And yet, the Supreme Court appears poised to do just that.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stand next to Donald Trump during the signing of an executive order in the Oval Office, August 25, 2025.
(Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Supreme Court made clear this week that it is likely to rule in favor of Donald Trump's right to generally fire members of the boards of directors of supposedly independent regulatory bodies. If and when such a decision is made by the far-right judges who dominate the court, it will destroy basic government structures and barriers that have existed for nearly a century. It would also give even more executive power to a wannabe autocrat who has no internal moral inhibition mechanism and who is already armed with a disgraceful Supreme Court ruling that he is immune from prosecution for acts committed in an official capacity. Simply put, it will be a green light for capricious, corrupt, revenge-driven politics, and for the dismantling of regulatory structures and government agencies created by law by Congress.
Across all key government departments and agencies, Trump is using his hiring and firing powers to tame honest government workers and replace them with the most immoral, pliant, sycophantic—and often grossly incompetent—men and women he can find. It's as if he was given a who's who of sycophants and told he could look through the list and pick the worst of the worst.
Hence the extraordinary events of recent weeks. America's Caligula may not have made his horse a US senator, but he had no problem making his horse's ass ready to conjure up any war crimes the boss, the Secretary of Defense, ordered. Evidence of this is the accusations made verbally by Pete Hegseth:kill them all» orders regarding America's rampant assassination campaign against suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Or look at Trump's repeated use of the most vile, racist, and demeaning descriptions of the Somali American population. Instead of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem resigning in horror at how the presidency was tainted by the use of Hitler language, she tried to one-up Trump by releasing her own publications on social networks This is somehow even more odious. One in particular is worth quoting in full: “I just met with the President. I recommend a total travel ban on every damn country that has infested our country with murderers, leeches, and drug addicts. Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and an unyielding love of freedom, not for foreign invaders to kill our heroes, suck up our hard-earned tax dollars, or take away benefits due to them.” AMERICANS. WE NEED ONE.
Forget the lofty speeches of Roosevelt or John Kennedy. This is not even the language of Reagan or Nixon. Rather, it's the guttural meow of an insecure subordinate desperately trying to get the school bully's attention by landing a few punches of his own on the lonely kids in the corner. This is what happens when the government is taken over by gangsters.
Likewise, the government new national security strategy– which openly aligns the US with fascist parties in Europe, largely sides with Russia regarding Ukraine, and declares it a US national security priority to limit migration to Europe and thus “save Western civilization” – should have sent every State Department official, starting with Marco Rubio (the son of immigrants, worth constantly shouting from the rooftops) running in the chaos for the exit. But instead, they all hunkered down, resigned themselves to this crazy statement of intent, and relaxed while the rest of the world gasped in amazement at America's priorities in the Trump era.
Current number
When news broke in the middle of the week that Customs and Border Protection was going to start operating demanding five years of social media access, email addresses and a dose of personal data for visa applicants from 42 countries (mostly consisting of America's closest allies) whose citizens can currently apply online for a US tourist visa and who can currently receive that visa within hours, not a peep has been heard from a single Trump official or GOP members of Congress; regardless of the fact that it could destroy the US tourism industry or lead other countries to impose similar aggressive visa restrictions on Americans wishing to travel abroad. The boss and his minions want to fence off the country with a wall from the rest of the world, and so it will be.
This is truly a dilapidated autocracy; it's an extraordinarily toxic combination of Trump's instinct to personalize all power and what at the moment looks like raging, impulsive decrepitude. And yet, no one stands up and says, “Enough already.”
What would it look like if the Supreme Court actually concentrated even more power in the hands of this evil old man, allowing him to fire any federal employee on his nightly whim? Just ask Abby McIlraith and Declan Crow, the two FEMA employees who signed the agreement. Declaration of Katrina warning of the risk of epic disasters due to the destruction of the agency they work for. Both were among those who signed the letter and were placed on administrative leave after the letter was published; both received notices from the Office of Professional Responsibility in the days leading up to Thanksgiving clearing them of wrongdoing and allowing them to return to work; and then both were immediately placed back on administrative leave by the Trump administration within hours of their return to office.
What about statutory protections for whistleblowers? For the birds.
Talking to Nation as private citizens, McIlwraith and Crowe expressed alarm at the breach of institutional safeguards. “We want justice for the whistleblowers,” Crowe told me this week. “Not just at FEMA, but across all organizations. When things like this happen, FEMA's ability to provide services is weakened.”
For McIlwraith, the government's vindictiveness in repeatedly placing employees on administrative leave—paying them but not allowing them to work—made no economic or political sense. “Of course, pay us for No we do our job. It’s pretty egregious,” she said.
McIlraith had enough time in the office to plan to attend an upcoming holiday party when she received word that she would have to leave again. “It was quite strange,” she said, “not a very pleasant feeling; I’m afraid I’ll be fired for this and will have to look for another job.”
Now imagine if Trump could treat literally every employee in the civil service, every member of the board of directors of an independent regulatory agency, the same. This is not a recipe for making America great again; and even this exceptionally myopic Supreme Court should be able to see at this point that this is rather a road map leading to complete chaos and corruption.
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