It is not often that I kick off my Monday by diving into what the Supreme Court of the United States is up to, but the news coming from the occasionally hallowed halls of the Judicial Branch caught my eye this week.
As with so many above the fold (it's still a thing, even though it's not literal in an online context) headlines in The New York Times or The Washington Post, it all begins with some panic about President Trump becoming more powerful in his role. The Democrats' flying monkeys in the mainstream media struggle with basic concepts, like that of a "chief executive," for example.
The Supremes are considering a suit brought by Democrat Rebecca Slaughter, a woman President Trump fired from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). There's a lot to unpack with both the case, and the media reaction to it, but I'll try to be economical with my response.
First up is the 21st century notion that it should be difficult or impossible to fire anyone having anything to do with the government. This is one big reason why public education is a hellscape — bad teachers usually end up running schools rather than being thrown out on the street. Thank your local public sector teachers' union for that.
Here's a little background from The Washington Post:
The Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to allow President Donald Trump to fire a leader of the Federal Trade Commission, a ruling that could limit or overturn a 90-year-old precedent that curbs executive power to dismiss the heads of agencies Congress set up to be independent.
A ruling in favor of Trump’s position has been widely expected by legal experts because the justices have been chipping away for years at the precedent, known as Humphrey’s Executor. Many of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices have expressed support for an idea known as unitary executive theory, which holds that the Constitution gives the president broad authority to fire officials and that Congress cannot limit it.
Predictably, leftists are framing this as Trump consolidating power in the Executive Branch for nefarious purposes. It's a variation on the "Trump as totalitarian dictator" nonsense that they've been pushing seemingly forever. The real motivating factor for the panic here is the Dems' unholy worship of the bureaucracy. We saw them lose it when the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began trimming federal fat in earnest at the beginning of the year. Democrats were aghast at the very idea of bureaucrats losing jobs they weren't doing well in the first place.
I am of the opinion that it should be easier to fire a federal bureaucrat than it is to fire anyone else in America.
Of course, that's not the opinion of Justice Ketanji Brown Single Brain Cell:
Ketanji lost it today during oral arguments and went on a “No Kings” style rant about President Trump wanting to rule like a monarch, and how we should instead have many issues handled by “the experts and PhDs” like Dr. Fauci, Dr. “Rachel” Levine, and the gay bondage AIDS dude. pic.twitter.com/Z8qFZgZzsR
— Bad Hombre (@Badhombre) December 8, 2025
Justice Sonia Sotomayor caterwauled about the court being asked to "destroy the structure of government" while taking "away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that a — the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent.”
That's all fine and dandy if you're severely concussed and believe that Congress oversees the laughingly labeled "independent" agencies without a whiff of partisanship in the process. Or that Congress does much of what it's supposed to do, in the way that it is supposed to do it. Once again, the lefties are proceeding from a false premise.
Congress has been ceding its responsibilities to the Executive Branch for decades now. It's the reason we do the insane government shutdown dance so often. Congress is a dysfunctional mess, and has been for a long time. The Legislative Branch has been weakening itself since long before President Trump first got to the White House.
The very idea of "independent" agencies that operate within the federal bureaucratic behemoth is patently absurd. The United States' federal bureaucracy is inherently leftist. I wrote this last month in the Morning Briefing:
Two of the five wealthiest counties in the United States are in Virginia, and — SURPRISE! — they're the counties that are the closest to Washington. Fairfax County is in at number five, and Loudon County is number one with a bullet. Falls Church, Va., is an independent city that is not part of a county but in the D.C. metro area, and it has the second-highest household income in the nation.
Those are all populated by federal bureaucrats who have gotten wealthy and I can assure you that very few of them are voting Republican. No matter what the intentions, the "independent" agencies are demonstrably Dem-friendly.
So, yeah, let's give the occasional Republican president the opportunity to clean house should he or she have the will to do so. I'm grateful that we have one now who is brimming with that will.
Click the button below to get the Morning Briefing emailed to you every weekday. Have your coffee with me, people. It's free and it supports conservative media!
