by @amuse at X
The Acting Solicitor General has formally notified Congress that she intends to petition the Supreme Court to overturn Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), a ruling that has long stood as an affront to constitutional governance. This decision, a relic of New Deal-era overreach, neutered the executive branch and birthed an unaccountable administrative state. If President Trump is to fulfill his clear mandate from the American people, he must be empowered to direct the entirety of the executive branch, free from the constraints of so-called independent agencies. The Supreme Court must seize this opportunity to correct an eighty-nine-year-old mistake and restore the President’s rightful control over the government’s executive functions.
The Constitution vests executive power in one person: the President of the United States. Article II, Section 1 could not be clearer: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” This is not a shared or diluted power; it is singular, absolute in its scope within the executive branch. The Court’s decision in Humphrey’s Executor undermined this core principle by allowing Congress to create entities that function as quasi-independent fiefdoms, wielding executive authority but answerable to no elected official.
The fiction upon which Humphrey’s Executor rests—that agencies like the FTC exercise functions that are not “purely executive”—is indefensible. The Supreme Court in Seila Law LLC v. CFPB (2020) took a significant step toward recognizing this reality by striking down tenure protections for the Director of the CFPB. In that decision, the Court reaffirmed that executive power must be subject to presidential oversight. Yet, despite Seila Law’s clarification, the multi-member independent agency model persists, allowing career bureaucrats to wield coercive regulatory power with little to no accountability to the American people. This is not how constitutional governance was designed to function.
Consider the Federal Trade Commission,…
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You can also read the Acting Solicitor General’s letter HERE
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