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> If Congress passes a law that say "tobacco is banned", and the US President says "I will direct my agencies to follow this new law" and you have agencies saying "I'm not a lawyer, but I feel like this law is unconstitutional so my agency is not going to follow it!"?

Now if Congress passes a law that say "tobacco is banned", the president can say "This law means that tobacco isn't banned and has to be sold in schools, and I will direct my agencies to follow this new law". Before, the president had the option to refuse to enforce the laws as written (and risk getting thrown out on his ass) and now the president has the option to rewrite laws according to his whim and enforce that instead. He also has immunity too so he can't even get into trouble for just doing whatever he wants.

Every citizen in a democracy has a duty to understand, respect, and uphold the law and the constitution. Congress defines what the law is, the judiciary adjudicates disputes on how the law should be interpreted, and the president can only execute that law. But all federal employees have their own duty to understand and uphold the law. The president has no special power to interpret the law: the law is what it is, and perhaps what the courts clarify.

An agency head that is disobeying the law can be fired by the president. An agency head who is not disobeying the law can't be fired (assuming there is no other cause, such as poor management, of course). If there is disagreement on whether the agency head was upholding the law or not, that's not up to the president, it's up to the courts to decide.

Having the president be the ultimate authority on the interpretation of every law and regulation, even within the executive branch, is not only unconstitutional, but also unworkable. A single man can't physically review every single aspect of the American government, they have neither the time nor the mental capacity to be the ultimate authority on every single aspect of the federal government.

So not only is it normal that the president defers to agency heads on the interpretation of the applicable law that they are experts in, it is the only way the system can function. The president has plenty of control over the agency by naming the head, they don't need and can't have more control than that.

> So not only is it normal that the president defers to agency heads on the interpretation of the applicable law that they are experts in, it is the only way the system can function.

[Emphasis mine.]

Yes, well said. This is the ultimate bottom line argument!

The Constitution might as well not exist if individual actors with expertise the President does not have, are not expected to put their specialized understanding of previous orders, laws and precedent (and reality!!!) ahead of who they report to.

> The EO isn't saying "ignore Constitutional violations".

What if the President says "I interpret [irrefutably unconstitutional action x] to not be in violation of the constitution"? Then anyone in the executive branch has to behave as though that action were constitutional, no matter what it is, don't they?

> But it's not madness based on the intended structure of government? The EO isn't saying "ignore Constitutional violations". It wouldn't be valid if it did.

If all executive actors must bend for the president’s orders, regardless of previous orders, laws and precedent, then nobody’s views in the executive branch matter, any time the President chooses.

They are now effectively sworn to a particular human, not the Constitution.

The President is now the “Constitution” for the executive branch.

(You might counter with the argument that they are sworn to the President’s Office first, but who actually gets to decide what that means? The human in that role.)

It is madness because a president whose will is unassailable within their own branch is also unassailable across all three branches.

The President has all the levers of practical coercive power.

Neither Congress can put any law into effect, or the Judiciary put any ruling into effect, without the cooperation of the executive branch. Without that, their existence is decorative.

> The executive branch of government is more accurately viewed as a monolithic organization which derives 100% of it's authority by delegation from the US President

That is inaccurate. Almost all federal departments and agencies derive their authority from acts of Congress. The President has very limited authority to create and empower agencies.

The strongest argument against the CFPB is that is was not created by an act of Congress. Trump could not create a DOGE so he renamed the USDS. He cannot shut down USAID, but he can mismanage it.

The president is required by law to execute the laws passed by Congress even if he strongly disagrees. The mass firings and funding holds have the legal fig leaf that he is managing them to the best of his ability.

> Almost all federal departments and agencies derive their authority from acts of Congress.

Partially, as we need to be precise in our language.

Congress can design an agency, determine what powers it has, determine agency procedures and fund agencies.

It's up to the President to execute the law within those boundaries, including selecting the head of that agency (with Senate approval), and determining how the agency executes the law which can be incredibly broad if Congress wasn't proscriptive.

Thus the authority to execute the laws is delegated to the President by the Constitution who then delegates that power to the head of the agency which acts on the Presidents behalf.

More broadly, the Supreme Court has made clear that the Constitution imposes important limits on Congress’s ability to influence or control the actions of officers once they are appointed. Likewise, it is widely believed that the President must retain a certain amount of independent discretion in selecting officers that Congress may not impede. These principles ensure that the President may fulfill his constitutional duty under Article II to take [c]are that the laws are faithfully executed.9

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3...

> More broadly, the Supreme Court has made clear that the Constitution imposes important limits on Congress’s [and the President’s] ability to influence or control the actions of officers once they are appointed.

Improved on that, just a tad, for this discussions context. Not disagreeing.

Without that balance Congress couldn’t delegate anything with any expectation of its will being carried out.

And the President couldn’t ensure the agency acted competently and with respect to the President’s good faith understanding of the agency’s guiding laws.

With the courts ready to step in to settle any differences.

Agencies can only work reliably with the differing participations and limitations of all three roles.

As with all expressions of law.

> More broadly, the Supreme Court has made clear that the Constitution imposes important limits on Congress’s ability to influence or control the actions of officers once they are appointed.

No they did the opposite when they overruled Chevron. They said Congress cannot delegate that amount of its plenary power to the executive.

This of course lays the whole thing bare. When it comes to regulating markets or companies, or minority rights, conservatives think the president has no power. But when it comes to immigration or Christian social issues, the president is all powerful. This translates into laughable double standards like "the Biden admin even sending a single email to Twitter is pressure and censorship, but Trump suing media organization after media organization for defamation to the tune of billions of dollars is not pressure and not censorship". None of this is principled; it's entirely us vs them.

> They said Congress cannot delegate that amount of its plenary power to the executive.

That wasn't the conclusion of the decision that overturned Chevron. You can read the decision here.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf

Overturning Chevron only impacted the purview of the courts. It changed nothing with regards to Congress delegating power to the executive - Congress can continue to do so.

All it does is make ambiguity in the law the responsibility of the courts to decide, not the executive.

But Congress can still pass a vague law that says "a new agency X will regulate this product in order to protect public safety". The executive can then interpret what "protect public safety" means, but if challenges, the courts won't defer to the agency for the interpretation any more.

Well, maybe more embarrassingly I read your post backwards. But Thomas' concurrence is basically "only Congress can legislate".

I will say it's super unclear how our government works now. SCOTUS is like "sure, go ahead and delegate" but what they mean is "only as much as we let you... looking at you Democratic administrations". MAGA has--through half statements and gaslighting, made it clear that the only principle is that they have power and their opposition doesn't. If that means the Executive is powerful when it's Republican and weak when it's Democratic, well he who saves his country breaks no law.

> The executive branch of government is more accurately viewed as a monolithic organization which derives 100% of it's authority by delegation from the US President.

This is a very extreme version of unitary executive theory, which is highly controversial even in its weaker forms.

Moreover, even were one to accept that extreme version of unitary executive theory, it would be odd to also assume an act of Congress purporting to create an subordinate executive officer who was appointed by the President but removable for only specified cause and granting authority specifically to that officer was then valid but had the effect of actually granting the specified authority directly to the President; a more natural conclusion would be that, as the express intent of such a law was unconstitutional, it was void and had no effect.

Say something like "hey, no, that law is unconstititional!".

What is the purpose of having cabinet secretaries swear an oath to defend the Constitution if the President has the sole authority to decide what this means?

Why do you support Trump being an autocrat?