CLARIFICATION UPDATE: The 1936 law that DJT wants the DoJ to not uphold and have the USSC overturn, Humphrey’s Executor, blocks a president's power to hire and fire protected employees without cause. DJT now argues he has unlimited power and congressional laws that infringe on a president's power to hire and fire people in the executive branch are unconstitutional. The USSC has not held that a president has unlimited power to hire and fire, but it has come pretty close. In Myers v. United States (1926) the USSC held that the President has the exclusive power to remove executive branch officials without the approval of the Senate or any other legislative body.
The hair being split here is exclusive power does not necessarily mean unlimited power. For example, the Senate has advise and consent power. The Senate can thus reject presidential nominees that require Senate consent. Also, in Collins v. Yellen (2021), the USSC said that the President's removal power is broad but not absolute. DJT wants to break through the restraints on him so that he can flood executive agencies with corrupt, loyal MAGA thugs.
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DJT and MAGA have launched a new line of legal attack on consumer and worker protections. This is part of the authoritarian Project 2025 plan to fire all important federal employees and replace them with loyal, corrupt, MAGA thugs.
MSNBC reports:
Project 2025 called out a 1935 Supreme Court precedent protecting federal agencies’ independence. Now, the Trump administration says it’s prepared to ask the Supreme Court to overturn it.
In a letter dated Wednesday, the Justice Department’s acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, said the DOJ is ready to ask the justices to ditch the case, called Humphrey’s Executor. The 1935 ruling has long upheld agency independence at a time when Donald Trump is attempting to amass power in a White House now under Republican control.
In this legal tactic, DJT's MAGA DoJ will no longer defend statutory tenure protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Protections for members of those agencies relied on Humphrey’s Executor, but our corrupted DoJ claims those protections are unconstitutional. If and when that precedent stands in the way of the government’s new stance, the DoJ will just ask the justices to overturn the 90-year old law.
By getting rid of statutory tenure protections, DJT can fire existing federal employees and replace them with corrupt DJT MAGA thugs. Under existing law, DJT just cannot fire those people for no reason.
Think about that. Laws that stand in the way of MAGA’s corrupt, authoritarian wealth and power agenda will simply not be enforced any longer. In the past, the DoJ defended laws almost all of the time. Now, it will pick and choose what laws it like and what laws have to go. This amounts to a massive power shift from the law to DJT and plutocrats. Now the burden is on the law to defend itself.
For the FTC, a President may remove any FTC commissioner, but only “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” as per 15 U.S.C. § 41.
For the NLRB, Section 3 of the National Labor Relations Act provides that NLRB Members “may be removed by the President, upon notice and hearing, for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause.”
For the CPSC, commissioners are not at-will employees and can only be removed for cause, similar to the protections for FTC and NLRB members. Protections for employees in those agencies are there to limit political and special interest interference with protecting consumers and workers.
So what?
Some might think, so what? Big deal. Who cares? This won’t affect me. This is just DJT being boisterous DJT. Well, maybe that’s true. But maybe not. It will definitely affect most consumers and workers.
What the FTC does: The FTC is an independent federal agency with a dual mission of protecting consumers and promoting competition. For consumers, the FTC investigates and prevents unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent practices in the marketplace. This includes enforcing consumer protection laws to prevent fraud, deception, and unfair business practices. Guess what laws will not be enforced? Yup, you guessed it.
The FTC enforces antitrust laws to prevent anticompetitive business practices, including (i) challenging mergers that may have an anti-competitive effect on the market, and (ii) investigating and preventing unfair methods of competition or unfair or deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce. Guess what laws will not be enforced? Yup, you guessed it.
The FTC also has the power to promulgate rules defining unfair or deceptive practices and to establish requirements to prevent these practices. Guess what power is not going to used to define unfair or deceptive practices or to establish requirements to prevent these practices. See where I'm going with this?
What the NLRB does: The NLRB is an independent federal agency in the United States responsible for enforcing the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as the Wagner Act. The NLRB protects the rights of most private-sector employees to organize, engage in collective bargaining, and choose whether or not to have unions as their bargaining representatives. This includes the right to join together, with or without a union, to improve wages and working conditions. The agency enforces the rules and regulations under the NLRA. Those rules and regs. prohibit employers from discriminating against employees for union activities or for engaging in protected concerted activities.
The agency also investigates claims of unfair labor practices by both employers and unions. These practices can include interference with the formation of labor unions, discrimination against employees for union activities, refusal to bargain collectively, and other actions that undermine employees’ rights.
Guess what rights will no longer be protected, and what and illegal employer practices will no longer be prosecuted? Guess who will win (hint: people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, ExxonMobil, Wells Fargo Bank and other behemoths), and who will lose (hint: previously protected workers). Workers will now be at the gracious, generous mercy of businesses and their owners and investors. Power flows from workers to plutocrats and businesses.
What the CPSC does: The CPSC is an independent federal regulatory agency established in 1972 by the Consumer Product Safety Act. Its primary mission is to protect the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with consumer products. The CPSC develops voluntary standards with industry, issues mandatory standards when necessary, and can ban consumer products if no feasible standard would adequately protect the public. This includes setting safety requirements for products like toys, power tools and household chemicals. The CPSC can recall of unsafe products. The agency works with manufacturers to develop plans to reach consumers who have purchased recalled products, offering remedies like refunds, repairs, or replacements.
The CPSC also conducts research on potential product hazards, collects data on consumer product-related injuries, and maintains the National Injury Information Clearinghouse to track and analyze injury data. The agency enforces its standards and regulations, ensuring that manufacturers comply with safety requirements. This includes investigating complaints, enforcing recalls, and taking legal action when necessary.
Guess what will happen when the CPSC is run by corrupt MAGA loyalists. Power and legal protections will flow from consumers to special interests who have little to no interest in protecting consumers. But those interests have a huge interest in profit. Research on potential product hazards will stop, and data on consumer product-related injuries will no longer be collected (safety data is inconvenient to profits).
Qs: Is this merely a “so what” thing of little consequence, or is there cause for serious concern? Is it hyperbolic or irrational to argue that most power will flow from those agencies and related laws and regulations to special interests who are motivated by power, wealth and profit? Is it fair to argue that for DJT and nearly all MAGA elites the main goals are wealth and power, with almost everything else being of moderate to no concern.
