Reason's Christian Britschgi offered a perspective that will antagonize members of the Presidential Cult, irrespective of which Cult Figure is issuing the day one executive orders and attempting to get legislation passed in the first hundred days. "The Supreme Court's recent rulings limiting the powers of the administrative state are a blessing for liberals who might not control the White House for much longer."
His elaboration makes clear that when bureaucrats have less ability to boss citizens around, that will be the case irrespective of which party's figurehead is appointing the senior cabinet officials.
The always hysterical Mark Joseph Stern, Slate's legal writer, declared the decision a "major blow to the 'administrative state'" and one that "constitutes a major transfer of power from the executive branch to the judiciary.""Less ability to unilaterally set policy." Should Donald Trump become president, even if he is able to appoint competent managers to the various departments, with the end of Chevron deference, citizens will have more ability to challenge the latest impedimenta cluttering the Federal Register. His Reason colleague Steven Greenhut continues the argument.
Stern leveled a similar assessment of the Supreme Court's decision in SEC v. Jarkesy, in which the court ruled that people being prosecuted by administrative agencies for civil violations were entitled to a jury trial.
He's hardly alone in despairing. The liberal legal commentariat is positively apoplectic at the new limits that the federal bureaucracy will now have to put up with.
Individually, these separate freakouts might make sense; Democrats don't want a Democrat to lose a presidential election. Liberal big-government supporters don't want additional restrictions on the power of federal regulators to set sweeping national policy.
Taken together, there's a frustrating incoherence to these twin panics. Liberals are incensed that an executive branch soon to be controlled by Donald Trump will have less ability to unilaterally set policy.
Given the fears of what a second Donald Trump administration will mean for liberal political priorities, one would think that the Supreme Court's rulings limiting executive power should be viewed as a good thing amongst America's liberals.
Surely, they should think it a good thing that Trump's executive agencies will face more scrutiny from the courts when enacting regulations not obviously authorized in statutes passed by Congress. Likewise, Trump haters should seemingly think it a good thing that people charged by independent agencies whose personnel Trump will appoint get the benefit of jury trials.
Liberals are freaking out. U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D–Calif.), calls Project 2025 an "unprecedented embrace of extremism, fascism, and religious nationalism, orchestrated by the radical right and its dark money backers." In reality, its 900-plus pages offer a mix of traditional policy platforms with MAGA-oriented ideas. It often conforms to the new conservative approach of wielding government on behalf of conservative causes, as opposed to Reagan's laudable goal of limiting government power.It is, and I am willing to entertain arguments that Donald Trump is again the Republican nominee because he, alone, among the aspirants to ride the elephant in the 2024 presidential parade, was willing to match Dementia Joe, executive order for executive order. Whether Donald Trump will follow through on bending or breaking Official Washington or not, the end of Chevron deference means faith communities, other civic organizations, states, and local governments have standing to challenge annoying ukases that until earlier this year they lacked.
For instance, the document explains, "The great challenge confronting a conservative president is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power—including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people. Success in meeting that challenge will require… boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington and back to America's families, faith communities, local governments, and states."
Of course, the federal bureaucracy is unwieldy and often promotes bureaucratically approved inanities at odds with the views of the average American. But implementing what critics call "unitary executive theory"—i.e., putting all aspects of the federal government under the control of the president—is a prescription for authoritarianism and abuse.
That prospect seems to frighten Inside Higher Ed's Katherine Knott.
Project 2025 calls for a lightly regulated higher education system run with limited involvement from the federal government. Ultimately, it declares that the federal government’s only role in education policy should be “that of a statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states.”To Militant Normals, the department of education has long been a paradigm of malaise institutionalized, and there has to be a study in applied public administration quantifying the gains and losses from sending taxpayer money to Washington and then back to the local schools, less a substantial handling charge. And yes, I understand the logic of offering all the country's youngsters a fair go: something that all those national standards and Good Intentions still falls short of. That's something Heritage education maven Lindsey Burke grasps.
The most significant piece of the plan for higher ed is its call to break up the Education Department and disperse the management of federal education programs—those that would still exist, that is—across multiple agencies. For example, the Office for Civil Rights would move to the Department of Justice, while the Bureau of Indian Affairs would oversee tribal colleges and universities. The Treasury Department would handle the federal student loan portfolio.
The rationale for such a shake-up is clear, Burke writes. “Bolstered by an ever-growing cabal of special interests that thrive off federal largesse, the infrastructure that supports America’s costly federal intervention in education from early childhood through graduate school has entrenched itself. But, unlike the public sector bureaucracies, public employee unions, and the higher education lobby, families and students do not need a Department of Education to learn, grow, and improve their lives.”I see all manner of legal complications therein; again, the end of Chevron deference gives the public more latitude in offering public comment, as well as the standing to bring suit. Moreover, won't it take an Act of Congress to shut down those government departments? That's how constitutional government works. (Not that there is anything wrong with a Congress shutting down a few departments!)
If Congress fails to abolish the Education Department, Project 2025 calls for lawmakers to eliminate the process known as negotiated rule making, which the agency currently must use to issue new regulations like those for Title IX. The department would follow the same rule-making process as other federal agencies: posting regulations for public comment, reviewing those comments and then finalizing the rule.
“In recent decades, negotiated rulemaking has become a veritable three-ring circus, replete with negotiators who use their Twitter accounts and other social media feeds during negotiations to denigrate the process and their peer negotiators in real time,” Burke writes.
The fearmongering, though, never ends.
Many of the policy proposals in Project 2025 are likely unpopular with Black Americans and other marginalized groups. The project calls for eliminating programs and federal rules related to racial and gender equity and discrimination, eliminating tens of thousands of federal jobs, and undertaking mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.It's no surprise that the Center for American Progress would organize a panel raising objections: that's a major talking shop for the administrative state. But should those changes come to pass, again the end of Chevron deference gives citizens more latitude to challenge ukases from unelected bureaucrats.
The agenda, crafted by former Trump administration officials, also calls for centralizing the presidency’s power over historically nonpolitical and independent agencies like the Department of Justice.
“If we’re not outraged, then we’re not awake,” said Maya Wiley, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. She spoke during a Tuesday panel hosted by the Center for American Progress about the myriad ways Project 2025 will “dismantle American democracy.”
Panelists decried numerous policy proposals in the Heritage Foundation plan, including further restricting abortion care, eliminating worker protection rights and undoing decades-long programs to advance civil rights.
Wiley especially bemoaned Project 2025’s threat to the civil rights of Black Americans, noting the recent 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that “gave federal agencies the power to create the regulations that say you can’t actually discriminate against Black people.”
In Newsweek, Jeffrey Anderson, who helped write the proposal, argues that protecting citizens from such ukases is the idea.
Project 2025's proposals would reinforce our system of government, not depart from it. They would strengthen our checks and balances, not weaken them. "Fundamentally transforming the United States of America," as Barack Obama put it, is the stated mission of the Left, not the Right. Far from encouraging the exercise of unchecked power, Project 2025 is an ode to the Constitution.Perhaps the end of Chevron deference puts more checks on that autonomous bureaucracy, and, should Donald Trump become president with Republican majorities in Congress, wouldn't it be fun to see Center for American Progress types using their standing to ... challenge ukases issued by bureaucrats appointed by Donald Trump? Mr Anderson has their number.
Project 2025 published a thoughtful book-length policy blueprint called Mandate for Leadership 2025, which a conservative (or any) president would be free to draw from or ignore. Having authored the introductions to all five sections of that book, I'm likely one of only a few people actually familiar with the entire work—and it is nothing like what Biden suggests. As I wrote in the introduction to Section 1, "Above all, the President and those who serve under him or her must be committed to the Constitution and the rule of law."
Indeed, perhaps the most radical thing about Mandate for Leadership is its unwavering commitment to the Constitution as written. Far from trying to "gut" that glorious document, Project 2025 seeks to restore its fraying fibers. It aims to strengthen the separation of powers, as well as federalism—the division of power between the federal government and the states. James Madison, in Federalist 51, said these dual protections provide a "double security...to the rights of the people."
Project 2025, which is spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, features a board of advisers that includes Hillsdale College, the National Association of Scholars, and my own group, the American Main Street Initiative—along with more than 100 other conservative organizations. A major thrust of the effort is that the unelected, unaccountable administrative state is out of control. As Heritage president Kevin Roberts writes, Mandate for Leadership lays out "how to restore the American people's constitutional authority over the Administrative State."
Donald Devine, Dennis Kirk, and Paul Dans elaborate on this theme: "The people elect a President who is charged by Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution with seeing that the laws are 'faithfully executed' with his political appointees democratically linked to that legitimizing responsibility." By contrast, "An autonomous bureaucracy has neither independent constitutional status nor separate moral legitimacy. Therefore, career civil servants by themselves should not lead major policy changes and reforms." One imagines most Americans would agree.
Moreover, rule by executive agencies undermines checks and balances. Russ Vought writes that "the modern executive branch"—"whether controlled by the bureaucracy or by the President"—"writes federal policy, enforces that policy, and often adjudicates whether that policy was properly drafted and enforced." He calls the result "constitutionally dire" and "in urgent need of repair." This is hardly a call for unchecked executive power—quite the opposite.
Each of these five points involves curbing or checking, rather than expanding, executive power. The fact that Biden and his leftist allies are nevertheless characterizing Project 2025 as paving the way for a presidential power-grab would seem to be a classic case of projection.Moreover, Reason's Stephanie Slade has Donald Trump's number.
The truth is that progressives like "our democracy" a lot more than they like our Constitution. Indeed, their disdain for our founding charter causes them to sound the alarm whenever an effort like Project 2025 shows a genuine commitment to restoring it.
Trump was supposed to be a repudiation of "Conservatism, Inc."—not just in tenor but in substance. Out were the commitments to limited government and free trade, the insistence on fiscal belt tightening and entitlement reform, and the largely sunny orientation toward immigrants associated with previous Republican leaders such as former House Speaker Paul Ryan. In were hardball politics that pulled no punches, minced no words, and had no qualms about a "muscular" state that interferes at will in people's lives.His voters want him to get a mulligan. Ms Slade suggests voters not expect much.
But Trump had trouble getting the rest of the governing apparatus to line up behind him. Unfavorable court rulings bookended his presidency, overturning his Muslim travel ban in 2017 and rejecting his election fraud claims in 2021, with other losses along the way. After he left office, the conservative America First Policy Institute released a report complaining that "career bureaucrats resist[ed] Trump Administration policies" by withholding information, slow-walking priorities, and otherwise refusing to carry out work that didn't align with their ideological preferences.
Worse, Trump's own advisers and appointees often seemed to be working at cross-purposes.
[T]he solution to Trump's first problem—ensuring his new staff is fully ideologically aligned with him—pulls against the solution to his second. He can have people who are true believers or he can have people who are competent; he probably can't have both, because there are simply too few of them. Stacking the government with folks from outside the establishment, without relevant experience, leaves you with a work force that is unlikely to be effective at implementing an agenda.Perhaps if people of all sorts of political persuasions, including the Center for American Progress, use their enhanced powers to challenge ukases, the bureaucracy gets less done. Mr Britschgi, take us home.
"The best way to describe these lists is it looks like they're looking for incompetence as the chief qualification," says Cato Institute Senior Fellow Thomas Firey.
Libertarians have an easy time accepting limits on executive power. We're never in charge of the federal government, and we don't want it to do much anyway. The rest of the ideological spectrum should embrace the wisdom of this attitude as well, even if they desire a much more active federal government.Good.
Policy wins resulting from unilateral executive action can be just as easily undone by executive action. The more power the president has, the more concerning it becomes when the president is someone you consider to be dangerous, or even unhinged.
All the more reason to limit the powers of the president, even if that means working through Congress and the states to get one's favored policies enacted.
The cases coming out of the Supreme Court will put hard limits on liberals' ability to implement their policy vision through executive agencies. They will also put hard limits on Donald Trump doing the same.
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