So for decades now, Congress has decided, the elected representatives of the people have decided, and presidents have passed laws saying that there are some kinds of functions of government that we want to have some independence from whoever is sitting in the presidency at any given moment. And so the case that was was in front of the court involved the Federal Trade Commission, which was created early in the 20th century and was designed to have a certain amount of insulation from the president. The president appointed members of the Federal Trade Commission, but the appointments were it was a multi member board. The appointments came due at different times. So there was no way to completely change direction of the Federal Trade Commission. And Congress made clear that presidents couldn't remove federal trade commissioners except for good cause. And so the question in front of the court was essentially was that constitutional? Donald Trump decided very early in his second term to fire the democratically appointed members of the Federal Trade Commission, the two Democrats who were still sitting on the commission, to give the commission a Republican dominated cast. And the court said, yeah, it's unconstitutional for Congress to limit the ability of the president to remove at least the people who count as principal officers, the heads of agencies. Instead, the president has the power to appoint them with advice and consent of the Senate, but then the president can remove them whenever he wants for whatever reason he wants. And the court said, that's something that we get from the executive power in Article 2 of the Constitution. Now the question then is, well, what about all the other independent agencies? And the court pretty much indicated that there aren't independent agencies. But for one, which is what they said in the Cook case, they said, well, the Federal Reserve is really different. In the Cook case, what President Trump tried to do is fire a person who sits on the Federal Reserve, one of the governors of The Federal Reserve, Lisa Cook said that she had engaged in misconduct, totally drummed up case of misconduct. And what the court said is, you know, she didn't get sufficient procedure to determine whether she'd engaged in misconduct. And it was okay for Congress to limit the ability of the President to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board because that agency, unlike other agencies, can constitutionally be independent. Why? Well, it's nothing in the text of the Constitution. It's more that the Fed is really important to the economy and as the court said, stands in the tradition of the first and second Banks of the United States. Now, we can talk in a bit about the reasoning there, which is really laughable. But the basic distinction they drew was there's the Fed, which we're going to say is independent for reasons and everything else, can't be an independent agency. Instead, every other function of governance pretty much has to be subject to the will of the President in removing whoever sits in charge.
