The President’s enemies are beginning to awaken to the formidible possibility that Trump knows exactly what he is doing and is setting traps for them to fall into.
JEFF CHILDERS
“FROZEN”
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JEFF CHILDERS
“FROZEN”
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The President’s enemies are beginning to awaken to the formidible possibility that Trump knows exactly what he is doing and is setting traps for them to fall into. The New York Times covered the story yesterday under the headline, “Trump’s Firings Could Bring Court Cases That Expand His Power.” (The article even mentioned our beloved Ms. Fong.)
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Bye, Charlotte Burrows, Obama-appointed EEOC Commissioner, who believed she was untouchable.
Over the past several days, the President has “abruptly fired dozens of officials,” if not hundreds of them. The Times, at least, is beginning to detect a figure of rationality emerging from the fog of administrative war. It claims to have uncovered a pattern among Trump’s firings of powerful federal actors who thought they were safe. These included the 17 aforementioned Inspector Generals (including high-heeled rebel Fong), plus cemented-in officials from agencies like the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Note that all four categories include officials appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
Astonishingly, Trump’s mass firings of top-level commissioners from the NLRB, the Privacy Board, and the EEOC, were thought to be illegal and impossible. But even more historic and astonishing, Trump has fired so many it leaves those agencies without quora. They are dead in the water. These now-paralyzed agencies literally cannot undermine Trump’s agenda, even if they wanted to, for the practical reason that there simply aren’t enough commissioners left to vote on anything. They’re frozen.
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Strikingly, none of the “abruptly fired” officials have yet sued the federal government—even though Trump is trampling on all sorts of precedents, customs, and statutes. Ms. Fong merely staged a bizarre mini-protest rather than assert her legal rights. All this legal restraint is especially strange considering that in at least one agency, the NLRB, federal law expressly limits the President’s ability to fire commissioners except in very limited circumstances.
The Times and the fired officials smelled a Trump trap.
“The prospect of getting dragged into court,” an alarmed Times observed, “may be exactly what Mr. Trump’s lawyers are hoping for.” What terrified and dismayed the far-left Times and its progressive allies was the ghastly prospect that “any rulings in the president’s favor would establish precedents that would expand presidential power to control the federal government.”
In other words: Trump is hoping that they’ll sue him.
The New York Times began connecting the dots starting with a Reagan-era constitutional interpretation of broad Executive Branch power. The Reaganites believed “that presidents must be able to fire any executive branch official at will.”
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“In recent years,” the Times realized with growing horror, “the Supreme Court’s majority — led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who worked in the White House Counsel’s Office under the Reagan administration — has pushed that idea” of broad executive powers in employment.
Reagan called his constitutional interpretation “unitary executive theory.” It is an uncomplicated view of constitutional separation of powers, holding that the president must exclusively control his own executive branch. Any laws passed by Congress (under Article II) purporting to make Article I executive branch officials independent from the president’s sole control must therefore be unconstitutional.
Hahaha! The mass firings are genius! Trump has got progressives doubting their own theory of permanent federal employment. The President has tied these people into pretzel-like political knots. They literally don’t know what to do.
The Times’ reporter spoke to the 17 Inspectors General —Ms. Fong’s cohort— and asked them when are you going to sue the Orange Man? The depressing answer was: we’re not sure. They worry they might be playing right into Trump’s hands:
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Haha! Can you see it now? The sheer brilliance of Trump’s plan? If they do sue him, then Trump is likely to grow even more powerful. Their only other option to just take it.
? Back in April 2021, I won my first and biggest mask case at Florida’s First District Court of Appeal. The three-judge panel agreed that mandatory mask ordinances were presumptively unconstitutional. Normally, in response the County and its squidlike mask allies would have appealed that decision up to Florida’s Supreme Court. But they didn’t. They took the “L,” even though my victory deleted mask mandates in 33 of Florida’s 67 counties, and created a significant legal precedent.
Why did they just take the “L”? It was because, if they also lost at Florida’s Supreme Court, it would have outlawed mandatory masking in all 67 Florida counties. They didn’t want to risk it. Better to live with losing 33 masking counties rather than risk the whole Sunshine State.
? As far as the Times can tell, all these far-left, fired appointees —many, like Ms. Fong, even appointed by Republican presidents, but still— they all seem to be leaning toward taking the “L” too. None so far have filed a single lawsuit. It turns out that, despite the Democrats’ howls of protest, the legal limits on presidential hiring and firing might not be quite so constitutional after all, and they know it:
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How about that? Now the Times tells us there are serious questions over whether Congress can limit a president’s power to fire his own employees.
Hamlet once asked, to sue or not to sue, that is the question. (It was in an earlier draft of the play.) That is the question confounding the Democrats right now. They just don’t seem to have any ideas. In fact, many of the article’s comments were white-hot with fury since the Times only presented the problem, not any solution.
Astonishingly, none of the Times’ “legal experts” quoted in the article offered any possible strategy to counter the President’s maneuver. Not one. That’s partly why I called Trump’s plan “brilliant,” since there are no clear countermoves. It’s also why I called the Resisters cowards, because, at least so far, they’ve refused the risks of lawfare, too chicken to stand up for their principles in a fair fight.
The Deep State’s usual tactics—delay and sabotage—aren’t effective against this mass-firing strategy. Bureaucratic slow-walking and procedural hurdles are great for stalling policies, but they don’t work, can’t work, when an agency’s entire leadership has been physically removed by security. Bye, Felicia.
? If Congress wants these crippled agencies, like the EEOC, to resume function, they will have to wait for Trump to nominate replacement commissioners and then the Senate must consent. But Trump won’t do that until his Cabinet nominations are heard first. So, the firings also pressure the Senate to confirm quicker.
? Finally, take a moment to consider how much work was invested in carefully charting all these myriad agencies and, one by one, figuring out which bureaucrats to yank. They had it all ready to go on day one. That precise kind of detail and planning is what the Democrats now face. So it is unsurprising they remain in response mode, where they’ll stay until they can figure out what the heck is going on.
Sue? Or don’t sue? Is it a trap?
Everything we’ve seen suggests Trump has a deep bench of legal and administrative expertise—people who understand the intricate mechanics of the federal bureaucracy and know how to dismantle the procedural obstacles without sparking immediate legal defeats. And even better, they’re teeing up bigger legal victories.
Democrats and the media are still scrambling because they never expected Trump 2.0 to include this level of precision and premeditation. I hate to keep saying it, but we’re seeing something that’s never happened before. Against all odds, Trump is really doing it.
In some weeks, decades happen!