How Conservative Lawyers Accidentally Helped Biden De-Trumpify the Government – By Mark Joseph Stern (Slate) / July 13 2021
The Supreme Court left Biden with two options: unilateral disarmament or hardball politics. He chose the latter.
On Friday, President Joe Biden fired Andrew Saul, the Donald Trump nominee leading the Social Security Administration. Saul’s removal marked the latest chapter in Biden’s ongoing efforts to expel Trump holdovers from leadership positions in the executive branch. Beginning on Jan. 20, the new president has sacked Trump appointees from agencies both powerful and obscure, preventing the dead hand of the previous administration from governing the current one.
The conservative legal movement has long advocated for the president’s power to fire executive officials at will. This theory of the “unitary executive” has gathered widespread support on the right and scorn from the left. But it is Biden who has first reaped its rewards, exploiting the theory’s ascendence at the Supreme Court to de-Trumpify the government. The radical nature of Trump’s nominees, combined with the Supreme Court’s conservative tilt, have allowed Biden to become the first unitary executive. An idea promoted by conservatives has created a windfall for Democrats.
If Trump had put regular, competent Republicans in charge of the government, Biden might have put up with them until their terms ran out. But Trump put arsonists in charge of the firehouse, nominating extreme partisans eager to sabotage the agency they led. For instance, Peter Robb, Trump’s general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, relentlessly sought to undermine unions. Michael Pack, whom Trump placed at the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, tried to turn Voice of America and its sister networks into pro-Trump propaganda machines. And Kathleen Kraninger, Trump’s director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, authorized predatory lending and abusive debt collection practices.
By tradition, a new president allows these officials to serve out their terms. But Biden did not wait for them to burn down the firehouse. He fired all three on Jan. 20.
CONTNUE > https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/joe-biden-andrew-saul-trump-unitary-executive.html
