The reactionary majority's final assault on the administrative state.

December 9, 2025

On Monday, the Supreme Court’s reactionary majority signaled that it would overturn a long-settled precedent that underpins independent federal agencies, which, in turn, serve as the cornerstone of the modern administrative state.

While many conservatives choke on the very notion of “the administrative state,” independent agencies helped propel the US post-war economy to the world’s largest by maintaining orderly, safe, and (relatively) corruption-free markets and industries.

The key to the success of many federal agencies has been their independence from political pressure. See, e.g., The Constitutional Accountability Center, The Virtues and Necessity of Independent Agencies. (“Congress carefully structured these agencies to ensure that they would have the expertise, stability, and insulation from day-to-day politics necessary to perform their important functions on behalf of everyday Americans.”)

Examples of independent agencies and commissions include the Social Security Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US Postal Service, the Small Business Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Federal Reserve.

Over the span of 90 years, 37 justices of the Supreme Court respected the rule established in Humphrey’s Executor v. US, a case that recognized the right of Congress to establish independent federal agencies whose members cannot be removed by the president except for cause.

But the six justices of the Roberts’ reactionary majority believe that their views on presidential power are correct and that the views of 37 justices over 90 years are wrong. The only explanation is that the Roberts majority is applying a partisan political lens to overturn long-settled precedent to benefit Donald Trump.

Substituting partisan aims for honest judging is corruption, plain and simple.

Every observer of the argument in the case Trump v. Slaughter agrees that the Roberts’ majority will uphold the president’s authority to fire commissioners of independent agencies. See NPR, Supreme Court appears poised to vastly expand presidential powers.

Per NPR,

Supreme Court justices seemed open Monday to overruling a 90-year precedent that has prevented presidents from removing members of independent agencies at will in a case that could reshape the balance of power within the federal government. [¶]

The court’s conservatives pressed Slaughter’s attorney, Amit Agrawal, on Humphrey’s Executor, the 1935 precedent, and its relevance today. Chief Justice John Roberts said the precedent had “nothing to do with what the FTC looks like today.” He said the FTC of that era “had very little, if any executive power,” suggesting the agency had far greater power today.

If it sounds like Roberts is willing to engage in historical revisionism to overturn Humphrey’s Executor, you are right. Any argument that begins with, “Oh, that case was then, we are talking about now” has nothing to do with legal analysis and everything to do with result-oriented rationalization.

If the Court overrules 90-year-old precedent to allow Trump to fire the FTC commissioner, Trump will be free to reshape over 100 independent agencies that exercise congressionally authorized power to make rules necessary to regulate the economy free of political interference.

Let’s pause here to acknowledge that the reactionary majority is acting in a corrupt manner and must be overwhelmed by enlarging the Court as the first order of business when Democrats re-take Congress and the presidency. The minimum number of new justices necessary to do so is 4, so that the reactionary majority will be outnumbered 7 to 6. But we should not act in the least invasive manner possible.

A single-vote majority could be eradicated by an unexpected illness, death, or early retirement. I suggest that Democrats expand the Court to 27 justices, the same size as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which acts in a businesslike, orderly manner.

Such an expansion is also justified by the 8,400% increase in the US population and the 160,000% increase in real GDP between 1789 and 2025, a period that saw the Supreme Court grow by only 50%. The Court's growth has failed to keep pace with the nation's by any measure.¹

Is there any silver lining to the Court’s destruction of the independence of the administrative state?

Yes and no.

No, because the changes are permanent unless we expand the Court and overturn the expected ruling in Trump v. Slaughter.

Yes, because the next Democratic president can fire every Trump appointee and replace them with qualified experts to run the commissions and agencies. But Republicans can and will do the same thing if they ever elect another president. That type of whipsaw change in agencies responsible for maintaining order and predictability in markets and industries discourages growth and investment.

As with everything Trump is destroying in his second term, we should not assume that the changes will be permanent. We will rebuild scientific expertise at the CDC once it is freed from Robert Kennedy’s quackery. We will restore climate science, we will repair our relationships with NATO, we will rebuild educational infrastructure, and we will undo the damage inflicted on hundreds of agencies and programs that exist to promote the health, safety, and financial security of the American people.

Trump falsely claims he will bail out US farmers with $12 billion from tariffs.

Trump is desperate to improve the damage to his favorability ratings caused, in part, by the impact of tariffs on consumers, retailers, and farmers. On Monday, he met with farmers at the White House and falsely claimed that he was releasing $12 billion in tariffs to be paid to farmers.

Every part of Trump’s claim is false, a fact that was expertly covered by the NYTimes in its article, Trump Promises Farmers $12 Billion to Blunt Fallout From His Trade War | The federal aid comes after China boycotted American farm products in retaliation for U.S. tariffs. The article was written by Alan Rappeport, Kevin Draper, and Ana Swanson.

As the Times accurately reports,

• Mr. Trump’s aggressive use of import levies is the primary reason that American farmers need economic support.

• Most of the relief funds will come from the Agriculture Department’s Farmer Bridge Assistance program.

• The payments are not being funded directly by tariff income.

Good reporting by the Times! Trump’s tariffs caused the problem, it is being “blunted” with money from an existing Agriculture Department fund, and the money is not coming from tariffs (which are paid directly into the US Treasury, where Congress appropriates them, not the president).

Larry Ellison promises Trump big chances at CNN as part of effort to advance Paramount bid for Warner

David Ellison, who controls Paramount, is in a bidding war with Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. David Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison of Oracle fame, is a major Trump donor. When the Ellisons apparently lost the bidding war to Netflix for the purchase of Warner, Larry and David Ellison called and visited Trump to make two points:

The Netflix/Warner combination “would hurt competition,” and

If Ellison / Paramount were able to acquire Warner, Ellison would make sweeping changes to CNN.

Trump has said that he will be personally involved in reviewing the Netflix-Warner merger. Wall Street Journal, Behind Paramount’s Relentless Campaign to Woo Warner Discovery and President Trump

As the WSJ article documents, Trump has made himself the final arbiter of business combinations in America. That role was previously performed by the Federal Trade Commission—which is at the heart of the Trump v. Slaughter case discussed in the first article, above.

Trump could stop the Netflix acquisition of Warner, as requested by the Ellisons, who promised to change CNN to garner favor with Trump.

This situation stinks to high heaven and underscores the need for independent federal agencies to regulate the economy and prevent anticompetitive behavior.

Trump claimed two homes as his primary residences months apart

The DOJ is seeking the indictment of Letitia James and is investigating Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff for alleged mortgage fraud for purportedly claiming two residences as their “primary” residence on mortgage applications. It turns out that Trump has done exactly the same thing. See Pro Publica, Trump’s Own Mortgages Match His Description of Mortgage Fraud, Records Reveal.

Per Pro Publica,

In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence.

In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out . . . .

So, Trump has engaged in precisely the same conduct that his DOJ claims constitutes “mortgage fraud” when members of Congress claim that their Washington homes are their “primary” residences for mortgage application purposes.

The effort to investigate and indict Letitia James, Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell is motivated by political retribution and should be dismissed because of vindictive prosecution. Exhibit A is the fact that the president himself has engaged in the same private conduct and has not been prosecuted.

Trump’s National Security Strategy, redux.

Well, I gave it my best shot in yesterday’s newsletter, but reader reaction in the Comment section to my analysis of the NSS was mostly negative. The most “liked” Comment said that much of the NSS has already been implemented. Another reader rejected my statement that “Just because it’s on paper doesn’t mean it will come true” by noting that some people said the same thing about Project 2025.

I won’t repeat my analysis. Instead, I will refer readers to the brilliant analysis by Fred Kaplan in Slate, which makes many of the same points I made yesterday! See Slate,Trump’s new national security strategy paper is alarming the world. What does it really mean? | It is an unserious document—but it can tell us a few things about how Trump sees the world.

Kaplan writes,

Unease is warranted; it’s a nerve-rattling document, clearly designed for that effect. But it’s worth asking whether it has any effect, whether the world—or Trump America’s policy toward it—would be any different if it had never been drafted. [¶]

But the act of putting it all down on paper gives the impression that Trump has, and acts on, a coherent strategy—as opposed to a set of pecuniary interests and a scattershot of impulses. And that is misleading, both in terms of what Trump is actually doing and of what the paper really says. [¶]

In short, the National Security Strategy is an unserious document. It is not an outline of strategy in any meaningful sense—i.e., it does not describe or propose how to align the country’s national security aims with its military programs or budgets. It is not even a product of administration officials. [¶]

Opportunity for Reader Engagement

Please join me on Tuesday, December 9 at 4 pm PT / 7 pm ET for a special Movement Vote Project (MVP) fundraiser. I’ll be speaking about one of my favorite reminders that—“We are not potted plants”—and why strengthening and supporting grassroots organizing is essential both to stopping the harmful actions of this regime now and to winning the 2026 midterms up and down the ballot.

I’ll be joined by Jillian Johnson, MVP’s Southern Regional Field Director, who will highlight some of the groundbreaking work that MVP-supported local groups are leading—work that helped secure key victories in 2025. We’ll discuss MVP’s strategy for winning the midterms and the impact these organizations are having on the ground right now to push back against the rise of authoritarianism.

You can register for the event here.

Concluding Thoughts

The Republican Party is beginning to turn on itself as members try to understand what the post-Trump future holds for a party that abandoned principles and integrity for Trump. It is a bleak future, indeed. The GOP is a husk of a party that once stood for something. Now, it stands for nothing. That is a bad state of affairs for a party tasked with governing America for the next year.

Talking Points Memo commented on this dire state of affairs in its article, It’s Time to Govern, and Republicans in Congress Can’t Remember How. TPM writes,

At the heart of the phenomenon is this: in almost all areas of governance, the Republican Party stands for Trump. Nothing more, nothing less.

[GOP] Members of Congress have accepted this rebranding, or left government entirely. Occasionally, Republicans in Congress muster the ability to buck the president’s demands, but that is a rarity.

At this point, they have little they want to accomplish that is not a Trump priority.

Since the only “Trump priorities” involve making Trump richer, congressional Republicans are frozen and ineffectual. That’s bad for the country.

But it creates an opportunity for Democrats. They can spend the next year pushing legislation that Republicans will vote against, thereby clearly defining the GOP as the “Do Nothing” party at a time when Americans desperately want Congress to do something to make their lives more affordable.

And grassroots activists can spend the year alerting their friends, neighbors, and complete strangers that Republicans stand for nothing except loyalty to Trump—who is a lame duck president becoming lamer by the day.

Talk to you tomorrow!

Pro-democracy protest photos:

Chattanooga Bridge Brigade

We were at it again this morning! Lots of honks of approval (and a couple of middle fingers from people who apparently don’t want healthcare! 😆)

Randolph, MA

Randolph Resistance, a chapter of Indivisible located in Randolph, MA, just south of Boston. We are organizing various protest and support activities. These pictures are from our December 6, 2025 overpass standout. This was the overpass of Route 24 on the Randolph/Stoughton line. We will be doing these standouts monthly.

Location not specified:

Every Sunday several of us protest for a couple of hours in the center of our small town.

Mt, Kisco, NY

Rise and Resist gathered outside St Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday to remind the hundreds of passing shoppers and tourists on Fifth Avenue that Mary and Joseph were refugees. As one sign said, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
Every Thursday Rise and Resist holds a Silent Vigil at the Federal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan to honor and fight for our immigrant neighbors, loved ones and friends. Noon to 1pm. Rise and Resist.

Daily Dose of Perspective

The Crab Nebula is the remnant of a supernova explosion observed by astronomers around the world in 1054 C.E. It is located 6,500 light-years from Earth.

1. If the Supreme Court had grown proportionately with the US population, the Court would have 510 justices. Enlarging it to 27 justices is modest, compared to the explosive growth in the US population and economy.