"Chief Justice John Roberts, an executive-power enthusiast in judicial drag..."

[pat_k]

The Supreme Court Is Ready to Give the Ax to a 91-Year-Old Precedent That Protects Us from a Troubling Executive Power
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a71604357/scotus-humphreys-executor-executive-power-trump/

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In bleaker news, the court seems ready to give the boot to a 91-year-old precedent that forbids a president from firing certain employees of executive-branch agencies.

In 1935, the high court ruled in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that Congress could shield certain executive branch officials with firing protections. It laid the groundwork over decades for expert agencies to enjoy a degree of independence from the White House. Today, those agencies investigate plane crashes, oversee product recalls, rule on federal worker rights, adjudicate union disputes, and more. Several of the conservative justices have already signaled they want to overturn Humphrey’s Executor, viewing it as a violation of presidential authority. Trump has teed them up to pull the plug. He has fired various independent agency heads without claiming to have valid cause, and his firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter set up a direct challenge to the precedent.

During oral arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts, an executive-power enthusiast in judicial drag, said of the precedent, which involved President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission:

Humphrey's Executor is just a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was. It was addressing an agency that had very little, if any, executive power, and that may be why they were able to attract such a broad support on the court at the time.

Expect exceptions to this opinion to magically appear in the court the next time there is a Democratic president.