The U.S. Supreme Court just fundamentally altered the balance of power between the president and Congress, according to a legal expert — and they didn't even bother to explain why.
The conservative majority allowed the Trump administration to move forward with abolishing the Department of Education by firing some 1,400 employees, and it didn't provide a reason why it allowed President Donald Trump to unilaterally dismantle a federal agency created and funded by Congress in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution, wrote Slate's Mark Joseph Stern.
"SCOTUS has now, in effect, allowed the president to destroy an entire agency by himself, an action that would’ve been unthinkable for most of history," Stern wrote. "The conservative justices are accelerating this administration’s lawless seizure of duties and prerogatives that the Constitution expressly assigned to Congress. They are doing so after sharply limiting President Joe Biden’s power to carry out responsibilities that are assigned to the president."
"This split-screen reveals an unseemly double standard," he added. "A Republican president gets to do pretty much whatever he wants, while a Democratic president must be constantly boxed in by the courts."
Trump has enjoyed "an extraordinary winning spree" with the court he helped shape with three nominees, who've granted his administration relief in all 15 emergency applications filed sine April, and Stern excoriated the Supreme Court for giving Education Secretary Linda McMahon the unlawful authority to dismantle the agency she leads.
"The Constitution does not allow for any of this," Stern wrote. "To the contrary, it empowers Congress to create and structure federal agencies like the Education Department, and hands Congress control over staffing and budget decisions. The Constitution then instructs the president to 'faithfully execute' the laws enacted by Congress. Of course, Congress has not defunded or eliminated the Education Department. It has laid out procedures through which the president can seek congressional approval to withhold funds, transfer offices, or undertake a large reduction in force."
"But Trump has followed none of these rules," Stern added. "He has, instead, purported to assert his own executive authority to tear down an agency without the assent of Congress, eviscerating its ability to operate as intended by purging its workforce."
The conservative justices have made clear that Republican presidents don't have to follow laws they don't like, while also holding that Democratic presidents cannot carry out duties plainly assigned to them, Stern said, and he said the emerging pattern "could not be more disturbing."
"Is it accurate to call the United States a nation of laws when our highest court will simply suspend laws disfavored by a Republican president?" Stern wrote. "There are words to describe countries in which a strongman leader works with a captured judiciary to hobble the legislature, consolidate power, and declare himself free from legal restraints on his reign. Democracy is not one of them."
