“Unelected bureaucrats prevent us from having self government” - Mark Chenoweth

[livingston]

“Unelected bureaucrats prevent us from having self government” - Mark Chenoweth​

At the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference, Jan Jekielek interviewed Mark Chenoweth, President and Chief Legal Officer of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, to discuss the recent amicus brief he recently filed urging the Supreme Court to affirm the President’s absolute power to fire executive branch officials. Chenoweth: “If you go back to the Constitution, all of the Executive power is given to the President. It's vested in him by Article Two, and then the appointments power is limited. It says for a lot of these positions, you have to have advice and consent of the Senate in order to make those appointments. But the removal power is not similarly limited. Madison said this shortly after the Constitution was drafted that this was deliberate.” “For the first time in my lifetime, and maybe the first time in living memory, the administrative state is going to shrink over the next four years, and I think that's exciting, because I don't think the founders ever really intended for the executive branch to be as large and as populated as it is. They always understood and George Washington understood this, that the President couldn't handle all the executive power by himself. That he would have to delegate it to other people, but we've come to a point where a lot of this power is being delegated in unaccountable ways, and that's what President Trump has said: No more, we're not going to have this.”

 

[spat]

“Unelected bureaucrats prevent us from having self government” - Mark Chenoweth​

At the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference, Jan Jekielek interviewed Mark Chenoweth, President and Chief Legal Officer of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, to discuss the recent amicus brief he recently filed urging the Supreme Court to affirm the President’s absolute power to fire executive branch officials. Chenoweth: “If you go back to the Constitution, all of the Executive power is given to the President. It's vested in him by Article Two, and then the appointments power is limited. It says for a lot of these positions, you have to have advice and consent of the Senate in order to make those appointments. But the removal power is not similarly limited. Madison said this shortly after the Constitution was drafted that this was deliberate.” “For the first time in my lifetime, and maybe the first time in living memory, the administrative state is going to shrink over the next four years, and I think that's exciting, because I don't think the founders ever really intended for the executive branch to be as large and as populated as it is. They always understood and George Washington understood this, that the President couldn't handle all the executive power by himself. That he would have to delegate it to other people, but we've come to a point where a lot of this power is being delegated in unaccountable ways, and that's what President Trump has said: No more, we're not going to have this.”

The idea of "independent agencies" is an anathema to the constitution.

The "independent" part of them is that they are independent of any accountability to any elected official.

To the left that is a feature. Much as they prattle on about "democracy" they hold the electorate in utter contempt and absolutely can't stand the idea of the government being constrained by them.