Trump cannot remove institutions – Atlantic Ocean
The lawsuit filed last week to prevent the Trump administration from demolishing the basic constitutional principles of the U.S. international development agency: “Congress, not the president or the U.S. Constitution, builds and organizes the offices and departments of the government” Report of the 2017 Heritage Foundation To be precise.
The arguments of good faith against the United States’ independent United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and opposition to the United States’ independent federal education department. Over the past few decades, Congress has changed its mindset about both. But, constitutionally speaking, that's the point: the decision depends on Congress. Unilaterally demolishing the U.S. Agency for International Development, handing over to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency to players, or, if Trump’s advisers have a way to dismantle the education sector, it is beyond the president’s constitutional authority.
Since the Kennedy administration, diplomatic support functions have been proposed in different agent families. John F. Kennedy was granted his authorization by the Foreign Aid Act of 1961 to establish the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a department of the State Department. President Jimmy Carter transferred the functions of the US Bureau of International Development and Development Cooperation to regulations promulgated in 1979. In 1998, Congress granted President Bill Clinton the authority to return the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the State Department or allow it to become an independent body within the executive branch; Clinton did the latter. Although the president's judgment thus informed the shape of the AID at every stage of its evolution, everything President Trump did with the structure of the AID or its distribution of its functions was in accordance with laws enacted by Congress. Progress. No president has advocated independence from Congress to create, reshape or eliminate U.S. Agency for International Development.
This history reflects the decision by the makers to grant Congress rather than the president, i.e. the power to execute the organization’s chart. Article 2 of the Charter of the Enforcement Branch of the Constitution envisages what we now call the federal bureaucracy. The President has clear authority to “requires the Chief Official of each executive to comment on any subject related to the duties of his respective offices”. But the second article knows nothing about those “departments”. Instead, the constitution of the legislative department, Article 1 of the Constitution grants Congress the responsibility to “make all laws that are necessary and appropriate laws to enforce…all…all powers., or in any of its departments or its officials ” The President’s work is to faithfully enforce the law, but the laws (including the laws that establish and structure administrative offices and institutions) are made by Congress.
Since the first Congress, the legislative body has been jealous of its power over the organization. When the Senate introduced the first House bill, Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay suggested that the executive branch organization might be left to the president as holders of executive power. His plan will give the President the authority to create an office in the British monarch. The Senate rejected his position, and the first Congress enacted a round of regulations that organized new departments – the Department of Foreign Affairs, War and Treasury. The statutory duty of the Secretary who leads diplomatic affairs and war is largely intended to implement the President's instructions; Congress recognizes that Article II envisions an important discretionary role in diplomatic and military affairs for the President. However, the Ministry of Finance has organized in detail. Not only has Congress assigned a large number of specific legal responsibilities to the Treasury Secretary, but it has also created other offices within the department – all need the advice and consent of the Senate. As administrative law scholar Jerry L. Mashaw explains, these other offices “designate to check the secretary and each other’s checks in key issues that preserve the integrity of the state’s fiscal and monetary affairs. ” Congress continued to create a variety of other institutions, including mint, post office, customs services and national banks, tailoring the structure of each in accordance with how it best adapts to the meaning of the task structure. No one doubted that this was a privilege for Congress decision.
The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence recognizes the role of Congress. exist Myers v. United StatesThe Supreme Court's decision in 1926 was the most extensive presidential government power, Chief Justice (and former president) William Howard Taft admitted: “Under its legislative power, to the post of Congress, Determining its functions and jurisdiction is the determination of its functions and jurisdiction, the rules that stipulate the reasonable and relevant qualifications and qualifications of the appointee and determine the terms to be appointed. “This claim has never been opened to serious problems.
Congress certainly recognizes that the president may have valuable ideas about executive organizations. Beginning in 1939, Congress enacted a series of so-called reorganization bills that gave the president significant (but not unlimited) discretion to create, abolish or reorganize the executive, but with important warnings. The president's plan to reorganize is bound by a “legislative veto,” which means that the resolution does not approve of plans formulated by both houses of Congress, which can prevent it from taking effect. This will be a simultaneous resolution between the House and the Senate, and the president cannot veto it and does not have to sign it to make it binding. Through the threat of legislative veto, Congress has been controlling the creation, abolishing or reorganizing content.
However, the Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that the veto power of legislation is an unconstitutional form of legislation. As a result, Congress deprived the president of its power to unilaterally implement the reorganization. If the presidential restructuring plan is not easily blocked, Congress will no longer authorize them. Since 1984, the president has only proposed a reorganization, which Congress can enact or reject through ordinary legislative procedures. (A proposal made by Vivek Ramaswamy in 2023 that the Reorganization Act of 1977 continues to authorize the president to repeal the institutions, although the statutory changes enacted by the 1984 statutory one is a shocking statutory interpretation.)
Given this legal context, the question is why Trump believes that the president can legally dismantle the agency himself, i.e., he thinks he cares whether he is legal. The possible answer would involve a particularly ambitious version of the second explanation, called the “Uniform Execution Theory.” The baseline premise of unified implementation theory is that Article 2 guarantees the President's full deletion authorization of each subordinate member of the executive branch. The bold version believes that he or she can also directly command how to perform every function of the executive branch, even individuals to execute them.
The Supreme Court has never fully accepted a unified theory of enforcement. But, Myers The aforementioned decision (the court was unanimously rejected by seven years later) would invalidate Congress’ attempts to create independent administrators protected from the president’s removal. Roberts Court is almost entirely read Myers,treat Humphrey's Executor vs. Usthe Federal Trade Commission's opinion was maintained in 1935, just an exception Myers. (In the following decades, the Supreme Court repeatedly reiterated Humphrey's executive As a control agency, most notably, insisted on the constitutionality of the independent lawyers of the Post-Mirou in the 1988 decision. As you can imagine, the court could uphold the sacking of NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox.
Of course, even the presidential power to expel individual institutions’ heads may not necessarily translate into the power to shut down the entire government department. However, in the 2024 opinion, granting all but candid immunity to the former president to avoid prosecution of crimes committed during his tenure, the court seems to have shown something more ominous. The majority describes the president's power to oversee the executive branch as a power that Congress may not be able to reach, which is the conclusion in the face of the Constitution's text. As Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith explains, in George W. it is completely novel…it has huge implications, depending on its scope.” The opinion now is clear It implies that Trump is the president in the constitution and the whole of the executive branch, and he can configure it according to his own wishes.
That said, Trump’s record of legal success in the Supreme Court is a mixed bag. But he probably thought a good bet would be either, the legal challenge of his scorched earth strategy was either too slow to stop him, or if they arrived at the Supreme Court, the right-wing super woman of the corpse would continue to represent the de ramblings if they reached the Supreme Court . Fact execution is supreme. Staring at the possibility of the latter, newly confirmed director of management and budget Russell Vought confirmed the government's position that Congress lacks the power to force funding to spend on funding, a position that the Supreme Court never endorsed, and Constitutionally unfounded. But most people will do it as vigorously and creatively as they protect Trump from prosecution, which may be willing to improvise.
The structure and location of government agencies is not only abstract; they are important to the work that agencies do on the ground. When Congress extracted the Department of Education from the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare, it was intended to give support to federal education. When Congress transfers the Coast Guard from transportation to the Department of Homeland Security, it is presumably a priority for the role of the Coast Guard in terms of security rather than security. The reason why the merger of the Land Administration and the U.S. Forest Service recommendations always fail is that the Interior Department’s organization DNA (which both houses BLMs, favors conservation, and the agricultural sector’s reflective policy sentiment, which has the Forest Services Department, is Developed.
Perhaps the most worrying development is that the commitment of the government to comply with the court order may not be more reliable than its dedication to the following regulations. Vice President JD Vance posted on X in his exact wording with Trump's denial amount of soup: “Judges are not allowed to control the legal power of executives.” Literally Look, Vance's statement is accurate. What it fails to acknowledge is that judicial power includes the power to illustrate the extension of the legitimate power of executives. In denying President Richard Nixon's right to withhold Watergate videotapes, the court agreed: “Many of the rulings of this Court… have clearly reaffirmed the holdings of (1803) Marbury v. Madison “(i) Emphasize the provinces and obligations of the Ministry of Justice to say what the law is.” The Constitution itself.