How Some of Trump’s Firings Could Upend Legal Precedent and Expand Presidential Power
6th April 2025
USA Today, a Voice of the Crust.
First, an aide to President Donald Trump emails a leader of an independent agency to fire them. Then the leader sues, citing a law on the books that protects them from getting fired without cause. So the Trump administration shoots back that the law is unconstitutional. And they fight it out in court.
Legal observers following the trend think Trump is setting up a test case for the Supreme Court to revisit a 1935 decision that prevented a president from firing a member of Federal Trade Commission and paved the way for independent boards like the Federal Reserve to wield their power freely.
“I think the game is get it up to the Supreme Court,” said Thomas Berry, the director of constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “And I think to some extent this is going to force the court’s hands.”
Among other roles, these boards set interest rates, insure bank accounts, protect children from unsafe toys, investigate airplane crashes, regulate public airwaves, enforce workplace discrimination laws, block federal workers from illegal firings, and allow workers to form unions.
So-called ‘independent agencies’ are major building blocks of the Deep State, carefully crafted so that if God forbid the Dramacrats lose the Presidency, some Republican who didn’t get the memo can’t come in and clean house.
One of Trump’s great virtues is that he doesn’t act like a politician, who would stroke his chin and consult widely before perhaps trimming an inch or two off of the Blob; he act’s like a business man, and in business the CEO can take a chainsaw to the operation and nobody can say him nay. And that’s exactly what is needed. People elected Trump to blow shit up, and that’s exactly what he’s doing, which is why all this media trash-talk isn’t affecting his popularity.