On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article about a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that will have a negative impact on the deep state.
The article reports:
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to strike down the 90-year-old precedent in Humphrey’s Executor that insulated deep state actors when even the president sought to fire them.
“Nearly 250 years ago, the Framers decided to vest ‘[t]he executive Power’ in one person—’a President of the United States of America,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “The choice was not made lightly.”
Roberts noted that “several delegates to the Constitutional Convention pushed for a multimember council instead of ‘unity in the Executive magistracy,’ which they feared would serve as ‘the foetus of monarchy.’ But unity won out.”
“Our Constitution’s drafters knew from experience that a ‘plurality in the executive’—the model in use by most States at the time—not only ‘diminishe[s]’ the ‘activity, secrecy, and dispatch’ necessary to ensure ‘good government’ but ‘tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility,’” he added.
Roberts delivered the opinion of the court, which Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined in full. Justice Clarence Thomas joined every part of the opinion except one, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The deep state was very active during the first Trump administration and has not gone away. Their actions have been blunted somewhat by President Trump’s quick learning curve and by the loyalty of the people he has chosen for his cabinet this administration. In President Trump’s first administration, the deep state saw him coming and was prepared. In this administration President Trump saw the deep state coming and was prepared.
The article notes:
An RMG Research poll last year found that 75% of Washington, D.C.-area federal employees who made at least $150,000 a year and who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 would disobey a lawful Trump order if they considered it bad policy.
That is the reason this decision is important.
The article concludes”
Trump v. Slaughter involved President Donald Trump’s ouster of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, but it will affect other federal boards and commissions with members appointed by Republican and Democrat presidents.
The so-called independent boards and commissions have members appointed by Republican and Democrat presidents who, in theory, operate without political concerns. They serve for a set term, regardless of whether a new president of a different party assumes office during that term.
Slaughter’s lawyer argued that independent commissions have existed in some form since the 1790s and added that such bodies don’t operate with unchecked power, since members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 prohibited the president from firing a commissioner for any reason other than “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
In Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), the high court ruled that Congress could enact laws limiting the power of a president to fire executive officials of an independent agency.
