
Creating/Hating Its Own Monster
The left is spawning rumors that Trump is trying to become a dictator. Here’s its proof:
- Making the government respond to his policies via large-scale lay-offs, issuance of Executive Orders, and cancellation of grants and contracts.
- By,, among other things, cancelling grants and downsizing agencies from USAID to the CFPB.
- Assertive enforcement of the immigration laws
At Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton provides a list of those who partner with “No Kings.” There are at least 209 (by Menton’s count). Each of these institutions is a who’s who of partners of the left.
- ACLU,
- “Bernie,”
- League of Conservation Voters
- org
- Planned Parenthood
- Vermont Public Interest Research Group
- Labor unions (Communications Workers of America and SEIU)
- org (environmental/climate activist groups)
- Greenpeace
- Sierra Club
And so on and on, reports Menton.
Can any group become a partner? Menton bets that substantial funding is involved.
The total federal funding flowing through to these groups far exceeds a billion dollars, although perhaps not all within one year.
What specifically makes Trump a dictator compared to prior presidents? Well, horror of horrors, Donald Trump expects his subordinates to follow his directions or get fired.
According to Bruce Ackerman, a 50+ year Yale law professor,
“It is not the case that the president can dominate the policy making of all institutions in the executive branch,” he said. “And in particular, the president can’t fire people or members of these commissions. Even less, can he through unilateral action, simply destroy two independent commissions.”
Has Professor Ackerman not had enough time to read the Constitution? Fifty-five years ago, Francis Menton was among Ackerman’s students at Yale in 1972.?
What doesn’t Ackerman understand about Article II, Section I, wonders Mr. Menton?
“It is not the case that the president can dominate the policy making of all institutions in the executive branch.
And in particular, the president can’t fire people or members of these commissions. Even less, can he, through unilateral action, simply destroy two independent commissions.”
If that doesn’t mean that the President can “dominate the policy making of all institutions in the executive branch,” it’s hard to know what it might mean, continues Mr. Menton. Did the Left think that they had gotten around the Constitution with decades of progressive-inspired legislation designed to create a government of permanent experts that would tie the hands of any President who might have different policy ideas?
The main legislative restraints were the creation of the so-called “independent commissions,” run by commissioners who could only be removed for “cause,” and civil service laws restricting the firing of career government employees. The “independent commissions” had been upheld in a 1935 Supreme Court case called Humphrey’s Executor.
On 31 January 2025, Menton posted “Next Up: Humphrey’s Executor,” in which the MC predicted the demise of that terrible precedent.
On 22 May, the Supreme Court, in a case called Trump v. Wilcox, reversed a lower court preliminary ruling and permitted Trump, at least pending litigation, to fire “independent” commissioners of the NLRB and the Merit Systems Protection Board.
The Key Quote:
Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, see Art. II, §1, cl. 1, he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf. . . .
Not A Lot of Wiggle Room Here
Reporting on the Supreme Court’s decision, NPR notes that, although it is preliminary, it expresses a rationale so thoroughly inconsistent with Humphreys Executor that it is highly unlikely for that precedent to survive. According to NPR’s Nina Totenberg, although the decision is temporary, “the tone is pretty final.” (A final decision in the case is not expected until sometime next year at the earliest.)
How many “No Kings” agitators are aware of the thin ice on which Humphrey’s Executor now skates, let alone of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, or of what these issues mean for their assertion that Trump is somehow acting as a “dictator” or “king?”
Groupthink at Work
As Menton notes, for decades, the left thought it had achieved a perfect model for unbreakable left-wing governance.
When a Democrat was President, he could exercise all executive functions because the commissions and bureaucracy would support him as part of their team; but when a Republican got elected, he would be boxed in by the commissions and bureaucrats who would assure continuance of the policies of the progressive groupthink, with maybe a handful of tweaks around the edges.
Who’d Have Thunk It?
Can an election change policies? It sure looks like it.
Vast agencies and bureaucracies put in place in the expectation of a permanent government groupthink impervious to elections now find themselves fully under the control of the elected President, and turning to a whole new direction.
“Dictator?” … that’s what the Constitution provides. If you don’t want a President with so much power, it would have been much better not to have created so many agencies and delegated so much power to the executive.
The left complains that Trump is acting like a “dictator.” But it has created its own monster, a monster that it thought it could control, only to find out that it can’t control it.
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