kagan wrote.

‘Reasonable’ question unanswered

But Kagan and the court’s majority didn’t wade into whether the search of Chatrie was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. While the warrant in the case was an uncommon, multi-step warrant, Kagan wrote, the lower appeals court found that a search did not occur, so it did not decide whether the warrant was reasonable.

“We are, as we have said many times before, ‘a court of review, not of first view,’” Kagan wrote. “It is therefore now up to the Court of Appeals to decide whether, at each step of the search process, the warrant satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s requirements of particularity and probable cause.”

In his dissent, Alito wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision “further destabilizes” longstanding jurisprudence on the Fourth Amendment. He accused the majority of issuing an advisory opinion by not addressing whether the search of Chatrie’s data was reasonable.

“Indeed, by refusing to review the one question that could have at least theoretically given Chatrie some hope of relief, the Court carefully set the stage for its planned performance: striking a pose as a great champion of privacy in the digital age. I cannot support this irresponsible escapade,” Alito wrote.

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Journalism under attack

 When the Justice Department charged Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor, and the reporter Georgia Fort and photographer Junn Bollmann with a pair of crimes that carry, in total, the possibility of 10 years or more in prison, something shifted in President Trump’s legal campaign against journalists.

While Mr. Trump has tried for decades to keep the press in line using civil lawsuits, federal criminal law is a sharper weapon. This time the law may also be on the president’s side, reported The New York Times.

The prosecution of Mr. Lemon and the others arose amid the turmoil in Minnesota following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti this year. On Jan. 18, a group of demonstrators entered and disrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul, where a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement official served as a pastor. In addition to the three journalists, dozens of protesters are charged with conspiring to violate the rights of the parishioners to religious freedom.

Mr. Lemon has a show on YouTube, and Ms. Fort and Mr. Bollmann are independent journalists. Their defense is clear. “I was there as a journalist, not a protester,” Mr. Lemon told me. “I was interviewing people from all sides. We were livestreaming. It’s all right there on tape.”

The product of journalism, for decades, has enjoyed substantial protection under the First Amendment. The courts almost never uphold prior restraints on publication or distribution of news. Thanks to Supreme Court decisions like New York Times v. Sullivan, it’s difficult for public figures who feel wronged by journalists to recover damages for libel. The courts protect journalistic outlets from potentially ruinous judgments because, in the words of that famous case from 1964, of the “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”

But federal law, including the crimes for which Mr. Lemon and the other two are charged, offers no similar protections for the process of journalism. In 1972, the Supreme Court rejected a claim that the First Amendment entitled a journalist to refuse to comply with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury and be asked to identify confidential sources. In that case, Branzburg v. Hayes, the justices upheld the “obligation of reporters to respond to grand jury subpoenas as other citizens do and to answer questions relevant to an investigation into the commission of crime.”

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Florida carries out its ninth execution of 2026

 The 16th Execution of 2026

A 74-year-old man convicted of fatally stabbing his wife became the oldest person executed in Florida’s modern history on June 25, 2026, and the state is scheduled to execute another 74-year-old inmate next month, reported The Associated Press.

Dusty Ray Spencer was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Spencer was convicted of the 1992 stabbing death of his wife Karen.

The curtain to the death chamber went up promptly at the 6 p.m. execution time and the warden asked Spencer if he had any statement as he lay strapped to a metal table with an IV inserted in his arm.

“Sorry, sorry to the family. Into thy hands I commit my spirit and my soul. I’m on my way, Lord. I’m on my way. Amen,” Spencer said, a spiritual adviser nearby at the foot of the table.

Immediately after his words, the lethal drugs began flowing and, after a few minutes of labored breathing, Spencer ceased all movements.

The warden then shook Spencer and shouted his name several times, but there was no response. Several more minutes elapsed before a medic was called in to check Spencer’s vital signs, and the inmate was declared dead.

Alex Lanfranconi, in the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis, told The Associated Press in a text message that there were no complications. He had no immediate response to further phone and text messages seeking comment about the ages of the inmate executed Thursday and the next facing execution.

The family of the victim released no statement.

Florida Department of Correction records dating to 1924 show the oldest inmates previously executed by the state were both 72 — Samuel Lee Smithers on Oct. 14, 2025, for the 1996 killings of two women; and R. Charlie Gifford on Feb. 21, 1951, for the 1950 shooting death of a state lawmaker, Charles Schuh Jr.

Another 74-year-old Florida inmate, Dennis Sochor, is scheduled to be executed on July 14. Socor was convicted of killing a woman just hours into 1982 after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Nationwide, the oldest person ever executed in modern times was Walter Leroy Moody Jr., 83, who was put to death in Alabama in 2018 for sending mail bombs during a wave of Southern terror, killing a federal judge and a Black civil rights attorney.

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Thursday’s execution was the ninth in Florida this year after a record 19 executions in 2025. DeSantis, a Republican, oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was eight executions set in 2014.

Court records show Spencer was arrested after choking and threatening to kill Karen Spencer in December 1991. While in jail, Dusty Ray Spencer called his wife and warned her that when he got out, he was going to finish what he had started.

On Jan. 18, 1992, Spencer beat his wife’s teenage son with a clothes iron when the boy tried to stop Spencer from attacking his mother, officials said. Then about a week later, the son responded to a commotion outside their home and found Spencer hitting his mother in the head with a brick, according to officials.

Court records show the teen tried to shoot Spencer with a rifle, but the gun misfired. Spencer threatened the teen with a knife, and the boy ran away to get help. When police arrived, they found Karen Spencer dead with several stab wounds to the chest.

Spencer was initially sentenced to death in 1992 after being convicted of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault and aggravated battery. In 1994, the Florida Supreme Court ordered his new sentencing after finding that the trial court had mishandled evaluating aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Spencer was resentenced to death the next year, and subsequent appeals were denied.

Last week, the state Supreme Court rejected Spencer’s appeals. His attorneys had argued that he had health issues such as liver disease that posed a heightened risk of pain and suffering. They also argued that executing him at his advanced age would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a final appeal earlier Thursday without comment.

All Florida executions are carried out by the lethal injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

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PA Legislature faces Supreme Court deadline to establish sentence guidelines for felony murder

With just under a month to go until a Pennsylvania Supreme Court-imposed deadline, the state Senate passed a bill that would create new, strict sentencing guidelines for people charged with second degree murder, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star..

Also known as felony murder, the charge is used when someone is killed during the commission of another felony, even if the defendant did not intend to cause that person’s death. 

It can apply to people with varying degrees of culpability. That can include an armed robber who fatally injured but did not intend to kill their victim, as well as a getaway driver who was not present.

Until a state Supreme Court ruling in March, the charge came with a mandatory life without parole sentence. In a case revolving around a 36-year-old Allegheny County man who committed armed robbery with an accomplice who shot and killed someone, the court ruled requiring such sentences in all cases violated the state constitution’s ban on cruel punishment.

The court gave lawmakers 120 days to enact legislation addressing the ruling. But key lawmakers still have disagreements over how to move forward.

More than 1,100 people in Pennsylvania are currently serving life sentences without parole on second degree murder charges. The review of their cases could be the largest resentencing effort in the history of the commonwealth.

The GOP-led Senate bill, which passed with a 30-20 bipartisan vote, would impose a minimum 35 year sentence in almost all cases of second degree murder. It would still allow judges to pass life sentences if they believe them warranted.

If a defendant meets a strict set of criteria proving lesser culpability at sentencing, a judge would be allowed to impose a mitigated sentence between 10 and 40 years. Defendants would have to prove by a preponderance of evidence that they meet six requirements, including that they were not the only participant in the underlying felony; did not cause or intend to cause the victim’s death, nor solicit or conspire in the underlying felony; did not brandish, use or threaten to use a deadly weapon; have no reason to believe another participant would use a deadly weapon; and did not cause serious bodily injury to another.

The measure would also allow the parole board to consider the release of anyone charged with second degree murder who has served at least 35 years of a life sentence or is at least 70-years-old.

“We’ve worked hard to put together a plan that strikes the appropriate balance between judicial interpretations of the rights of convicted offenders, and community interest in seeking the appropriate punishment for those convicted of deadly crimes,” said Sen. Lisa Baker (R-Luzerne), the bill’s prime sponsor. 

Roxanne Horrell, the campaign director to end life without parole with the nonprofit Straight Ahead, said she believes the Senate’s bill remains too strict in its minimum sentencing requirements. She noted that even Derek Lee, the man at the center of the Supreme Court case, would not meet the bill’s criteria for receiving a mitigated sentence.

“It’s basically a 35-to-life bill,” Horrell said. “It attempts to do these mitigating categories, but it makes an impossible test to really fulfill … it looks good, but in actuality it will be something that’s very limited.

Horrell said that she hopes negotiations with the Democratic-led House will lead to a bill that would allow judges more latitude in sentencing and earlier eligibility for parole.

“We want a bill that’s going to bring as many people home as possible,” she said. “It’s very easy to make assumptions about who people are based on what they’ve done in the past. But I think a lot of these people are just people that made terrible mistakes.”

The Public Defenders Association of Pennsylvania also opposed the bill. In a joint press release with the Public Defenders Association of Philadelphia, the group said it “replicates the mistakes of Pennsylvania’s current, unconstitutional sentencing scheme with high mandatory sentences that provide narrow opportunity for relief.”

The groups added that it could cost between $34 million and $36 million to adequately represent the 1,100 Pennsylvanians who will have their cases reviewed.

“If Defenders aren’t provided with the resources to provide adequate representation and real mitigation, then this becomes just another unfunded mandate,” said Sara Jacobson, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Public Defenders Association of Pennsylvania. “Only real representation can cure this injustice. Without it, the courts risk new sentences that are just as cruel and just as unconstitutional.”

To become law, the Senate proposal will have to pass the House, where Democrats hold a razor-thin majority. That likely means approval from the Judiciary Committee chaired by Tim Briggs (D-Montgomery), who has introduced numerous bills to end mandatory life sentences for life without parole since entering office.

Briggs said, as it stands, he can not support the Senate plan.

“I haven’t voted for any mandatory minimum [sentences] in 16 years,” he told the Capital-Star. 

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AG Blanche faces complaint with New York State Bar

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s principal focus in recent weeks has been lining up support on Capitol Hill ahead of his upcoming Senate confirmation hearings, with a specific focus on winning over GOP skeptics. But Donald Trump’s controversial former defense attorney has more troubles than lining up 51 votes, reported MS Now.

As this week got underway, Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers Defending American Democracy and a group of 101 former federal and state judges filed a complaint against Blanche with the New York State Bar, which included a formal request for an ethics investigation.

The 73-page complaint specifically focused on three areas of alleged misconduct:

Blanche’s role in orchestrating the creation of a $1.776 billion compensation fund, widely panned as a “slush fund,” and an IRS audit shield for the president and his family.

Blanche’s role in “abusing the investigative and prosecutorial powers” of the Justice Department to target the president’s perceived political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey.

Blanche supervising the DOJ’s “flawed response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, including the disclosure of thousands of records containing sensitive victim information.”

Time will tell what, if anything, comes of the complaint, but as the process moves forward, it’s worth pausing to note just how frequently former judges have become prominent and influential critics of the president and his team.

In early November, for example, Judge Mark L. Wolf, a Reagan-appointed jurist, resigned from the federal bench in order to give himself the freedom to warn the public about the threats posed by Trump.

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CREATORS: A Fallible Legal System Should Not Have a Death Penalty

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
June 23, 2026

Next month will mark the 50th anniversary of the return of the death penalty. There was a period in this country when death row was cleared, and the death penalty disappeared.

As The Marshall Project described it, a narrow majority of the U.S. Supreme Court had scrapped the country's entire death penalty system, calling it "morally unacceptable," "racially discriminatory" and "arbitrary."

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Furman v. Georgia. The court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional in the manner it was applied, violating the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

At the time, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote, "These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual."

Furman seemed headed to the gallows until Stewart struck a deal with Justice Byron White, who'd been on the fence about the death penalty. Stewart agreed to abandon his moral statement against the death penalty and would instead say that the problem with capital punishment was excessive arbitrariness. The deal resulted in a surprising 5-4 decision overturning the death penalty.

The compromise outlawing the death penalty only lasted four years. Stewart and the four justices who joined in the decision thought that, with public sentiment being against executions, the death penalty would just be a remnant of the past and slip away, never to be heard of again.

Stewart and his brethren were wrong. The decision prompted "law and order" state legislators to rewrite their unconstitutional death penalty statutes with an eye toward cleansing the law of its arbitrary, capricious and racially discriminatory nature.

On July 2, 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Gregg v. Georgia. The high Court found that three of five states that amended their death penalty statute — Georgia, Florida and Texas — did conform to the directives of Furman. The death penalty was back.

Since 1976, 1,669 people have been executed in this country. Executions decreased each year from 2010 until post-pandemic. Last year, executions soared to 47, with the state of Florida leading the way with 19 executions. Federal executions surged in 2020 and 2021. President Donald Trump oversaw 13 executions in seven months. There had been three federal executions prior to Trump's re-election flurry of death — and none since.

As America reaches this dubious death penalty anniversary, it is worth asking why we have a death penalty in this country. Ohio's Republican Gov. Mike DeWine recently called for an end to capital punishment in his state, suggesting that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent.

Pennsylvania's Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro came out against the death penalty early in his administration. Shapiro took a principled position that the death penalty was simply immoral.

Recently, Mike Fox wrote an interesting essay for the Cato Institute. Fox suggested, "When the state is granted the ultimate power to end a human life, the system executing that power must be flawless and completely transparent."

Fox lamented, "American legal system operates under rules where police and prosecutorial misconduct can — and does — flourish with virtually no consequences for the bad actors."

Fox goes on to suggest the legislative creations like qualified immunity for police and absolute immunity for prosecutors have "erected an impenetrable shield around its own operators."

Fox's concerns are legitimate, but when it comes to the death penalty, Fox and most who ruminate over the death penalty's inadequacies overlook the obvious.

The criminal justice system is fallible. Prosecutors are not required to prove convictions beyond all doubt or to a mathematical certainty. The government is required to prove an accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The criminal justice system does not guarantee foolproof convictions. The system accepts that sometimes there will be wrongful convictions. It is a tragedy for any person to be mistakenly sentenced to prison. Those errors, painful as they are, can be corrected.

Death is final. A fallible legal system should not be tinkering with the machinery of death.qu

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book, "The Executioner's Toll," 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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