AI
Properly understood, the president's executive powers are sufficiently broad that President Donald “St. George” Trump can slay the Deep State.My regular readers know that I see a number of left-wing legal writings from day to day. One of the more sane (from time to time) pundits is Ilya Somin of George Mason University. In his latest piece, he bemoans the “Perils of the Unitary Executive Theory.” He begins by saying,
The originalist case for a unitary executive falls apart in an era when many of the powers wielded by the executive branch were not originally supposed to be federal powers in the first place.
For those who didn’t major in Constitutional Law, Somin is referring to Article II, § 1, Sentence 1, which says, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” That’s pretty simple. And it is, as the Supreme Court loves to say, “Black Letter Law.”
Further, in more words from the Court, it is “unqualified.” That means that all power in the Executive Branch belongs to Donald Trump. No “ifs,” “buts,” or “excepts.” “All” means “all.” Put bluntly, as long as he occupies the White House, every bureaucrat is obligated to do what he says. If you don’t like it, then “You’re fired!”
<img alt captext="AI” src=”https://conservativenewsbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/trumps-broad-constitutional-powers.jpg”>
Image by Andrea Widburg
This isn’t complicated, and as push comes to shove, all the Supreme Court needs to do is look at the language of the Constitution. In every case, Trump wins. Even Somin admits that “he is supposed to have all the power given to the executive branch, except such as is specifically allocated elsewhere in other parts of the Constitution.” The next step is where Somin goes off the rails. He confuses proximate and ultimate causation.
Somin is correct that the Executive branch wields great powers that were not envisioned in the original discussions around the Constitution. In this, he agrees with James Madison in Federalist 41. Madison states that using the general welfare clause (Article I, § 8, Clause 1) to allow the government to “exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare” is a “stooping to…a misconstruction.”
Madison goes on to state that logically, the enumerated powers that follow the general welfare clause explain what the clause means. In short, if it’s not in that detailed list after the General Welfare Clause, the federal government isn’t supposed to do it.
When I asked ChatGPT when this changed, it pointed me to United States v. Butler (1936), where the Court said, “The power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution.”
You can take your jaw off the floor now. During the New Deal under FDR, the Supreme Court threw the entire concept of enumerated powers out the window. This was set in concrete with Helvering v. Davis (1937), which explicitly allowed Congress to use the General Welfare Clause to do almost anything it wanted to do with your tax dollars.
As for the President’s management powers, most of the questions are unanswered. Myers v. United States (1926) clarified that the President has the freedom to fire any official he nominated, and the Senate confirmed. Then Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935) limited his removal power for certain specific officials. Morrison v. Olson (1988) basically echoed Humphrey’s Executor for Special Counsels. Seila Law v. CFPB (2020) and Bessent v. Dellinger (2025, DC Court of Appeals) have both chipped away at Humphrey’s Executor, and many legal observers are suggesting that the Court is looking for a way to put it six feet under.
What does this all mean for President Trump’s actions to fire lots of bureaucrats? For almost a century, Congress has felt free to create and fund lots of agencies and the cronies to operate them. This becomes a great feedback loop where more bureaucrats discover more “needs” for Congress to answer.
And with little or no pushback from anyone in the White House, the Federal Government and debt have exploded. Then a true outsider showed up. He was stymied by a Swamp more impenetrable and Dismal than he ever imagined. Even his own Vice President has now been proven to be part of the enemy swarm.
But when Donald Trump sat a second time behind the Resolute Desk with Sharpie in hand, DC changed. He can neuter many of his opponents simply by denying them access to classified information. This strips them of access to the corridors of power and rich sinecures due to their privilege.
So, it’s no surprise that they are actively pursuing legal Hail Mary strategies. But those remedies are running headlong into Article II, Section 1. Democrat district judges can try to gum up the works, but the Constitution does not care, and, ultimately, virtually everything will end up in the lap of the Supreme Court, where, contra Professor Somin, Donald Trump possesses plenary power over the management of the Executive Branch.
Ilya Somin has missed the point. Admitting that the President has complete authority over his branch of government would not be a problem if Congress was properly constrained by the Constitution’s enumerated powers. But since a rogue progressive Court ignored the plain history and tradition of the General Welfare Clause, we have a behemoth in DC. When Saint George Trump arrived to slay this dragon, those who benefit from it started screaming. Donald’s Ascalon is the proximal “threat to America” that the Swamp fears when, in fact, the ultimate threat is the Swamp itself.
We must be careful to avoid Professor Somin’s error of mistaking the proximate cause of whatever we fear for the ultimate cause. We can fix a thousand proximate causes, and like Hydra, a new head of the monster will appear. Until we return our government to one of limited, constitutionally enumerated powers, we will not have subdued the threat to liberty.
Ted Noel is a retired physician who posts on social media as Doctor Ted. His Doctor Ted’s Prescription podcast is available on multiple podcast channels.
