If you read and watched nothing but legacy media coverage of the Supreme Court this week, you’d come away thinking that a majority of justices are prepared to anoint Donald Trump as king of America. Naturally, it’s all complete garbage.
This hyperbolic hullabaloo centers around a case heard by the high court earlier this week known as Trump v. Slaughter. The matter involves Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The media-led freakout comes into play because of the likely prospect that a majority of justices are prepared to side with the administration in overturning Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., a 1935 decision that gave Congress the thumbs-up to limit presidents’ ability to remove members of so-called “independent agencies” like the FTC. As The Federalist previously reported, these “independent agencies” are a part of what has often been referred to as the administrative state, a de facto fourth branch of government that’s been permitted to act outside the normal confines of traditional separation of powers.
Rather than acknowledge the constitutional conflict that arises with one branch of government infringing upon another’s key powers, the corporate press has since adopted the talking point that the Supreme Court is about to hand (specifically) Trump “more power.”
“SCOTUS’s GOP Justices Are About to Hand Trump Way More Power,” a Mother Jones headline reads.
“The Supreme Court is handing Donald Trump more power,” blares an Economist headline.
Vox’s Ian Millhiser took his ill-informed hot take in a slightly different direction. He argued that the court’s conservative justices are going to “remake the separation of powers among the three US branches of government into a kind of hierarchy,” in which “Congress’s power to create ‘independent’ agencies that enjoy some insulation from the president must yield to a more powerful executive” and “the executive’s authority over these agencies must, in turn, yield to a more powerful Supreme Court.”
The collective meltdown is as entertaining as it is predictable. The reason that leftists are so adamant in protecting the administrative state at all costs is the same reason they support packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, and making D.C. and Puerto Rico states: power.
Under the current Humphrey’s framework, “independent agencies” effectively act as a fourth branch of government and are able to operate outside of the direct supervision of the president — the head of the executive branch. To argue that a president should not be able to remove certain executive officials unless it comports with Congress’s mandated requirements is to argue that he should not be permitted to fully execute the powers prescribed to him by the Constitution.
The media and other leftists’ infatuation with “independent agencies” and the administrative state boils down to the simple belief that, if a Republican gets elected president, the entrenched bureaucracy will be there to stifle his agenda and the will of those who voted for him. Should Humphrey’s be overturned, that objective becomes more difficult to achieve.
The media can screech and whine all they want. But in all likelihood, Humphrey’s Executor is headed for the dustbin of history, and America will be all the better for it.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
