Chief Justice John Roberts Is Trying His Darnedest to Make Trump a Dictator

On Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts once again narrowed the strike zone for separation of powers and the rule of law. He did so without explanation, but that’s all right, because he says it’s only for a little while. From the AP:

Trump first moved to fire Rebecca Slaughter in the spring, but she sued and lower courts ordered her reinstated because the law allows commissioners to be removed only for problems like misconduct or neglect of duty. Roberts halted those decisions in a brief order, responding to an appeal from the Trump administration on the court’s emergency docket. The Justice Department has argued that the FTC and other executive branch agencies are under Trump’s control and the Republican president is free to remove commissioners without cause.

Monday’s order is the latest sign that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has effectively abandoned a 90-year-old high court precedent that protected some federal agencies from arbitrary presidential action. In the 1935 decision known as Humphrey’s Executor, the court unanimously held that presidents cannot fire independent board members without cause.

Overturning decades-old precedents is quite of a piece with how the carefully manufactured conservative majority operates. (Humphrey’s fell in May in a shadow-docket finagle that carved out an exception for the members of the Federal Reserve.) And it’s been operating quite a bit these days. From NBC News:

The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a federal judge’s ruling that restricted federal officers’ ability to conduct immigration stops in the Los Angeles area, prompting a harsh rebuke from liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. The decision to grant an emergency request filed by the Trump administration puts on hold the July 11 ruling by Los Angeles-based U.S. District Court Judge Maame Ewes-Mensah Frimpong. ... Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to serve on the court, was joined in dissent by the court’s two other liberals. “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” she wrote.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, part of the conservative majority, wrote a separate opinion in which he cast doubt on whether a constitutional violation took place. He said that because there is a large population of undocumented immigrants in the Los Angeles area and they “tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work,” frequently work in construction or related jobs and may not speak English, law enforcement likely would have reasonable suspicion to stop people in many circumstances. “Especially in an immigration case like this one, it is also important to stress the proper role of the Judiciary. The Judiciary does not set immigration policy or decide enforcement priorities,” he added.

Not these days, anyway.