Supreme Court Gives Trump a Quiet, Yet Potentially Large Victory Against Administrative State:
As Americans began to prepare for Memorial Day weekend, the Supreme Court quietly handed President Donald Trump a significant victory in the fight to rein in the rogue D.C. bureaucracy.
In a short, two-page order, the court stayed a district court order that directed Trump to reinstate two federal officials whom he had fired.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett voted for the stay. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
The obvious effect is that the two officials—Gwynne Wilcox and Cathy Harris, whom Trump removed from the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, respectively—cannot retake their positions in either agency unless they win their lawsuits.
The implications, however, are far more sweeping.
From its inception during the Progressive era, the administrative state was designed to give technical specialists broad policymaking power and even broader discretion to use that power. Progressives, such as President Woodrow Wilson, believed that important matters of state should not be left to the political process, but should instead be decided by subject matter experts who should be insulated from removal by those who appointed them and unaccountable to the people who elected those who appointed them.
The result was that unelected federal bureaucrats would enjoy the ability not only to control national policy in a whole host of areas but to do what they want regardless of who controls Congress or occupies the White House.
Of course, Progressives conceded when casting the vision for this form of administrative governance that bureaucrats should and often would consider the views of the American people, Congress, and the president as expressed through legislation, directives, and votes. But bureaucrats would retain the discretion to act contrary to those views when they think it in the best interest of the country to do so.
That mindset lies at the heart of the administrative state. And it has pervaded the D.C. bureaucracy for decades.
It’s no wonder that scores of bureaucrats had the gumption after the 2024 election to say that they would disobey Trump if they disagreed with his policies or directives.
But this mindset, as well as the Progressive enterprise of administrative government, are incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. --->READ MORE HERE
Supreme Court allows Trump to remove agency heads without cause for now:
The Supreme Court on Thursday granted the Trump administration’s request to pause orders by federal judges that required government officials to allow board members at two independent federal agencies to stay in office after President Donald Trump tried to fire them. Chief Justice John Roberts had already issued an administrative stay, which temporarily put those orders on hold to give the justices time to consider the government’s request, so Thursday’s order extends that hold while the litigation continues in a federal appeals court and, if necessary, the Supreme Court.
In an unsigned two-page order, the court explained that the decision to put the lower courts’ orders on hold “reflects our judgment that the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.”
Justice Elena Kagan dissented from the court’s order, in an eight-page opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Calling the order “nothing short of extraordinary,” Kagan would have turned down the Trump administration’s request.
The dispute stems from Trump’s efforts to remove two federal officials, Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris of the Merits Systems Protection Board, earlier this year. Both women were appointed by then-President Joe Biden for terms that were due to expire in 2028.
Wilcox and Harris went to federal court in Washington, D.C., where they argued that their firings violated federal law because, unlike most federal officials, they can only be removed for good cause.
Two different federal judges ruled for the officials, ordering the Trump administration to allow them to continue to serve. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit blocked those orders, but the full court of appeals reversed that ruling and reinstated the trial judges’ instructions to allow Wilcox and Harris to remain in office. --->READ MORE HERE
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