A major Trump power grab just reached the Supreme Court | The Court is likely to give Trump broad, unchecked authority over the federal workforce
Posted by ONETRILLIONAMERICANS
A major Trump power grab just reached the Supreme Court | The Court is likely to give Trump broad, unchecked authority over the federal workforce
Posted by ONETRILLIONAMERICANS
4 Comments
> Trump v. Wilcox, a case now pending on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” asks whether several federal agencies that are supposed to enjoy a degree of independence from the president should be stripped of that independence.
> Wilcox is the latest in Supreme Court cases involving what’s known as the “unitary executive” theory, which, in its strongest form, would give presidents legal control over every federal job that’s not part of Congress or the judiciary. And this case doesn’t look particularly good for advocates for agency independence.
> In previous unitary executive cases, the Court’s Republican majority has shown it is absolutely committed to an expansive view of presidential power — including the power to fire officials who are supposed to be independent from political pressure.
> Nine decades ago, in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court upheld a law that protected the five commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from being fired except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” As the Court explained, members of the FTC “are called upon to exercise the trained judgment of a body of experts” — bringing technocratic knowledge to their decisions, even if their expert judgments depart from ideas that are politically fashionable.
> Relying on this authority, Congress has created multiple similar agencies — the most important of which is the Federal Reserve, which, like the central banks in other successful nations, is supposed to set interest rates based on expert economic judgment and not based on what will benefit the sitting president. The consequences of stripping the Fed of this independence would be severe. In 1971, Fed chair Arthur Burns succumbed to pressure from President Richard Nixon to juice the economy going into Nixon’s reelection race. Burns’ actions are often blamed for the years of “stagflation” — slow economic growth and high inflation — that followed.
> It’s difficult to exaggerate the current Republican justices’ disdain for Humphrey’s Executor, or for the very idea that federal agencies can act independently of the president. Beginning at least as far back as Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Board (2010), the Court started limiting Congress’s power to shield government officials from presidential control. This process accelerated rapidly once Trump started to remake the judiciary.
> The unitary executive theory even played a starring role in Trump v. United States (2024), the Supreme Court decision establishing that Trump can use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes, with the Court relying on this theory to establish that Trump has total control over the Justice Department — even if he orders prosecutors to target his political enemies.
> Now, Wilcox concerns two federal officials, one of whom sits on the National Labor Relations Board and another who sits on the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), who were fired by Trump despite federal laws establishing that the president cannot fire them at will. Trump’s attempt to seize full control over the MSPB is particularly consequential, in the likely event that it succeeds, because the MSPB is the agency that’s supposed to protect civil servants from politically motivated firing. If Trump gains the power to fire MSPB members, he could potentially unravel civil service protections and anti-corruption reforms that began in the Chester A. Arthur administration.
> More broadly, Wilcox gives the Court’s Republican majority a vehicle to overrule Humphrey’s Executor in its entirety — potentially ending independence for all federal agencies, including the Fed.
!ping LAW
Seeing the strip-mining of the American federal government reminds me of what Venezuelans have told me about the Chavez years, where he replaced the technocrats who ran various utilities and the state oil company, PDVSA, with incompetent loyalists from the army and the party, in one case an illiterate corporal who was buddies with Chavez.
This was the prelude to a system-wide collapse of the country, including a 2-week blackout.
I don’t know how Americans, who have more guns than there are people, would respond in a 2-week blackout but I have some idea.
So the thing is if Trump fires Powell which he wants to do, the US bond market will immediately spike like 2-3% we will basically just get instantly downgraded from AAA.
Does the US Supreme Court really let the President commit seppuku on the US economy?
We know they don’t have principles but are they economically literate enough to realize what would happen?
Not a lawyer, but the federal reserve act seems different from the FTC, NLRB, and other boards created by congress. It’s goal isn’t to take away executive power, but an attempt to take away private banking power in the name of stability.
In other words.. the absence of a federal reserve isn’t the president controlling interest rates. It’s the free market controlling interest rates.
Also, would presidential control extend to each federal reserve bank (which would effectually give the president enormous pressure over every private bank) , or just the federal reserve board? Seems like a can of worms the Supreme Court doesn’t want to open. They’ll probably rule narrowly on the NLRB.