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Comment by timoth3y | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

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