Brett Kavanaugh shakes hands with President Trump during the Supreme Court justice’s ceremonial swearing in on October 8, 2018. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images A few weeks before the 2016 election, Brett Kavanaugh, then a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, drew a lot of attention with a ruling concluding that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, conceived in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, was unconstitutional.
Now promoted to the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh will get another bite at the agency’s independence; Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Kavanaugh and his fellow justices are expected to rule on before the end of June, may give him the last word. The case is technical but consequential, as what the Supreme Court does with the decision has implications beyond the CFPB.
And so the battle for the soul of the CFPB rages on, and Kavanaugh will have an opportunity, alongside his other conservative colleagues, to tell the nation whether independent agencies, free from political interference, are permissible not just in the age of a mad-king president, but at a time when voices inside the government daring to speak with truth and science are being silenced.
This kind of “aggressive presidentialism,” as Shane likes to call it, is not a new theme for the Trump administration, or Republican administrations more generally. From the onset of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the president has asserted his unequivocal right to fire anyone he pleases, including civil servants that are under the direct supervision of other department heads or agency officials.
For decades, conservatives in academia or in Republican administrations have been singing a different tune — and if they had their druthers, they’d burn it all down. Or at least some of them would.
Clement handily swatted those concerns away. The thrust of his presentation was that Congress has for a very long time set up independent agencies and bodies where the president can’t just do whatever he wants with their appointed leaders. They don’t serve at his pleasure. Under the law, the president of the United States may only remove the head of the CFPB for cause, which is legal-speak for a really good reason — a formulation that’s by no means unique in the federal government.
Article 2. First sentence: 'The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.' Not 'SOME of the executive power.' People like you want to amend the Constitution through extra-legal means. No.
Threat your readers with the intelligence it deserves, NYmag. I brought and paid for this magazine, therefore, I'm going to see the return in its print.
SCOTUSGoneBad SCOTUSRunByTrump SCOTUSPoisonedByBarr
We’re doomed
of course, kavanaugh will do trump’s bidding, but that won’t mean he has the ‘right.’ just the full-scale corruption.
Let him . Vice versa