Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron,
go to vpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. So have you heard of the case Trump
versus Slaughter? It is not just about whether a president
can fire a bureaucrat, It's about who actually runs the country. Okay,
that's the summation over at the Independent Journal Review IJR
dot com. Rebecca Slaughter was a Biden era Federal Trade
commission her. She was shown the door by President Trump
in March, and she did not take it well. Rather
than accepting that her policies and priorities might not align
with the administration that's elected by the people, no, no, no,
she sued, this is classic Democrat playbook, you know, sue
till blue approach. Right that which we cannot get done
legislatively or electorally, we will get done through the courts. Right,
we will make law through the courts, because that's the
only place we have any real power. At the moment,
she sued the President for firing her. Her team is
claiming that she could not be let go unless there
was cause. Apparently, simply disagreeing with the president's entire agenda
does not count as cause. So, and by the way,
we know what happens when you have an entire bureaucracy,
or as the Soviets called it, the new state, or
as a lot of folks in Maga call it, the
deep state. We have seen what happens when you have
people inside of the executive branch that oppose Orange Man.
They work from the inside to throw sand in the gears.
They thwart him and his agenda, which is not what
they're supposed to be doing. The idea is that the
American people elect a president. That president under Article II
the Constitution. That president then carries out the laws that
the Article one branch the Congress that they pass. Right,
and so you a hireling of the executive branch, your
opinions do not really matter. If you disagree with the
agenda that the boss is telling you to enact, that
doesn't matter. You can express your opinion. You can say
I disagree, this isn't the best idea. We shouldn't do this,
Here's a better way. Whatever you do, that all you want,
but you do have to implement the agenda. That's the job.
But what the bureaucrats do is they slow everything down,
They lose paperwork. They talked about this. I'm not making
this up. This is from their own mouths anonymously. Of course,
during the first term of Donald Trump, they talked about
this in a very lengthy piece I think it was
at the New York Times, talked about how they were working,
you know, behind enemy lines in order to thwart Trump's
radical agenda. So she sues the president for firing her.
Slaughter's legal team is leaning hard on precedent, specifically a
dusty old nineteen thirty five case that says presidents can't
just remove officials from quote unquote independent agencies. They say
the FTC is one such agency, and if you want
to remove somebody, you got to go through all of
these legal hoops. But as Trump's Solicitor General John Sower
pointed out in the oral arguments, that precedent is a
quote decaying husk a relic of a bygone era when
Washington was not overrun by career bureaucrats convinced they know
better than the people who actually cast the ballots. Right,
and think about how big the US federal government has
become since nineteen thirty five, ninety years ago, eighty five
years ago. Right, This is why DOGE was so important.
It's something that GOVC does never do that the private
sector does regularly. Elon must proved this model, this approach
right when he bought Twitter, but also in other enterprises
where you fire a bunch of people and look as
one who has been fired in this very same kind
of cost cutting efforts and streamlining and optimization and all
of that budgetary constraints. I know firsthand it stinks. It stinks. However,
from an organizational standpoint, right number one, the job isn't yours.
This job that I'm doing right now, this is not mine.
This is the company's job. Every job has a shelf life.
And there are people who do not understand this that
work in government because government jobs never seem to go away.
And what happens is like you just think about it
from an operational standpoint, you know you're doing doing things,
and technology improvements come along, you get better at your
job and you're able to do the work in a
more efficient manner. So then what happens when you've gotten
all caught up on your workload, your paperwork is all
caught up. Then what do you do? You start looking
for other things that you could do. Oh, you know what,
while I was working on this project, I saw some
other thing that we could also do, And so you
start branching out. You start, you know, mission creeping, and
that's why. And then you end up adding more people
because hey, I started doing this thing, we need more
bodies to keep doing it better. So then you bring
in more people and you end up with this bloated bureaucracy.
Same thing in education. All the administrator positions, right, so
it keeps growing, and it keeps growing. And in the
private sector, due to budget constraints, they will come through
and fire a bunch of people. They'll sort of clear
out the underbrush in order to keep the forest healthy.
That doesn't happen. Government never happened, especially at the federal level.
That's why DOGE was so important. That's why I was
so excited about what Musk was trying to do. Which
has now it seems, has like crashed and burned. The
only remnant of success there is the exposure of the
nngos and USAID funding, the funding, you know, being funneled
through all these leftist organizations giving them the the lifeblood
that they needed. The Solicitor General John sower Uh points out,
this is a relic, This idea is a relic. You
have a much bigger bureaucracy now, he's and I Jr.
Says let's talk about what went down during oral arguments now,
because it got a little wild. Justice Katanji Brown Jackson
or KBG, in what can only be described as a
full throated defense of government by credential, argued that presidents
should not have the power to fire the so called
experts running the bureaucracy. I've got the audio clip.
Speaker 2: Some issues, some matter, some areas should be handled in
this way by nonpartisan experts. That Congress is saying that
expertise matters with respect to aspects of the economy and
transportation and the various independent agencies that we have. So
having a president come in and fire all the scientists
and the doctors and the economists and the PhDs and
replacing them with loyalists and people who don't know anything,
is actually not in the best interest of the citizens
of the United States. These issues should not be in
presidential control. So can you speak to me about the
danger of allowing in the these various areas the president
to actually control the Transportation Board and potentially the Federal
Reserve and all these other independent agencies in these particular areas,
we would like to have independence. We don't want the
president controlling I guess what I don't understand from your
overarching argument is why that determination of Congress, which makes
perfect sense given its duty to protect the people of
the United States, why that is subjugated to a concern
about the president not being able to control everything. I mean,
I appreciate there's a conflict between the two, but one
would think under our constitutional design, given the history of
the monarchy and the concerns that the Framers had about
a president controlling everything, that in the clash between those
two congresses view that we should be able to have
independence with respect to certain issues should take precedence.
Speaker 1: So what is she arguing for there the deep state,
some fourth branch of government that Congress sets up, some
quote unquote independent agency and that they then get to
do whatever they want. That's not what the framers had
in mind at all. In fact, if Congress wants to
set up some you know, advisory board made up of experts,
they can do so, and that could inform them and
they can pass legislation based on the advice and council
of the experts. But if you're going to create agencies
that fall under the executive branch, then the executive should
have the ability to run those agencies, because that's what
you're hiring the executive to do. No otherwise, how do
you ever get rid of somebody? It doesn't make sense.
She essentially wants to hand the keys to unelected lifers
who answer to nobody. You know, stories are powerful. They
help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories
connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations.
They help us process the meaning of life, and our
stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories
with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill,
North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this
valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality
produced slide shows, videos, and albums. The trusted talented and
dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of
the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed.
Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be
ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your
loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays,
or just your family stories, all told through images. That's
what your photos and videos are. They are your life
hold through the eyes of everyone around you and all
who came before you, and they will tell others to
come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. A
couple of text messages here on topic on topic Pabo
on topic The Hellian says this is so embarrassing. Was
reacting to the uh the comments there from KBJ Katanji
Brown Jackson Supreme Court justice so embarrassing. Is she a
judge or a lawyer here? Well, she's a lawyer with
a wardrobe change. See that's why I call them that.
Eric says Elon with Doge was getting too close to
the politician's corruption, so he had to go. Unfortunately Trump
didn't back him. In the swamp one out Ian says
KBJ sounds a lot like AOC whose voice moves even
the most serene souls to render their own flesh. Ooh
bad sounds bad. Um okay, So let me go back
to this piece at IJR dot com Independent Journal Review
or Journalism Review. I should say what Justice Jackson is
suggesting in her argument is not some obscure legal argument.
It's a direct challenge to Article two of the US Constitution,
the part that says the executive power belongs to the president.
So that's a slight little detail there. Under her vision,
that power gets sliced up, watered down, and then hand
it over to a bureaucratic priesthood with Ivy League degrees
and zero accountability. And this is not just about the FTC.
If the Court sides with Trump, as it seems like
the six Conservatives on the Court seem inclined to do,
it could finally start pulling some of the tangled wires
of the administrative state out of the Constitution's throat. This
case could reassert what has been obvious to every Civics
student until recently, which is that presidents run the executive branch,
not boards, not commissions, not consultants, not panels. Presidents do.
David Harsani from The Washington Examiner points out that there
is no such thing as an independent agency. Not in
our constitutional framework. There is no fourth branch of the government.
He says, it's hard to believe this is even controversial.
Costas Moros, he is the director of Legal research and
Education at the Second Amendment Foundation. He says, Congress can
decide if an agency gets funded, and Congress can decide
what it's submission and authority is. They can do that,
but it cannot delegate away the president's power. Right. Congress
can't take that power from the president because it's enshrined
in the Constitution. If you want to change that, you
got to run an amendment to the US Constitution. You
want to create independent agencies that are not administered by
the executive branch, run an amendment. It cannot delegate away
the president's powers as the Constitution is clear that the
full power of the executive branch is vested in the
president alone. He gets to run the agencies and that
includes hiring people and yes, firing them, and if Congress
doesn't like it, they can stop funding the agencies. He says.
You can't have it both ways. You want a big,
expansive federal government unlike what was ever intended. Well, the
price is that sometimes somebody you don't like is going
to get elected president and they're gonna take it out
for a joy ride. That's the deal, Democrats, that's the deal.
You should have listened to people like me who were
saying government is too big and you're not gonna like
it when somebody you don't like is in charge of it.
Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to
a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina.
Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of
Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon,
maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get
family and friends together for a big old reunion, Cabins
of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you
can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that
truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres
of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene
escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally
located between Ashville and the entrance of the Great Smoky
Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and
proximity to all the local attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces,
air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi grills, outdoor tables, and
your own private covered porch. Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages,
two villas, and a great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms.
Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for
any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or
text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight
or check out all there is to offer at Cabins
Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime.
Amy Howe, writing at SCOTUSblog dot com Scotus obviously standing
for Supreme Court of the United States, talking about this
case Trump versus Slaughter, the Supreme Court signaled that it
was likely to strike down a federal law that restricts
the president's ability to fire members of the Federal Trade Commission.
During two and a half hours of argument in the case,
a solid majority of the justices appeared to agree with
the Trump administration. A law prohibiting the president from firing
FTC commissioners except in cases of quote, inefficiency, neglect of duty,
or malfeasance in office. That this violates the constitutional separation
of powers between the three branches of government. Okay, So
the law that was passed to set up the FTC
said that the president can fire somebody, but only for inefficiency,
neglective duty, or malfeasance. But what if the person is
working to thwart the boss's agenda? No, can't fire them
for that. I guess a decision in favor of the
Trump administration would significantly increase the president's power over not
only the FTC but roughly two dozen other multi member
agencies that Congress intended to be independent. President Trump has
also fired members of the National Labor Relations Board, the
Merit Systems Protection Board, which I've never even heard of,
the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The Supreme Court has already
allowed those firings to take effect in proceedings on its
interim docket, but the Court's ruling in the case of
the FTC Commission or Rebecca Slaughter will provide a more
definitive ruling on the legality of those firings. Now some
background on who Slaughter is. Trump actually nominated her to
fill one of the seats on the FTC, which was
slated to be a Democrat seat. Then President Joe Biden
in twenty twenty three tapped her to serve a second term,
which is slated to end in twenty twenty nine. But
in March, after winning reelection, Trump sent Slaughter an email
firing her. He did not cite any reason for her removal,
other than that allowing her to remain on the FTC
would be inconsistent with the administration's priorities. So there is
a nineteen thirty five ruling in the US Supreme Court.
It's called Humphrey's Executor versus us, or they referred to
it as Humphrey's Executor. In that case, the Supreme Court
upheld the FTC's removal statute against a challenge that was
brought by the Roosevelt administration. Only the Supreme Court could
overturn that case. That's what the Supreme Court said at
the time. They said, only we can overturn this ruling.
And so here we are. It took eighty five years,
but here we are, or ninety years. Representing the Trump administration,
the US Solicitor John D. Or Sorry D John Sower
told the court that Humphrey's executor was an indefensible outlier
and a decaying husk that must be overruled. The Supreme
Court's cases in recent years, he said, have repute the
very foundation of that original ruling. The lawyer representing Rebecca Slaughter,
A Meet Argowall, stated that the president's constitutional duty to
execute the law does not give the president the power
to violate that law with impunity. If the Trump administration
is correct that the removal statute at the center of
this case violates the separation of powers, then, Argurwall argued,
all three branches of government have been wrong from the
start of our country's history. A lot of the argument
focused on potential broader effects. The justices questioned whether a
decision in Slaughter's favor would give Congress sweeping power, including
the authority to convert existing cabinet departments into multi member
agencies that would be insulated from presidential control. Can you
imagine the chaos that would create Congress basically turned say
the Department of Defense into an independent agency, and then
they pack it with a bunch of their people. Then
what could you end up with like twenty fifth Amendment
stuff going on? Here where they work against the sitting president.
Argwall agreed with Chief Justice John Roberts when he was
asked whether Congress could just take over some cabinet departments.
He said, such a result is probably within the realm
of possibility. That seems like a problem, right. Justice Kavanaugh
was worried about such a scenario, telling Argowall that it
would allow Congress to create independent agencies without any requirement
of partisan balance and with lengthy terms for the agency heads. Right.
Why not create a Department of Green Energy and pack
it with only Democrats and give them thirty year terms? Right?
This would give Congress the ability to create agencies that
would thwart future presidents. On the other side, some justices
expressed concern that a ruling in favor of the Trump
administration would affect other multi member agencies like the NLRB
as I mentioned, but also the US Tax Court and
the United States Court of Claims, also the Federal Reserve,
and Argo Wall said, if Trump wins, everything's on the
shopping block. Justice Sonya Sutomigor echoed this sentiment, telling saur
that he was putting those institutions at risk. Justice sam Alito,
though was more sympathetic. He argued that sour Or. He
asked sour whether the Court could issue a narrow ruling
that did not address the concertstitutionality of removal provisions for
things like the tax court, and Sower said that it could.
The Supreme Court has discovered the Supreme Court has discouraged
general pronouncements on issues that were not before the justices right,
so they could they could own like they could look
at just only this FTC issue. Kavanaugh suggested the Court
could craft a decision that would not call into question
the removal laws, the clauses for the Federal Reserve Bank.
That's possible. Atlanta Kagan portrayed Congress's creation of independent agencies
like the FTC as the result of a bargain over
the last century. Congress, she said, gave the independent agency
substantial authority beyond executive power, and it bestowed that power
precisely because the president does not control the agencies. But
if part of that bargain is eliminated by giving the
president control over those agencies, it would give the president massive, uncontrolled,
unchecked power. Yet where Kagan saw a problem, Justice Neil
Gorsich saw an opportunity. All right, If you're listening to
this show. You know I try to keep up with
all sorts of current events, and I know you do too.
And you've probably heard me say get your news from
multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias,
which is why I've been so impressed with ground News.
It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines
news from around the world in one place, so you
can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it
out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I
put the link in the podcast description too. I started
using ground News a few months ago and more recently
chose to work with them as an affiliate because it
lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.
The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored
by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check
dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link
and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use
the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.
Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. Let me get to the text line. Some
messages here from RJ quoting Federalist paper number forty nine.
No major question of governance should be permanently removed from
the reach of the citizens and their elected representatives. He says,
whether every individual outcome is good or bad, the directional
thrust of this court is unmistakable. Major policy fights are
being kicked back to the arena where citizens actually have
a vote, whether through their state legislatures, Congress, or the
president that they just elected. And I am grateful for it,
seven oh four Numbers says regarding Kaitanji Brown Jackson, no
kings or pro kings. Her view of independent experts sounds
a lot like the monarchy in England and Dana the
dem I assume I thought you said our government was
set up on checks and balances. Well you thought correctly.
I have said that. In fact, you should have learned
that in school. In I'm just kidding, we don't teach
civics anymore, but you probably should have learned that in school.
But it is true checks and balances. She goes on
to say, but it seems as if you too want
the president to have indefinite power and do almost anything
he wants. No, I, in fact, have long argued for
reigning in the imperial presidency, reigning in the executive branch. See,
but I am able to look at an issue outside
of a prism of Donald Trump. I'm able to look
at the case as presented and listen to the arguments
with an understanding of the checks and balances system, as
is Justice Neil Gorsich, he says well Amy Howe, writing
its Scotus blog, she says Gorsich has long sought to
revive what's called the non delegation doctrine. This is the
idea that Congress cannot delegate its own lawmaking powers to
other institutions. See because Dana, when Congress does stupid stuff
like that, right then there are no more checks and
balances any longer. You're creating a fourth branch of government,
a quote unquote independent agency, not elected by anybody, not
under the control of any of the branches of government,
setting up rules aka laws. That's how we ended up
with the abomination that's Obamacare, because when they wrote the law,
they just offloaded all of the responsibility for writing the
actual details of the law to the Health and Human
Services Secretary. Oh is it like ten thousand times? The
phrase the Secretary shall make up the rules. That's not
the way this is supposed to work. Gorset emphasized, the
Supreme Court has allowed agencies to exercise a great deal
of power, and in particular significant legislative power, for a
very long time. That doesn't make it right, but that
doesn't make it right or constitutional. This idea that the
Supreme Court has never made rulings before that were actually unconstitutional.
It's bizarre to me. The Supreme Court has gotten stuff
wrong all sorts of times. Gorst said, maybe it's time
for the Court to do something about it. This accumulations
of power in independent agencies. Kavanaugh echoed that, indicating that
broad delegations to unaccountable independent agencies pose serious questions about
civil liberties and regulatory burdens. Amy Cony Barrett She noted
that Congress once had a legislative veto until the Supreme
Court ruled that was unconstitutional. And here's the thing. When
Congress had that veto, it allowed it to overturn decisions
that were made by these administrative agencies. Congress may have
been willing at one time to give these agencies like
the FTC sweeping powers because Congress thought that it could
override the agency decisions. But now independent agencies aren't accountable
to either Congress or the president. That's not a check
or balance, Dana, it's neither. Without that check on their powers,
the agencies had become something Congress did not intend. Right, So,
there seemed to be a clear majority on the Court
that is ready to rule that Trump does in fact
have the power to fire executive branch employees. But it's
less certain whether these judges are going to take an
additional step of completely overruling the original nineteen thirty five
case called Humphreys Executor. Gorsuch, though, said that the opinion
was poorly reasoned, one of the factors that justices consider
in determining whether to overrule a past precedent. So they could,
but Amy, howse says it didn't seem like there was
enough support, at least articulated during oral arguments. All right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
support and the support of the businesses that advertise on
the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too
and tell them you heard it here. You can also
become a patron at my Patreon page or go to
dpetekallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening,
and don't break anything while I'm gone.