Oh, Jared, you’re not overreacting! Many people share your opinion that the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) needs reform because its decisions do not reflect the views of the American public. Instead, they seem to serve the interests of themselves and certain unscrupulous oligarchs, including the current President, unfortunately. I’m not sure how SCOTUS can be reformed, but it won’t be easy. Paul Krugman interviewed Lisa Graves some time ago, and he has done so again recently. I hope you had the chance to watch her interviews. Most recent interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFPQU_JAu5s
Elections have consequences, for those of you who failed to support Harris, shame on you.
SCOTUS decisions are the law until reversed by a future court or congress. If the midterms take place, and I have my doubts, Dems need to take back both houses, too. many of us complain on social media and fail to contribute $$ or work to Get Out the Vote.
Jarod, taking back our nation is simple, it’s decided at the polls.
The so-called moderates will have us believe that if you are at the median between conservative and liberal positions you are at the sweet spot of democracy. What that view ignores is that conservatives (or liberals) can pursue an extreme agenda till democracy exists in name only, not in practice. That is exactly what has happened to this country beginning around 1980 - a relentless shifting of the Overton window till the moderate view is tantamount to hard conservatism - thanks to the persistent efforts of a few ruthless conservatives in the White House, the Congress and the Supreme Court. This will take a lot of undoing.
I agree, but it is worse than that. The centrists or moderates, if one prefers, have run the show during Democratic administrations, while there are no moderates or centrists left in Republican Party.
Unfortunately, through decades of neglect, centrist policies have failed to solve any of our growing number of problems. The ACA was a centrist policy, that still left millions without health insurance and is now being trashed by the Republicans. If we could get a well-written universal health care plan enacted it could become unassailable. Yes, the right wingers will never stop. And our electorate has been sleepwalking through the destruction of our country. But if everyone had affordable, comprehensive health care, very few would want to give it up. With incrementalism comes built in vulnerability.
Climate change. If we had seriously begun to address it forty years ago, we wouldn't face an impending disaster today. But, instead, we ignored it. The truth is most Americans don't want to do anything to address climate change, which is why it ranked 18th or 19th in 2024 among important electoral issues.
The latest reports have said that Social Security will have to cut benefits by 20% in just six years unless something is done now. Are Trump and Republicans going to do anything positive?
We don't need centrist or moderate policies. We need bold action and legislation that doesn't kick the can down the road until we face a crisis. We need to FIX problems, but the American people are willing to whine and complain, but they aren't willing to elect the kind of representatives and presidents who will actually work for the well being of the American people, both citizens and immigrants.
You're not underreacting. The Republic is within an existential constitutional crisis. These people need to be jailed and removed. If not, America of the people, by the people, and for the people, as we know it, will be gone forevermore.
The supreme court has no love or care for American laws. They are an unlawful body, and this supreme court shows the fickleness of the institution. They rule as despots and offer decrees for factional interest. Any American with a love for classical republicanism, that being the separation of powers, our checks and balances, must be horrified and weeping!!!
"Two, which follows closely from one, the conservative majority of this high court..."
Everyone, stop it! JUST STOP IT! The six majority justices are not conservatives. They are radicals. They are extremists. There is nothing conservative about their jurisprudence. Why would people who should know better award them a title that they don't deserve, that is inaccurate, and is frankly, dishonest.
It is time for everyone to stop calling these SCOTUS justices conservative or printing opinions that call them conservatives. If someone refers to them as "conservatives," anyone who prints a quote from that opinion should follow it with a refutation.
Language matters. Calling extremists conservatives helps to normalize them. The NY Times does some excellent investigative journalism, but its approved use of language has helped to normalize Trump and the American right. In fact checks, the Times has, to my knowledge, never called anything Trump has said a "lie." He is apparently not a "liar." He tells "falsehoods," but more often his untrue statements "mislead" or "need context." They call the right wing extremists on the SCOTUS "conservatives." A true conservative justice would never hand down the decisions these six have.
This is what I wrote recently in a NY Times comment:
______
A political conservative is someone who supports preserving traditional institutions, customs, and values while favoring gradual change over rapid or radical reforms.
Some could argue that they [the six justices] fit the first part of that description. Yes, they support preserving (or returning to) traditional institutions, customs, and values, such as racism and misogyny. On the other hand, racist and misogynistic are now widely seen as describing the nation at its founding, but not after 250 years of incremental change. But do these six really favor gradual change over radical? They have trampled all over stare decisis, which is certainly a part of a conservative approach to a justice system. They have been dragging this country far beyond what has ever been considered traditional or conservative by granting what was supposed to be a limited presidency with unheard of powers that the founders would never have supported. Is it conservative to look at a law and ignore its words in favor of an invented approach that fits ones own agenda? Congress did not intend for the president to be able to fire people it had expressly protected from firing. But the "conservatives" on the SCOTUS are allowing that. It is indefensible to call these right wing extremists conservative. They should be identified based on what they do, not on what they might dishonestly claim to be.
______
By convention conservatives fit on the right side of the political spectrum. Center-right politicians live there too. But as we move further to the right, we can also find right wing extremists of various stripes residing far out on that spectrum, among whom are fascists, neo-Nazis, White Christian Nationalists, and other right wingers. Somewhere well to the right of center-right and the varying degrees of conservatism is where the six justices live politically. They are not all identical and emphasize various things in their extremism. For one thing, a conservative justice would generally support and defend stare decisis. None of these justices have done that in reality. Their recent decision ignored a decision that is almost 100 years old and has been reconfirmed over the decades.
Four of the justices either can't read or are light years beyond dishonest and hypocritical. In their decision on birthright citizenship they completely ignored both stare decisis and the clear wording of the 14th Amendment. Kavanaugh only upheld birthright citizenship on the basis of a law passed by Congress (but he didn't care about the laws passed by Congress protecting members from groundless firing). So called "Textualism" demands that justices follow the actual words of the Constitution, but not what they think the authors meant. There is no doubt what the 14th Amendment says, but neither is there any real doubt about the intent, since later jurisprudence upheld that as well. Kavanaugh, as is becoming a habit, basically offers opponents of birthright citizenship a way end it. They simply need to get Congress to pass a law. Who cares about the Constitution.
Roberts and Barrett were not among the extremists on birthright citizenship, but they earn their extremist title based on many other decisions.
They took a swipe at democracy, period! This is a blatant sifting of power away from the representatives of the people to a “unitary executive” — i.e. a growing autocracy. Protecting the Feds independence while giving Trump the power to fire regulators rulings are not contradictory in the sense that both are what the corporate/financial world wants. Clearly the markets are strongly opposed to Trump interfering with the Fed but strongly in support of giving him the power to undo regulations on them. Seems pretty consistent to me.
The heads of Federal agencies are not representatives of the people. Many had their own charter. If you think Lina Khan was entitled to impose her nutty theories of anti trust on the entire country, without any presidential check, I could not disagree more. If Trump were not president, if there were some more popular figure such as Obama in the White House, I think the opinion would be celebrated.
Congress are the representatives of the people so they have the right to decide what the authorities of regulators by passing legislation. The Supreme Court just undercut that power and handed to our “unitary executive” undermining the checks and balances system created by the same Founders they claim to worship.
Most of the criticism I've seen has actually been very open about the fact that there's a subjective and objective element here, so your cynicism and conclusion are unwarranted. Most seem subjectively happy with the decision regarding the Federal Reserve, but are criticizing the illogicality and obvious interest (as opposed to the required disinterest of the judges) as being detestable. The two cases have no real differences, and the rulings should be equal under a fair, logical, and court system following its own doctrines and precedence.
I deletest both the Democratic and Republican parties, but, I don't see democrats rushing out to allow or seek allowing such arbitrary decisions.
I think the reaction to the slaughter case is overwhelmingly colored by the fact that Trump is president and disliked by this audience. (I don't like him either, but the decision has ramifications that go Way beyond his term.) The reality is that Humphrey's Executor has been a highly controversial decision for most its life. The notion that the burgeoning and bloated federal bureaucracy is in any sense a protection for the public seems to me almost farcical. The reality is that administrative agencies have almost become a fourth branch of the government over the last 40 years, and there is a tremendous case for reducing their power.
Funny, the Fed has immense power and influence over the lives (and pocketbooks) of Americans. I guess the justices are simply worried about their own financial wealth and not at all concerned with what this decision will inevitably lead to.
Now, the president is free to fire anyone who disagrees with him. All agencies will be staffed by toadies, bootlickers, and sycophants. The president's job is to "faithfully" execute the laws as written by Congress, which is what the Constitution says. It does not say that the Supreme Court can fulfill its own agenda and restructure the entire government.
This could also lead to the wholesale firing of every agency member every time there is a new administration. That will lead to chaos and unstable government. People's trust in government will fall even further. Trump has filled his administration with incompetents, crooks, and idiots. We have expected that political hires will leave when the new administration comes into office. Now, the turnover will be endless and there will no longer be any stability.
"...there is a tremendous case for reducing their power."
If that is true, then it is the job of the legislature, not the SCOTUS or the president.
In case after case, the SCOTUS majorities have been ignoring the Constitution. That is a far more serious problem that federal agencies have been.
Would you feel the same way if the President were one you liked? And the agencies in question. We're obstructing policies he believed in? Because that was the situation of FDR in 1933. Humphrey's executor was a controversial decision then and has remained so eversince
I don't care for Trump, and I particularly don't care for his immigration policies. But he was elected, and he does have majorities in both Houses. What I care for even less than Trump is the notion that unelected bureaucrats could obstruct the policies of a president democratically elected (FDR). The federal bureaucracy is bloated and unwieldy- everyone used to agree on that. And the only constituency it truly represents is itself. What it has become is an unofficial fourth branch of the government. Not good.
There will be presidents after Trump, and I believe they will be very grateful for the overrule today., I think most of us should be
"Would I feel the same way if the president (should not be capitalized) were one I liked?"
Of course, I would feel differently, because I'm a complete hypocrite and totally dishonest!
NO, I WOULD NOT FEEL DIFFERENTLY. But is seems quite clear that that is precisely what you are doing. For some reason, you don't like what one or more agencies have done, but there is no constitutional or legal distinction between the Fed and the other agencies. They deal with different issues, but their purposes are essentially to provide good government with oversight.
"I don't care for Trump..."
That's a shockingly tepid statement about a fascist, a convicted felon, a sexual predator, and an insurrectionist. That is only the beginning of a long list of abhorrent things about Trump. But you "particularly don't care for his immigration policies."
Another quote: "The federal bureaucracy is bloated and unwieldy- everyone used to agree on that."
NO, everyone has never agreed on that. It is your oinion
Of course, I would feel differently, because I'm a complete hypocrite and totally dishonest!
NO, I WOULD NOT FEEL DIFFERENTLY. But is seems quite clear that that is precisely what you are doing. For some reason, you don't like what one or more agencies have done, but there is no constitutional or legal distinction between the Fed and the other agencies. They deal with different issues, but their purposes are essentially to provide good government with oversight.
"I don't care for Trump..."
That's a shockingly tepid statement about a fascist, a convicted felon, a sexual predator, and an insurrectionist. That is only the beginning of a long list of abhorrent things about Trump. But you "particularly don't care for his immigration policies."
His immigration policies are detestable and based on bigotry and ignorance, but that is true of the entirety of the Trump administration.
Another quote: "The federal bureaucracy is bloated and unwieldy- everyone used to agree on that."
NO, everyone has never agreed on that. It is your opinion and there is considerable pushback on that from people who understand government and what is necessary to manage a country of our size, population, economy, and international connections. Making things up does not create a stronger argument. Is every regulation a good one? No. Could some be eliminated? Yes, except we don’t really have enough high quality people in the House and Senate to write laws and regulations in the best way possible. In my mind, a “streamlined government” wouldn’t necessarily be smaller, but it would have higher quality members and that begins with elected officials who are the responsibility of the voters. and that is the problem -- the dismal quality of our electorate.
Trump was elected. But why was he elected? The main issues were inflation, which the electorate for the most part was too ignorant to understand, so they blamed an international event on a president who doesn’t really have much to do with inflation and prices unless he raises tariffs and starts idiotic wars.
The electorate’s response was to re-elect an unfit and unqualified man to be president on the basis of campaign promises that anyone of average intelligence who had paid any attention for the past nine years would have known could not be believed. Surprise. Surprise! SURPRISE! Trump didn’t keep his promises. Instead he worsened inflation. What about inflation? Do American voters really understand th importance of immigrants to this country. Even those without documentation work and pay taxes, which helps to support programs for which they do not qualify. They do critical jobs that native born Americans do not, for the most part, want to do. Did voters understand any of that when they voted for a man who is openly racist and hostile to all non-white immigrants? No way. That’s why they were shocked when Trump turned a violent, unaccountable private army loose on the population. And not just “the worst of the worst.” Actually, I need to change that. He said “the worst of the worst” but he wasn’t really referring to criminals, as has been shown by his policies. Trump considers non-white immigrants – all of them – to be the worst of the worst.
The vote in 2024 was the single most irresponsible vote in our history. Putting a convicted criminal, who escaped formal judgment for other even more serious crimes, who cares about nothing beyond his own power and wealth, who has zero respect for the rule of law and the Constitution was as close to a crime as a voter who votes legally can get.
“There will be presidents after Trump, and I believe they will be very grateful for the overrule today., I think most of us should be.”
Yes, there will be presidents after Trump, but if he gets his way, and he is being helped by his party and the SCOTUS, they will all be either Republicans or autocratic strongmen.
They may be grateful, but the American people will ultimately not be. Their lives will become worse, more dangerous, and I would expect life expectancy in this country to continue to fall, as it has done since Trump appeared on the scene. Look it up.
So, yes, voters reelected Trump, but without a majority of the votes and now Trump acts like he won in a massive landslide. One-and-a-half percent is not a landslide. It’s not even a decisive win. The Electoral College distorts popular vote totals and can create wide margins in very close elections.
I’m going to stop here. I could continue to critique your comments, but I have other things to do and I want to have mercy on anyone who tries to read this.
We have seen repeated financial/bank crashes because of weak or not enforced regulations. The collapse of SVB happened in large part because Trump and a Republican controlled Congress weakened the definition of banks that are “too big to fail” designed to limit risky practices with the “Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act” that weakened the protections put in place by Dodd Frank which was enacted after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. That crisis is also widely known to be the result of failure of regulation and oversight.
The discussion of the integrity of the people in the government actually is striking me as important particularly because of stuff I've just been working on, and got out a final version of this morning.
As I've mentioned before, there was a 6/26/26 CMS report released on the coverage declines after the lapsed-1/1/26 ACA expanded subsidies, which are looking large.
And, the CMS report makes the claim that the coverage drops are all explained by the administration's successful crackdown on fraud.
So, I went through the report and a related report from the administration's friend--the Paragon Health Institute--and was able to determine the CMS statement was false.
So, the connection to what JB is talking about is that I was only able to have enough necessary information to come to the conclusion the CMS statement was false because at least one or more people inside CMS, maybe actuaries, made certain little details get in the report.
So, I don't know what legal protection those actuaries have from being fired, and I don't know if they had to bravely threaten to let the press know if the minimal essential details were left out. (I do know that information that the coverage losses were looking large, and a false attribution to fraud reduction was planned, was actually leaked to the press earlier by one or more people in CMS, so the actuaries may have had to be brave and use their credible threat of speaking to the reporter again.
Anyway, the summary of what I figured out from going through the report is here:
If anyone is interested in this, they might be able to see what key details I had to use to get to my conclusion to overcome the misrepresentation by CMS.
(There are some other details about the "fraud, fraud, fraud everywhere in the ACA" claims in the CMS report which, though not the subject of my post, the actuaries apparently forced sufficient details in for a sharp quantitative person to not be fooled.)
This is a very difficult issue. While it’s very reasonable to say that agencies should be protected from the whims of an unreasonable tyrant, it’s also reasonable to believe that bureaucracy is inherently inefficient and unresponsive and needs discipline. Shielding bureaucracy from oversight can compound the worst instincts of bureaucrats and slowly grind everything to a halt.
Yes, now we have many and will soon have tons of examples of Republican Christian Nationalist bureaucrats - easily in time as examples for 2028 elections. Since those qualifications are the ONLY criteria they will use.
It all started with Reagan and trickle down economics. It started the lie that we must curry favor with the rich to be a successful society. That if we tax them they will invest less. The Federalist Society has spent decades planting these lies and are now harvesting a bumper crop of corruption and authoritarianism.
That puts you in the minority. Because commentators of all stripes have been criticizing that opinion forever. Federal agencies are not supposed to be all powerful and beyond the reach of Presidential authority
" Federal agencies are not supposed to be all powerful and beyond the reach of Presidential authority."
That's not actually what the legislature believes. I would direct your attention to a persuasive argument countering your unpersuasive opinion, but I doubt you would read it, and if you did that it would make any difference in an already made up mind.
As I wrote in an earlier comment, which was before I read the argument I cite above, there is simply not rational way to exempt the Fed, while gutting the other agencies. "My 401K depends on it" is not a rational reason. It is, as a matter of good government, that the Fed not be subject to interference by a president who could (and Trump would) cut interest rates leading up to an election in order to juice the economy and gain favor with voters. That would prove disastrous in the hands of Trump or any president that didn't care about the long term, but only maximizing success in the upcoming election. Presidents often have falling approval ratings as mid-terms approach. Why not give the economy a nice little kick to improve those ratings and his party's election results? Why not? Because it will ultimately be disastrous.
Gutting the agencies that you dislike so much, will have similar effects in different ways. One thing it will lead to that is obviously a terrible idea is to end the accountability that inspectors general offer. That is what Trump has done. The DoJ's Public Integrity Office had 30 or more employees when Trump took office. It now has two. The PIO is empowered to investigate, among other things, presidential corruption. Trump is unquestionably the most corrupt president in US history, but he is now free from accountability. That is what you are arguing for -- a president who can hire and fire everyone and anyone in the executive branch. If you can't see the disastrous implications of that, you are beyond help.
Is there an actual difference between Fed members and those expert members of other agencies that the SCOTUS majority now says our king, um, dictator, um Fuehrer, um tsar, um kaiser, um convicted felon president can fire for any reason or no reason or because he doesn't like their hairstyle, or simply because he wants the freedom to destroy democracy and control every aspect of Americans' lives? But Donald Trump would never do that, would he? I mean, c'mon, he's the most serious, dedicated political servant in US history. He sacrifices so much with no expectation that he will be rewarded with billions of dollars, his name all over buildings, his name and mug shot on the US passport, his image on the $250 bill, a minimalist arch to his glory, or any other reward for his selfless service and rejuvenating naps during official meetings. Would a man who would never insult or denigrate journalists, or call his political opponents "traitors" or "terrorists" or people who hate America ever do something like fire the head of agency so he can install a spineless, groveling bootlicker who will do whatever the convicted felon president demands. Of course not.
I agree that the two decisions are contradictory. To justify the different treatment I believe Roberts appealed to the First and Second Banks of the United States, the first of which was championed by Alexander Hamilton, to help justify the carve out. I think the more rational argument, shielding all or most of the independent agencies, would be to recognize that Congress has delegated some of its constitutional powers to them—managing the value of money in the case of the Fed, regulating interstate trade in the case of the FTC, etc.—and generally created mechanisms by which these agencies are accountable to them. Perhaps the key mistake in all of this has been to lodge the power of appointment with the president rather than with some (small) subset of the Congress, say the chairs and ranking members of the relevant oversight committees.
But the two decisions are consistent in the sense that they are what Wall Street wants — weakened regulation but an independent Fed. The financial world knows that an independent Fed is crucial for trust in the US system. They also hate regulations because they believe that the free market is God.
“Wall Street is scared that we’re looking at the end of the Fed’s independence”
The irony that the Humphry’s precedent which was overturned came when FDR was trying to do what Trump is doing seems lost to many people. Thomas Jefferson would have been on the side of the current decision, perhaps even John Adams, although they differed substantially on how much power the federal government should have. The administrative state is a major problem in a democracy. How to rectify that issue is critical for democracy to survive. When the EPA considers CO2 a pollutant they are so intellectually corrupt any critical thinker knows the current system is out of control. CO2 is not a pollutant, in fact after argon it is the least chemically reactive molecule present in every breath you take. Geophysically CO2 levels are currently correlated with warming but no human (a creature with a functioning human brain) could consider pollutant when without CO2 we wouldn’t exist. Deciding to limit human generation of CO2 is a pure political question. Once the Dems bought into climate hysteria they decided to abandon democracy. This ruling was mostly correct but should have included the Fed. Congress is the democratic institution that should make law and policy. They can, by passing laws, make the Fed, a tool of the people, not politicians. I think a Fed that followed a Taylor rule set by law and only held US TSY securities 1-2yr and shorter would be good, and it would, by reducing the political impact of the Fed be good for both US democracy and the US economy.
It's easy to make an argument when you don't care about the truth of it, so you define and contort words to suit your agenda. I think you'd like the logic in Scalia's rulings like they the word "shall" is a suggestion.
To clarify, though I'm rather certain you won't care to pollute does not mean "to damage even with small quantities." Literally any difference can be considered poisonous in the right circumstances. I'm not sure why you think pollution and CO2 are any different. Why don't you go show us how safe water, is, too? Drink about 6 liters of it within a few hours. Then we won't have to hear your nonsense again, because you'll have died from water intoxication.
Oh, Jared, you’re not overreacting! Many people share your opinion that the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) needs reform because its decisions do not reflect the views of the American public. Instead, they seem to serve the interests of themselves and certain unscrupulous oligarchs, including the current President, unfortunately. I’m not sure how SCOTUS can be reformed, but it won’t be easy. Paul Krugman interviewed Lisa Graves some time ago, and he has done so again recently. I hope you had the chance to watch her interviews. Most recent interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFPQU_JAu5s
Elections have consequences, for those of you who failed to support Harris, shame on you.
SCOTUS decisions are the law until reversed by a future court or congress. If the midterms take place, and I have my doubts, Dems need to take back both houses, too. many of us complain on social media and fail to contribute $$ or work to Get Out the Vote.
Jarod, taking back our nation is simple, it’s decided at the polls.
Let’s win at the polls first …
It’s up to us.
The so-called moderates will have us believe that if you are at the median between conservative and liberal positions you are at the sweet spot of democracy. What that view ignores is that conservatives (or liberals) can pursue an extreme agenda till democracy exists in name only, not in practice. That is exactly what has happened to this country beginning around 1980 - a relentless shifting of the Overton window till the moderate view is tantamount to hard conservatism - thanks to the persistent efforts of a few ruthless conservatives in the White House, the Congress and the Supreme Court. This will take a lot of undoing.
I agree, but it is worse than that. The centrists or moderates, if one prefers, have run the show during Democratic administrations, while there are no moderates or centrists left in Republican Party.
Unfortunately, through decades of neglect, centrist policies have failed to solve any of our growing number of problems. The ACA was a centrist policy, that still left millions without health insurance and is now being trashed by the Republicans. If we could get a well-written universal health care plan enacted it could become unassailable. Yes, the right wingers will never stop. And our electorate has been sleepwalking through the destruction of our country. But if everyone had affordable, comprehensive health care, very few would want to give it up. With incrementalism comes built in vulnerability.
Climate change. If we had seriously begun to address it forty years ago, we wouldn't face an impending disaster today. But, instead, we ignored it. The truth is most Americans don't want to do anything to address climate change, which is why it ranked 18th or 19th in 2024 among important electoral issues.
The latest reports have said that Social Security will have to cut benefits by 20% in just six years unless something is done now. Are Trump and Republicans going to do anything positive?
We don't need centrist or moderate policies. We need bold action and legislation that doesn't kick the can down the road until we face a crisis. We need to FIX problems, but the American people are willing to whine and complain, but they aren't willing to elect the kind of representatives and presidents who will actually work for the well being of the American people, both citizens and immigrants.
You're not underreacting. The Republic is within an existential constitutional crisis. These people need to be jailed and removed. If not, America of the people, by the people, and for the people, as we know it, will be gone forevermore.
The supreme court has no love or care for American laws. They are an unlawful body, and this supreme court shows the fickleness of the institution. They rule as despots and offer decrees for factional interest. Any American with a love for classical republicanism, that being the separation of powers, our checks and balances, must be horrified and weeping!!!
"Two, which follows closely from one, the conservative majority of this high court..."
Everyone, stop it! JUST STOP IT! The six majority justices are not conservatives. They are radicals. They are extremists. There is nothing conservative about their jurisprudence. Why would people who should know better award them a title that they don't deserve, that is inaccurate, and is frankly, dishonest.
It is time for everyone to stop calling these SCOTUS justices conservative or printing opinions that call them conservatives. If someone refers to them as "conservatives," anyone who prints a quote from that opinion should follow it with a refutation.
Language matters. Calling extremists conservatives helps to normalize them. The NY Times does some excellent investigative journalism, but its approved use of language has helped to normalize Trump and the American right. In fact checks, the Times has, to my knowledge, never called anything Trump has said a "lie." He is apparently not a "liar." He tells "falsehoods," but more often his untrue statements "mislead" or "need context." They call the right wing extremists on the SCOTUS "conservatives." A true conservative justice would never hand down the decisions these six have.
This is what I wrote recently in a NY Times comment:
______
A political conservative is someone who supports preserving traditional institutions, customs, and values while favoring gradual change over rapid or radical reforms.
Some could argue that they [the six justices] fit the first part of that description. Yes, they support preserving (or returning to) traditional institutions, customs, and values, such as racism and misogyny. On the other hand, racist and misogynistic are now widely seen as describing the nation at its founding, but not after 250 years of incremental change. But do these six really favor gradual change over radical? They have trampled all over stare decisis, which is certainly a part of a conservative approach to a justice system. They have been dragging this country far beyond what has ever been considered traditional or conservative by granting what was supposed to be a limited presidency with unheard of powers that the founders would never have supported. Is it conservative to look at a law and ignore its words in favor of an invented approach that fits ones own agenda? Congress did not intend for the president to be able to fire people it had expressly protected from firing. But the "conservatives" on the SCOTUS are allowing that. It is indefensible to call these right wing extremists conservative. They should be identified based on what they do, not on what they might dishonestly claim to be.
______
By convention conservatives fit on the right side of the political spectrum. Center-right politicians live there too. But as we move further to the right, we can also find right wing extremists of various stripes residing far out on that spectrum, among whom are fascists, neo-Nazis, White Christian Nationalists, and other right wingers. Somewhere well to the right of center-right and the varying degrees of conservatism is where the six justices live politically. They are not all identical and emphasize various things in their extremism. For one thing, a conservative justice would generally support and defend stare decisis. None of these justices have done that in reality. Their recent decision ignored a decision that is almost 100 years old and has been reconfirmed over the decades.
Four of the justices either can't read or are light years beyond dishonest and hypocritical. In their decision on birthright citizenship they completely ignored both stare decisis and the clear wording of the 14th Amendment. Kavanaugh only upheld birthright citizenship on the basis of a law passed by Congress (but he didn't care about the laws passed by Congress protecting members from groundless firing). So called "Textualism" demands that justices follow the actual words of the Constitution, but not what they think the authors meant. There is no doubt what the 14th Amendment says, but neither is there any real doubt about the intent, since later jurisprudence upheld that as well. Kavanaugh, as is becoming a habit, basically offers opponents of birthright citizenship a way end it. They simply need to get Congress to pass a law. Who cares about the Constitution.
Roberts and Barrett were not among the extremists on birthright citizenship, but they earn their extremist title based on many other decisions.
Welcome to the resistance, Mr. Bernstein. 😊
“ Despitate times call for desperate measures “
Let’s hope we can last another 250 years w/o another King George III !
They took a swipe at democracy, period! This is a blatant sifting of power away from the representatives of the people to a “unitary executive” — i.e. a growing autocracy. Protecting the Feds independence while giving Trump the power to fire regulators rulings are not contradictory in the sense that both are what the corporate/financial world wants. Clearly the markets are strongly opposed to Trump interfering with the Fed but strongly in support of giving him the power to undo regulations on them. Seems pretty consistent to me.
The heads of Federal agencies are not representatives of the people. Many had their own charter. If you think Lina Khan was entitled to impose her nutty theories of anti trust on the entire country, without any presidential check, I could not disagree more. If Trump were not president, if there were some more popular figure such as Obama in the White House, I think the opinion would be celebrated.
Congress are the representatives of the people so they have the right to decide what the authorities of regulators by passing legislation. The Supreme Court just undercut that power and handed to our “unitary executive” undermining the checks and balances system created by the same Founders they claim to worship.
Most of the criticism I've seen has actually been very open about the fact that there's a subjective and objective element here, so your cynicism and conclusion are unwarranted. Most seem subjectively happy with the decision regarding the Federal Reserve, but are criticizing the illogicality and obvious interest (as opposed to the required disinterest of the judges) as being detestable. The two cases have no real differences, and the rulings should be equal under a fair, logical, and court system following its own doctrines and precedence.
I deletest both the Democratic and Republican parties, but, I don't see democrats rushing out to allow or seek allowing such arbitrary decisions.
I think the reaction to the slaughter case is overwhelmingly colored by the fact that Trump is president and disliked by this audience. (I don't like him either, but the decision has ramifications that go Way beyond his term.) The reality is that Humphrey's Executor has been a highly controversial decision for most its life. The notion that the burgeoning and bloated federal bureaucracy is in any sense a protection for the public seems to me almost farcical. The reality is that administrative agencies have almost become a fourth branch of the government over the last 40 years, and there is a tremendous case for reducing their power.
Funny, the Fed has immense power and influence over the lives (and pocketbooks) of Americans. I guess the justices are simply worried about their own financial wealth and not at all concerned with what this decision will inevitably lead to.
Now, the president is free to fire anyone who disagrees with him. All agencies will be staffed by toadies, bootlickers, and sycophants. The president's job is to "faithfully" execute the laws as written by Congress, which is what the Constitution says. It does not say that the Supreme Court can fulfill its own agenda and restructure the entire government.
This could also lead to the wholesale firing of every agency member every time there is a new administration. That will lead to chaos and unstable government. People's trust in government will fall even further. Trump has filled his administration with incompetents, crooks, and idiots. We have expected that political hires will leave when the new administration comes into office. Now, the turnover will be endless and there will no longer be any stability.
"...there is a tremendous case for reducing their power."
If that is true, then it is the job of the legislature, not the SCOTUS or the president.
In case after case, the SCOTUS majorities have been ignoring the Constitution. That is a far more serious problem that federal agencies have been.
Would you feel the same way if the President were one you liked? And the agencies in question. We're obstructing policies he believed in? Because that was the situation of FDR in 1933. Humphrey's executor was a controversial decision then and has remained so eversince
I don't care for Trump, and I particularly don't care for his immigration policies. But he was elected, and he does have majorities in both Houses. What I care for even less than Trump is the notion that unelected bureaucrats could obstruct the policies of a president democratically elected (FDR). The federal bureaucracy is bloated and unwieldy- everyone used to agree on that. And the only constituency it truly represents is itself. What it has become is an unofficial fourth branch of the government. Not good.
There will be presidents after Trump, and I believe they will be very grateful for the overrule today., I think most of us should be
"Would I feel the same way if the president (should not be capitalized) were one I liked?"
Of course, I would feel differently, because I'm a complete hypocrite and totally dishonest!
NO, I WOULD NOT FEEL DIFFERENTLY. But is seems quite clear that that is precisely what you are doing. For some reason, you don't like what one or more agencies have done, but there is no constitutional or legal distinction between the Fed and the other agencies. They deal with different issues, but their purposes are essentially to provide good government with oversight.
"I don't care for Trump..."
That's a shockingly tepid statement about a fascist, a convicted felon, a sexual predator, and an insurrectionist. That is only the beginning of a long list of abhorrent things about Trump. But you "particularly don't care for his immigration policies."
Another quote: "The federal bureaucracy is bloated and unwieldy- everyone used to agree on that."
NO, everyone has never agreed on that. It is your oinion
Of course, I would feel differently, because I'm a complete hypocrite and totally dishonest!
NO, I WOULD NOT FEEL DIFFERENTLY. But is seems quite clear that that is precisely what you are doing. For some reason, you don't like what one or more agencies have done, but there is no constitutional or legal distinction between the Fed and the other agencies. They deal with different issues, but their purposes are essentially to provide good government with oversight.
"I don't care for Trump..."
That's a shockingly tepid statement about a fascist, a convicted felon, a sexual predator, and an insurrectionist. That is only the beginning of a long list of abhorrent things about Trump. But you "particularly don't care for his immigration policies."
His immigration policies are detestable and based on bigotry and ignorance, but that is true of the entirety of the Trump administration.
Another quote: "The federal bureaucracy is bloated and unwieldy- everyone used to agree on that."
NO, everyone has never agreed on that. It is your opinion and there is considerable pushback on that from people who understand government and what is necessary to manage a country of our size, population, economy, and international connections. Making things up does not create a stronger argument. Is every regulation a good one? No. Could some be eliminated? Yes, except we don’t really have enough high quality people in the House and Senate to write laws and regulations in the best way possible. In my mind, a “streamlined government” wouldn’t necessarily be smaller, but it would have higher quality members and that begins with elected officials who are the responsibility of the voters. and that is the problem -- the dismal quality of our electorate.
Trump was elected. But why was he elected? The main issues were inflation, which the electorate for the most part was too ignorant to understand, so they blamed an international event on a president who doesn’t really have much to do with inflation and prices unless he raises tariffs and starts idiotic wars.
The electorate’s response was to re-elect an unfit and unqualified man to be president on the basis of campaign promises that anyone of average intelligence who had paid any attention for the past nine years would have known could not be believed. Surprise. Surprise! SURPRISE! Trump didn’t keep his promises. Instead he worsened inflation. What about inflation? Do American voters really understand th importance of immigrants to this country. Even those without documentation work and pay taxes, which helps to support programs for which they do not qualify. They do critical jobs that native born Americans do not, for the most part, want to do. Did voters understand any of that when they voted for a man who is openly racist and hostile to all non-white immigrants? No way. That’s why they were shocked when Trump turned a violent, unaccountable private army loose on the population. And not just “the worst of the worst.” Actually, I need to change that. He said “the worst of the worst” but he wasn’t really referring to criminals, as has been shown by his policies. Trump considers non-white immigrants – all of them – to be the worst of the worst.
The vote in 2024 was the single most irresponsible vote in our history. Putting a convicted criminal, who escaped formal judgment for other even more serious crimes, who cares about nothing beyond his own power and wealth, who has zero respect for the rule of law and the Constitution was as close to a crime as a voter who votes legally can get.
“There will be presidents after Trump, and I believe they will be very grateful for the overrule today., I think most of us should be.”
Yes, there will be presidents after Trump, but if he gets his way, and he is being helped by his party and the SCOTUS, they will all be either Republicans or autocratic strongmen.
They may be grateful, but the American people will ultimately not be. Their lives will become worse, more dangerous, and I would expect life expectancy in this country to continue to fall, as it has done since Trump appeared on the scene. Look it up.
So, yes, voters reelected Trump, but without a majority of the votes and now Trump acts like he won in a massive landslide. One-and-a-half percent is not a landslide. It’s not even a decisive win. The Electoral College distorts popular vote totals and can create wide margins in very close elections.
I’m going to stop here. I could continue to critique your comments, but I have other things to do and I want to have mercy on anyone who tries to read this.
We have seen repeated financial/bank crashes because of weak or not enforced regulations. The collapse of SVB happened in large part because Trump and a Republican controlled Congress weakened the definition of banks that are “too big to fail” designed to limit risky practices with the “Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act” that weakened the protections put in place by Dodd Frank which was enacted after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. That crisis is also widely known to be the result of failure of regulation and oversight.
The discussion of the integrity of the people in the government actually is striking me as important particularly because of stuff I've just been working on, and got out a final version of this morning.
As I've mentioned before, there was a 6/26/26 CMS report released on the coverage declines after the lapsed-1/1/26 ACA expanded subsidies, which are looking large.
And, the CMS report makes the claim that the coverage drops are all explained by the administration's successful crackdown on fraud.
So, I went through the report and a related report from the administration's friend--the Paragon Health Institute--and was able to determine the CMS statement was false.
So, the connection to what JB is talking about is that I was only able to have enough necessary information to come to the conclusion the CMS statement was false because at least one or more people inside CMS, maybe actuaries, made certain little details get in the report.
So, I don't know what legal protection those actuaries have from being fired, and I don't know if they had to bravely threaten to let the press know if the minimal essential details were left out. (I do know that information that the coverage losses were looking large, and a false attribution to fraud reduction was planned, was actually leaked to the press earlier by one or more people in CMS, so the actuaries may have had to be brave and use their credible threat of speaking to the reporter again.
Anyway, the summary of what I figured out from going through the report is here:
https://normspier828307.substack.com/p/the-administrations-claim-in-the
If anyone is interested in this, they might be able to see what key details I had to use to get to my conclusion to overcome the misrepresentation by CMS.
(There are some other details about the "fraud, fraud, fraud everywhere in the ACA" claims in the CMS report which, though not the subject of my post, the actuaries apparently forced sufficient details in for a sharp quantitative person to not be fooled.)
This is a very difficult issue. While it’s very reasonable to say that agencies should be protected from the whims of an unreasonable tyrant, it’s also reasonable to believe that bureaucracy is inherently inefficient and unresponsive and needs discipline. Shielding bureaucracy from oversight can compound the worst instincts of bureaucrats and slowly grind everything to a halt.
DJT fired Inspectors General, too -- the very people who provide oversight.
Yes, now we have many and will soon have tons of examples of Republican Christian Nationalist bureaucrats - easily in time as examples for 2028 elections. Since those qualifications are the ONLY criteria they will use.
Don't forget Senate Democrats wanted a corrupt system too, after all, they nominated all of Trump's Supreme Court Appointees out of Committee.
The dem senators were just plain stupid
It all started with Reagan and trickle down economics. It started the lie that we must curry favor with the rich to be a successful society. That if we tax them they will invest less. The Federalist Society has spent decades planting these lies and are now harvesting a bumper crop of corruption and authoritarianism.
That puts you in the minority. Because commentators of all stripes have been criticizing that opinion forever. Federal agencies are not supposed to be all powerful and beyond the reach of Presidential authority
" Federal agencies are not supposed to be all powerful and beyond the reach of Presidential authority."
That's not actually what the legislature believes. I would direct your attention to a persuasive argument countering your unpersuasive opinion, but I doubt you would read it, and if you did that it would make any difference in an already made up mind.
As I wrote in an earlier comment, which was before I read the argument I cite above, there is simply not rational way to exempt the Fed, while gutting the other agencies. "My 401K depends on it" is not a rational reason. It is, as a matter of good government, that the Fed not be subject to interference by a president who could (and Trump would) cut interest rates leading up to an election in order to juice the economy and gain favor with voters. That would prove disastrous in the hands of Trump or any president that didn't care about the long term, but only maximizing success in the upcoming election. Presidents often have falling approval ratings as mid-terms approach. Why not give the economy a nice little kick to improve those ratings and his party's election results? Why not? Because it will ultimately be disastrous.
Gutting the agencies that you dislike so much, will have similar effects in different ways. One thing it will lead to that is obviously a terrible idea is to end the accountability that inspectors general offer. That is what Trump has done. The DoJ's Public Integrity Office had 30 or more employees when Trump took office. It now has two. The PIO is empowered to investigate, among other things, presidential corruption. Trump is unquestionably the most corrupt president in US history, but he is now free from accountability. That is what you are arguing for -- a president who can hire and fire everyone and anyone in the executive branch. If you can't see the disastrous implications of that, you are beyond help.
Is there an actual difference between Fed members and those expert members of other agencies that the SCOTUS majority now says our king, um, dictator, um Fuehrer, um tsar, um kaiser, um convicted felon president can fire for any reason or no reason or because he doesn't like their hairstyle, or simply because he wants the freedom to destroy democracy and control every aspect of Americans' lives? But Donald Trump would never do that, would he? I mean, c'mon, he's the most serious, dedicated political servant in US history. He sacrifices so much with no expectation that he will be rewarded with billions of dollars, his name all over buildings, his name and mug shot on the US passport, his image on the $250 bill, a minimalist arch to his glory, or any other reward for his selfless service and rejuvenating naps during official meetings. Would a man who would never insult or denigrate journalists, or call his political opponents "traitors" or "terrorists" or people who hate America ever do something like fire the head of agency so he can install a spineless, groveling bootlicker who will do whatever the convicted felon president demands. Of course not.
I agree that the two decisions are contradictory. To justify the different treatment I believe Roberts appealed to the First and Second Banks of the United States, the first of which was championed by Alexander Hamilton, to help justify the carve out. I think the more rational argument, shielding all or most of the independent agencies, would be to recognize that Congress has delegated some of its constitutional powers to them—managing the value of money in the case of the Fed, regulating interstate trade in the case of the FTC, etc.—and generally created mechanisms by which these agencies are accountable to them. Perhaps the key mistake in all of this has been to lodge the power of appointment with the president rather than with some (small) subset of the Congress, say the chairs and ranking members of the relevant oversight committees.
But the two decisions are consistent in the sense that they are what Wall Street wants — weakened regulation but an independent Fed. The financial world knows that an independent Fed is crucial for trust in the US system. They also hate regulations because they believe that the free market is God.
“Wall Street is scared that we’re looking at the end of the Fed’s independence”
https://fortune.com/2025/08/21/wall-street-end-of-fed-independence/
Jared:
You just made me laugh with your very accurate comment! They really do not have a clue as to what havoc they are creating for the nation as a whole.
The irony that the Humphry’s precedent which was overturned came when FDR was trying to do what Trump is doing seems lost to many people. Thomas Jefferson would have been on the side of the current decision, perhaps even John Adams, although they differed substantially on how much power the federal government should have. The administrative state is a major problem in a democracy. How to rectify that issue is critical for democracy to survive. When the EPA considers CO2 a pollutant they are so intellectually corrupt any critical thinker knows the current system is out of control. CO2 is not a pollutant, in fact after argon it is the least chemically reactive molecule present in every breath you take. Geophysically CO2 levels are currently correlated with warming but no human (a creature with a functioning human brain) could consider pollutant when without CO2 we wouldn’t exist. Deciding to limit human generation of CO2 is a pure political question. Once the Dems bought into climate hysteria they decided to abandon democracy. This ruling was mostly correct but should have included the Fed. Congress is the democratic institution that should make law and policy. They can, by passing laws, make the Fed, a tool of the people, not politicians. I think a Fed that followed a Taylor rule set by law and only held US TSY securities 1-2yr and shorter would be good, and it would, by reducing the political impact of the Fed be good for both US democracy and the US economy.
It's easy to make an argument when you don't care about the truth of it, so you define and contort words to suit your agenda. I think you'd like the logic in Scalia's rulings like they the word "shall" is a suggestion.
To clarify, though I'm rather certain you won't care to pollute does not mean "to damage even with small quantities." Literally any difference can be considered poisonous in the right circumstances. I'm not sure why you think pollution and CO2 are any different. Why don't you go show us how safe water, is, too? Drink about 6 liters of it within a few hours. Then we won't have to hear your nonsense again, because you'll have died from water intoxication.