Why Is This Supreme Court Handing Trump More and More Power? - Kate Shaw

[In It to Win It]

NYT - Gift Link

Since taking his second oath of office, President Trump has been on a firing spree. In violation of numerous laws or longstanding presidential practice (or both), he has ordered the removal of many high-level officials who normally retain their positions regardless of who is in the Oval Office.

Some of these high-level officials have successfully challenged their removal in the lower courts. But on Thursday, in a case involving members of the National Labor Relations and Merit Systems Protection Boards, the Supreme Court quietly blessed, in an unsigned order, some or all of these firings. In doing so, the court effectively allowed the president to neutralize some of the last remaining sites of independent expertise and authority in the executive branch.

The court sought to cast its intervention as temporary, procedural and grounded in considerations of stability, with the order noting concerns about the “disruptive effect of the repeated removal and reinstatement of officers during the pendency of this litigation.”

In truth, the decision was radical. Whatever one thinks about the underlying question of presidential authority, the court should not have disposed of the case this way. It effectively overruled an important and nearly century-old precedent central to the structure of the federal government without full briefing or argument. And it did so in a thinly reasoned, unsigned, two-page order handing the president underspecified but considerable new authority.

Over the past four months, the legal world — and the country — has been plunged into chaos, and the Supreme Court bears a heavy dose of responsibility. Many of its decisions involving the presidency, including last year’s on presidential immunity, have enabled the president to declare himself above the law. The court’s latest order both enables the consolidation of additional power in the presidency and risks assimilating a “move fast and break things” ethos into constitutional law.

[UTUSN]

1. K&R