"What’s actually happening here dramatically limiting the ability of Congress to govern. It’s Congress, along with the presidency, that sets up these agencies, funds them, gives them tasks, and oversees them. It’s Congress in particular that has used administrative agencies to carry out goals that are too complex for the legislature to micromanage, or really to directly manage at all. Yes, some of this is Congress’s own fault, as they’ve reduced their own capacity. But delegation to executive branch agencies is a perfectly sensible solution to a complicated and constantly changing world, should Congress want to do that. The Court increasingly won’t let them.”
“And now we add to this a literal get-out-of-jail-free card for the president.”
“To be clear: What the Court is doing is reducing the role of Congress. And Congress is the best hope the people have to influence what the government does. At the same time, by aggrandizing the president, the Court is at least in part transforming the presidency from just another portion of the government designed to represent the people into a sovereign above the law. Roberts and his allies are not going after administrative agencies. They’re going after representative democracy — the ability of the people to do collective self-government.”
They’re not upending it. They’re basically shitting all over it.
In the past couple of weeks alone, they’ve:
- Ruled that people who participated in the J6 insurrection to obstruct the counting of votes cannot be charged with obstruction.
- Made bribery legal
- Made the President a king that is above the law (unless they say he isn’t)
- Put Trump’s state conviction in serious jeopardy by ruling that evidence collected while he was in office is inadmissable
- Given judge Cannon a roadmap to dismiss the Florida case against him with their blessing.
- Stated that they don’t actually have to abide by any code of ethics and can basically do what they want.
- Neutered Congress’s regulatory authority, forcing it to cede even more power to the executive branch
These people could literally spend the 4th of july decreeing that the 2020 election was stolen, and Trump is therefore president for life and it wouldn’t even get me to raise my eyebrows at this point. Rulings across the country seem to be doing nothing more than paving the way for Trump’s return and making sure what few restraints existed during his first term are now gone.
There are some good points in this, and the ending is particularly strong, but he shuts down some critical arguments about the ability of government to function, that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Some of the commentary over the weekend talked about the case ending “Chevron deference” and other recent Court actions as reducing the power of executive branch agencies. That’s the wrong way to think about it.
Instead he says the problem is that this stops Congress from functioning. I strongly disagree. Sure, Congress funds the agencies and sets up the broad regulatory framework, but it is almost entirely the executive agencies and their experts who have been entrusted with the latitude to interpret Congress’ often vague and imprecise goals, using science and deep institutional expertise. The end of Chevron deference will go down as the structural change to government that allows it to be fully corrupted and ineffective. When it’s no longer the experts and scientists who get to decide how to deal with incredibly complicated issues, issues that are well beyond the understanding of a few zealots in robes, we no longer have a government based on anything but the whims of those zealots.
