The nation’s 250th birthday provides the opportunity to examine the state of our national affairs and how it has changed in the last decade. Many students of government will point to the numerous and profound changes wrought by executive fiat as the most significant recent changes to our government, and they may be right. Even a partial list of executive actions—the subordination of the Justice Department to presidential whim; the elimination of Congressionally created agencies; the undermining of federally funded research in nearly all scientific fields; the reduction of the federal workforce and, with it, a nonpartisan civil service; the imposition of massive tariffs on friend and foe alike; the conversion of our rich history of welcoming immigration into a forced deportation system—presents a strong case for the preeminence of the Executive Branch.
But what has been achieved by executive fiat can be dismantled by executive fiat, at least in part. Policies can be changed. Executive Orders can be rescinded. Agencies can be restaffed. Grants can be refunded. Even departments can be rejuvenated. Some losses may not be reversible: The “soft power” and humanitarian labors of USAID, for example, cannot soon be rebuilt. Whether trust in government can ever be restored is quite another matter, but that can, at least, be addressed without overcoming legal impediments. Other matters, however, cannot be altered “with all deliberate speed,” such as the rulings of the Supreme Court.
Court Empowers Itself
In a series of rulings, the Supreme Court profoundly altered the way government functions. In the first of these decisions, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024), the Court overturned the 40-year-old Chevron deference doctrine. In sum, courts would no longer defer to the expertise of agencies created to regulate in Congressionally established areas, without explicit guidance from the statute. This significantly restructured the balance of power within the federal government, shifting authority away from executive administrative agencies and toward the judiciary and legislature.
The Court then limited the scope of matters that independent agencies could enforce. In SEC v. Jarkesy (2024), it ruled that when federal agencies seek civil money penalties for common law offenses, such as fraud, defendants have a Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. This restricts agencies from using in-house administrative tribunals for most cases and forces the government to file them in federal district courts instead. The breadth of the ruling is vast, as most administrative enforcement by executive agencies includes monetary penalties beyond equitable relief. The ruling shackles administrative enforcement in unforeseeable ways, but predictably both empowers and overburdens the courts.
The next judicial reformation was the decision in Trump v. Slaughter (2026), which represents a landmark shift in administrative law, fundamentally altering how independent federal regulatory agencies operate by vastly expanding executive control. The Court’s ruling struck down traditional “for-cause” removal protections for commissioners of independent agencies. As a result, all commissioners, directors, chairs, and members of those agencies are now “at will employees,” serving at the pleasure of the president.
Slaughter has been called a “seismic shift,” the most significant change in the balance of powers between Congress and the executive in a century, and even a declaration that the structure of much of the federal government is unconstitutional. One thing is certain: The decision significantly expands presidential authority and fundamentally alters the landscape of federal administrative law. Indeed, the radical expansion of presidential power means the administration can immediately coordinate the policies of all the executive agencies with the White House’s political and economic agenda. This inevitably weakens institutional stability within the civil service, replacing long-term bureaucratic continuity with direct executive control.
The instability of administrative precedents will make it all the more difficult for Congress to budget, for business to plan, for most of the elements of modern society to function as in the past.
New judicial state?
Critics of “big government” most often rail against the power of unelected bureaucrats issuing unlegislated rules that control great swaths of daily life. They are now faced with the greater power of unelected judges—with life tenure—issuing rulings, often contrary to Congressional statutes. Just how the populace will respond to this new age of judicial preeminence will likely occupy the politics of the future.