Extremely cheeky to skip out on APA rulemaking requirements
> See 5 U.S.C. 804(3)(C) (the term “rule” does not include “any rule of agency organization, procedure, or practice that does not substantially affect the rights or obligations of non-agency parties”).
But query whether giving an individual plenary Commission power could “substantially affect the rights or obligations of non-agency parties”.
The idea being that they could not discuss important matters privately but only when in the official committee discussions.
This included elevators so if one of them was about to get on and the other one was already there, the first person had to let the elevator go without them.
> The Commission is modifying 17 CFR 200.41, which establishes the Commission's quorum requirement. Three commissioners will continue to constitute a quorum of the Commission, with two important exceptions. First, consistent with the current rule, if the number of commissioners in office is two or one, that number is sufficient for a quorum. Second, if the number of commissioners in office minus the number disqualified from consideration with respect to a matter is two or one, then that number of commissioners constitutes a quorum for purposes of that matter.
This new rule means that the president only have to get one of "his" guys in, and now you can own all of the SEC decisions if you want by just firing any dissenting commissioners.
In the past, that is the sort of norm that would not be broken. We are now in a world where the president trying to fire fed bankers is real, and that is arguably a much, much, more serious norm to have broken. I don't think this administration will have any issues playing to the letter of the law instead of the spirit.
So with this rule change, the effect is that a president only needs one commissioner and a lack of regard for norms to completely control SEC decisions.
May as well go the full nine yards: "The Enabling Act 2026 appears to actually just be an edit to a .docx file. Hmm... My aloofness is a sign of my intelligence."
Luckily enough, the Supreme Court has given the administration the green light to fire members of commissions at will... save the Fed, because mumble mumble history and tradition mumble.
Definitely has nothing to do with SCOTUS's retirement accounts, no sir.
But my second was: "Oh, no, maybe this is just more targeted ignorance"
Once independent agencies are no longer independent, partly due to the expansion of the unitary executive viewpoint in both the Supreme Court and the current executive branch, and the rather obsequious Congress we have that instead of being “jealous to protect its power” is kowtowing to anything the Trump administration wants.
The supreme courts ruling on presidential immunity, chevron deference, and the dismantling of the ideas of an independent agency have all come together to create a dangerous situation for all of us.
The Supreme Court, whether because the of their own alignment with partisanship or some other more nefarious reason, have gutted the idea of an independent agency (except for the Federal Reserve, which is special, but not for any legal reason, but rather because even conservative SCOTUS is not willing to risk the fallout of logically applying their unitary executive view of government to the Fed).
So Congress put a lot of regulatory power in these once independent and non-partisan agencies, and that’s gone. Combine that with a president that is overtly partisan and vindictive, and you have a problem where SCOTUS has created a situation that has elevated the whims of a president above the law Congress created.
We will be feeling the affects of this decision for generations, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the catalyst for the failure of the American form of government.
Our system cannot sustain when coequal branches of government kowtow to politics.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/02/2026-20...
The FCC is set up for this same tactic. 2 vacancies, so down to the minimum quorum there right now. They can change the rule and let Anna Gomez's term expire. Suddenly we'll be reviewing everyone's licenses and seeing all the TV and radio content becoming more right-wing.
Already happening. Also, I support diversity in media without regards to ideology because diversity in media increases the peoples' power and freedom against the ownership and political power classes.
Not that it would do much if most justices had no shame/principles beyond "if I like it then it's okay."
You guys are just now discovering how obsolete the US constitution is.
There are newer law review articles but none quite so comprehensive and earnest as Cass R. Sunstein & Lawrence Lessig, "The President and the Administration," 94 Columbia Law Review 1 (1994), https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles/7779/
That's the same Lawrence Lessig who fought (and lost) copyright extension. 1994 is long before tribal politics became as pervasive and extreme in academia as it is today (not that it didn't exist back then). The paper pulls its punches and assumes unitary executive proponents are arguing in good faith, rather than rationalizing a foregone conclusion.
This is why we need the humanities. I remember one of my application essays to my university was on the merits of a “Liberal Education”[1] and I’m very grateful that I was able to properly receive one from my institution.
Who needs retirement accounts when you can just accept gifts-do-not-call-them-bribes?
* https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-un...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas#Nondisclosure_...
And why would they do that? Willingly give up power?
Of course they should, but it's not something I would bet much money on.
My main beef with the tenor of this whole thread in general is people do not seem aware of the historical rises and falls in executive power. For example, perhaps they did not call it a "unitary executive" then, but the executive power surely reached its zenith under FDR, with all sorts of behaviors and actions we would regard now with boggled eyes and before which even Trump's more radical actions tend to pale. [Perhaps most applicable to this thread, FDR openly wielded the power of the 'independent' FCC to silence his opposition, to the point where NBC and CBS felt compelled to announce they "would not air any broadcast that was in any way critical of any policy of the Administration.".] Everything worked out OK.
Ironically, of course, that's also the guy who was probably most responsible for the explosion of the size of the administrative state - he really, in a meaningful sense, refounded American government. And while there was good and obvious reasons for the immense expansion of the administrative state, and I'm open to legal reasons either way, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that there's really good social reasons to not have "independent" agencies - I suspect more direct democratic input (the President does X) nets out better in terms of social trust and cohesiveness even when it makes often much dumber decisions.
In fact, few legal scholars dispute that the executive power is unitary, though they might disagree on the implications. As Humphrey's explained in detail, the issue is about areas of the government where the executive nominally overseas work that has a congressional or judicial character. For example, administrative judges and Federal prosecutors exercise a kind of judicial power. And the whole Federal Reserve exception SCOTUS quickly formally carved out is because the Fed exercises a kind of congressional budgetary power.
Humphrey's said that when an agency or officer is exercising a non-executive power, Congress can limit the president's control over how it can be exercised, including reasonable limits on the president's ability to fire the officer.
Ignoring unitary executive proponents like Thomas who choose to ignore the ambiguous intentions of the constitutional drafters, or the early history of the first congresses actually limiting some executive power over officers, people like Roberts primarily argue that Humphrey emphasis on the character of the power is just too difficult for the courts to police; they want a brightline distinction defined by whether the office is nominally under the executive branch, even though that approach is in tension with the actual, if equivocal, original meaning of the constitution. But not too brightline, because letting the president control the Fed was a bridge too far. So they created that exception which clearly is rooted in the same logic as Humphrey's, but they (ironically) pretend it's just something they pulled out of thin air as a one-off.
And while I agree we don’t want the DoJ treated that way, that’s how it’s been operated since its beginnings! If anything the past few decades have been relatively not so bad. And regardless of what I want that doesn’t answer whether it would be within Congresses power to make it independent of the President.
To whom? The U.S. Constitution says that Congress has the power
"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
That's rather clear.
The legislative branch makes those laws and the executive branch executes them. Beyond that its role is limited ... commander-in-chief of the military, pardon power, making treaties (with approval of the legislature), appointing ambassadors, judges, and other officers (with approval of the legislature).
The legislature creates (or removes) the departments and sets forth their duties. The role of the executive is to see to it that the departments carry out those duties as established by the legislature.
The "unitary executive" is not to be found in the U.S. Constitution ... it's a creation of authoritarians.
The president is supposed to answer to Congress. The purpose was not to have an exectuive wielding the power of a king or a tyrant, which the US founding fathers were worried about.
You can read the Convention notes yourself! Don’t let other people tell you what they thought.You might be surprised! For example, many argued that the President should not be impeachable at all!
Ok, I won't let you tell me what they thought, like you just did.
> My main beef with the tenor of this whole thread in general is people do not seem aware ...
Such ad hominems are tiresome and more often than not are projection. You have made a number of claims here that simply aren't true.
I won't respond again.
Nowhere did I engage in ad hominem. Do you disagree or agree about my statement about executive power waxing and waning? It certainly appears to be the case that people are generally unfamiliar with the details. If you think almost anything Trump has done is meaningfully "unprecedented", that is almost certainly the case! Of course, having a precedent doesn't mean its good, either.
> You have made a number of claims here that simply aren't true.
Feel free to point out what specific claims you believe to be untrue, rather than simply blanketly claiming them so. The only post I see that you responded to before you don't even seem to have understood my question, which was not about the ability of Congress to create agencies, but about its power to create independent agencies, which is indeed heavily circumscribed even under the non-unitary perspective, under any reasonable definition of "independent". The question is how dependent can they legally be.
Here is a direct link the the Convention notes I was discussing, since possibly you take issue with that?
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_720.asp https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_908.asp
> Mr. PINKNEY & Mr. Govr. MORRIS moved to strike out this part of the Resolution. Mr. P. observd. he ought not to be impeachable whilst in office
> MORRIS: He can do no criminal act without Coadjutors who may be punished. In case he should be re-elected, that will be [FN9] sufficient proof of his innocence. Besides who is to impeach? Is the impeachment to suspend his functions. If it is not the mischief will go on. If it is the impeachment will be nearly equivalent to a displacement, and will render the Executive dependent on those who are to impeach.
> Mr. PINKNEY did not see the necessity of impeachments. He was sure they ought not to issue from the Legislature who would in that case hold them as a rod over the Executive and by that means effectually destroy his independence. His revisionary power in particular would be rendered altogether insignificant.
> Mr. KING expressed his apprehensions that an extreme caution in favor of liberty might enervate the Government we were forming. He wished the House to recur to the primitive axiom that the three great departments of Govts. should be separate & independent: that the Executive & Judiciary should be so as well as the Legislative: that the Executive should be so equally with the Judiciary. Would this be the case, if the Executive should be impeachable? It had been said that the Judiciary would be impeachable. But it should have been remembered at the same time that the Judiciary hold their places not for a limited time, but during good behaviour. It is necessary therefore that a forum should be established for trying misbehaviour. Was the Executive to hold his place during good behaviour? The Executive was to hold his place for a limited term like the members of the Legislature: Like them particularly the Senate whose members would continue in appointmt the same term of 6 years he would periodically be tried for his behaviour by his electors, who would continue or discontinue him in trust according to the manner in which he had discharged it. Like them therefore, he ought to be subject to no intermediate trial, by impeachment. He ought not to be impeachable unless he held his office during good behaviour, a tenure which would be most agreeable to him; provided an independent and effectual forum could be devised. But under no circumstances ought he to be impeachable by the Legislature. This would be destructive of his independence and of the principles of the Constitution. He relied on the vigor of the Executive as a great security for the public liberties.
> Mr. RANDOLPH. The propriety of impeachments was a favorite principle with him. Guilt wherever found ought to be punished. The Executive will have great opportunitys of abusing his power; particularly in time of war when the military force, and in some respects the public money will be in his hands. Should no regular punishment be provided, it will be irregularly inflicted by tumults & insurrections. He is aware of the necessity of proceeding with a cautious hand, and of excluding as much as possible the influence of the Legislature from the business.