Nobody for Secretary of Anything

Stop feeding the administrative state

Paul Ryan, the disgraced former Speaker of the House, told an interviewer last week that Donald Trump, if elected, would not be able to get a single cabinet appointment approved by the Senate.

Good!

The Constitution allows the president to appoint federal officers with the advice and consent of the Senate. But the president is still the boss of the entire executive branch. He doesn’t have to appoint anyone to anything. Trump can just run it himself.

And that’s exactly what Trump should do in his second term. No Attorney General, no Secretary of Defense, no Secretary of Anything. Retain all duties of all department heads.

Some killjoy lawyer’s gonna come along and say Congress mandates the president to appoint certain secretaries and whatnot. So what? Legally, and Constitutionally, the president exercise authority over the entire executive branch, and no act of Congress can diminish that authority.

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” — Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 1, Clause 1.

Though the Constitution refers to “executive departments” with a “principal Officer,” the Constitution requires no departments. In the absence of a department head, the chief executive acts. This includes the Attorney General. Any power delegated by Congress to the Attorney General—or any other “principal Officer” of any department—is not transferred from the president. The president retains all executive power because Article II, section 1, clause 1 is without exception. “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Boom! End of conversation.

Look, Trump’s first term proved that he can trust no one in Washington. No one, that is, who could get past confirmation in the Senate. Rudy Giullianni or even Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be a trustworthy Attorney General, but neither stands a snowball’s chance in Austin of getting through the Senate. Same goes for Steve Bannon as Secretary of Defense and Dr. Simone Gold as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The system is rigged against trustworthy people getting into the executive branch. That’s how Congress circumvents the separation of powers. The uniparty Congress actually appoints cabinet secretaries who, in turn, issue hiring policies and hire the people who execute those policies. They hire people like themselves into positions from which they cannot be fired.

If you need evidence, look at the non-delegation doctrine. That doctrine prevents Congress from delegating legislative power. It relies on the straightforward words in the Constitution:

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” — Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 1, Clause 1.

Compare that to Article II’s vestiture of executive powers:

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” — Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 1, Clause 1.

Congress gets “all” legislative powers, but the executive gets “the executive power.” Why the distinction?

First, executive power is singular and was once well understood. Ontologically, the executive power is absolute within a range of possibilities. In this case, the executive holds absolute power to bring to life laws passed by Congress and not vetoed. If Congress failed to regulate how a law is to be executed, the president has full discretion. If the president strays outside the limits of the law by performing actions that are not germane to the substance of the law, the Supreme Court stands ready to correct the wayward president. Most importantly, the president can delegate powers to members of the executive departments.

Congress cannot delegate, because “all legislative Powers” belong exclusively to that body. Plus, Congress has no one delegate its powers to. There are no “legislative departments” conceived of by the Constitution, though the same document does allow for executive departments.

Trump works more hours in a day than Biden’s entire cabinet combined. Yes, he would be busy, but Trump made being President of the United States look easy. He might break a sweat if he has to cover every position in the cabinet, but I have confidence he will manage. He already did more for East Palestine, Ohio, than the Secretary of Transportation. And he will end US participation in foreign wars, so the jobs of the State Department and DoD will be a lot easier. With the Trump economy humming along on all cylinders, Transportation, Labor, and Treasury will become easier over time.

In other words, the right man can run the who executive branch himself. If personnel problems are daunting, he can simply reduce executive branch head count. And a friendly Congress could help him out by slashing budgets in all departments.

The more I think about cabinet-free Trump administration, the more I like it. Now, I’ll turn over the comments to the killjoy lawyers who will explain why the chief executive cannot execute the law without a cabinet. (But they’ll be wrong.)