King Donald? Supreme Court grants Trump power to repeal laws at his whim

[Celerity]

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5402908-king-donald-supreme-court-grants-trump-power-to-repeal-laws-at-his-whim/

“The executive has seized for itself the power to repeal federal law by way of mass terminations, in direct contravention of the Take Care Clause and our Constitution’s separation of powers.” Read that again. These are the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissenting opinion to the Supreme Court’s one-paragraph July 14 ruling, in which the majority basically held — without any justification or explanation whatsoever — that it’s fine that America has become a land of lawlessness with power consolidated in one person.

President Trump is the law now.

The case is McMahon v. New York, and it involves Trump’s stated plan to abolish the Department of Education by basically firing half of its workforce so that it cannot function. Unlike Elon Musk’s slash-and-burn DOGE experiment, this maneuver is not even thinly disguised by the pretense of government “efficiency.” Trump just wants the Department of Education to go. The trouble is that, as a matter of the Constitution’s core separation of powers, Congress makes the laws. In 1979, Congress enacted the Department of Education Organization Act for purposes of “ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual.”

As Sotomayor explained in her dissent, which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined, “only Congress has the power to abolish the department. The executive’s task, by contrast, is to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’” By shutting down the Department of Education “by executive fiat,” Trump is blatantly intruding on the powers of the legislature to make the laws while ignoring the constitutional mandate, and his oath of office, that he duly execute those laws.

Trump’s plan ignores a bunch of other laws that the Department of Education is also responsible for executing, including laws governing federal grants for institutes of higher education; federal funding for kindergarten through high school (more than $100 billion during the 2020-2021 school year, or 11 percent of the total funding for public K-12 schools across the country); and laws banning discrimination in federally-funded schools on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex and disability.

snip

[Mister Ed]

1. The law has been outlawed. n/t

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. Looking at the bright side...

That means the next Dem president can fire every single ICE employee, and reassign ICE funding to a more worthy cause, like payments to the victims of ICE terrorism.

[TomSlick]

3. Wanna bet?

The Court's MAGAt majority will not be so deferential to the executive if a Democrat is in the White House.

There is no judicial reasoning or intellectual honesty involved in the "stuff" coming out of the Supreme Court.

[Fiendish Thingy]

10. I would love to hear the arguments before SCOTUS

The solicitor general representing the Dem administration would be quoting the rulings of the conservative SCOTUS justices on unlimited presidential power to fire federal employees, to their faces.

never say never, not in this post-stare decicis era.

[TomSlick]

11. Stare decicis died with judicial reasoning and intellectual honesty.

[Fiendish Thingy]

12. Indeed

So, since the precedent has been set with the Dobbs ruling that judicial precedents don’t matter, why should any lower court take any past precedent into consideration when considering how to rule on a case?

I look forward to the day when a rogue rebel judge appointed by Obama or Biden overturns a previous Roberts court ruling using the example of Dobbs (or any other precedent ignored by the Roberts court) to establish that SCOTUS rulings are not law etched in stone binding lower courts, but only temporary political positions and subject reinterpretation at any time, by any judge.

[TomSlick]

13. That would be a hoot.

The problem is that judges appointed by Obama or Biden lack the absence of character to blatantly reject SCOTUS rulings.

The MAGAt majority on SCOTUS feel themselves free to ignore precedent. A Democratic-appointed federal judge will not.

[Hope22]

4. Also, we can't survive these four year cycles.

Health insurance decisions, marriage law, contraception and maternal health all need stable law that builds and gets stronger not torn apart on a whim. Successful Foreign relations can not exist when a country turns at the whim of a madman. Just a few of the mountain of decisions that support a successful society.

[Karasu]

9. The fact that an SC decision like this is even happening after SIX MONTHS is all the proof anyone should need that we

Last edited Thu Jul 17, 2025, 12:50 AM - Edit history (1)

can't fucking take 4 years of this shit. No one should be thinking about 2028 whatsoever.

Even supposing the GOP fails to manipulate the outcome, the 2026 midterms can't save this country from the fucking Supreme Court.

[Ping Tung]

5. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" Shakespeare Henry !V

[B.See]

6. Trump, maga, and his SC fascists

have no respect for any law other than their own will.

But then, this is how we all KNEW it would be, a decade ago, right?

[ancianita]

7. Nope, no king. Just an outlaw in the WH who can't keep fluffy in the saddle.

[damifino10]

8. Countless

We no longer need a supreme court. Where is doge when you need them?