The Supreme Court’s Trump-favoring majority has allowed him to fire, without cause, any employee of any agency that Congress created by legislation that prohibited such firings. Trump is now free to bring any federal agency created by Congress to its knees and under his control, creating the most subjugated executive branch in America’s history.
Just this week, in Trump v. Slaughter, Trump’s obedient Chief Court Justice John Roberts stayed a lower court ruling that enjoined Trump from firing a Federal Trade Commissioner without cause in violation of the Courts own 90-year precedent. In 1935, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Humphry’s Executor v. United States that President Roosevelt couldn’t fire Federal Trade Commissioner William Humphrey because the FTC Act prohibits a president from removing a commissioner except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Robert’s stay will continue in effect until the Court hears and decides the case, which could take years. The stay adds to the shameful record of delaying cases to save Trump. The Court also stayed Jack Smith’s criminal case against Trump until after the 2020 election. In sharp contrast, it took the Supreme Court just 16 days to unanimously decide that Nixon wasn’t immune from prosecution and one day to decide Bush v. Gore, giving Bush the presidency.
Chief Justice Roberts wasn’t shy in telegraphing what the Court will ultimately hold. He asked Trump’s lawyers to brief whether the Humphry’s case should be overruled [i.e. tell him how to overrule it] and whether the FTC’s statutory removal protections that been in effect for 111 years violate the Constitution’s separation of powers clause – a curious notion because its Robert’s stay that usurps Congress’s power to protect employees of the agencies they create.
In Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court took the predictable final step in handing Trump full control of the policies that Congress wanted the 400 federal agencies it created to decide. Add Trump’s successful threat to back a primary challenger against disobedient Congressional Republicans and the Constitution’s concept of three independent branches of government that provide checks and balances on each other has been reduced to a fiction.
So it’s up to the voters to recapture our democracy by replacing Trump’s indentured Republicans with Republicans who are not intimidated by Trump, or by Democrats in the national elections. Only then can Trump be removed and his Supreme Court enablers be replaced by Justices who will abide by their oaths to administer justice impartially, and without favoring any person.