Millions of conservative Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because he recognized that appointing Supreme Court justices was among the most important things a president does.

And we were not disappointed. The hysterical reaction of the Left is proof enough of that.

The former president is now giving conservatives another reason to help reinstall him: He promises to get the “administrative state” under control. His second-term agenda has caused the media mouthpieces of that state to sound the alarm.

Trump Sought to Drain the Swamp

Trump made millions of Americans aware of what academics called “the administrative state” — the bloated, permanent bureaucracy that runs our lives and does not respond to the will of the voters as expressed in elections. These powerful agencies (the Fed, the EPA, the NLRB, the CFPB — the list is endless) make rules with the force of laws, prosecute violations of their rules, and adjudicate cases involving them. They combine legislative, executive, and judicial powers in what President James Madison called “the definition of tyranny.” Some called it “the Deep State”; Trump pithily dubbed it “the Swamp” and sought to drain it.

Trump’s chief domestic adviser, Steve Bannon, announced the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” The first Trump administration certainly made some improvements in the dysfunctional system. But it was more like the “regulatory relief” seen in the Reagan years than fundamental, systematic reform.

The Swamp survived the Trump administration. More than that, it drove him from office.

Recognizing the threat Trump posed to their system, the D.C. Establishment did all in its power to undermine his administration — just as it did with Richard Nixon. Nixon, like many of his presidential successors, wanted to get the bureaucracy under presidential control. But he was the first Republican to threaten the overwhelmingly Democratic Deep State, so it used the Watergate scandal to oust him. (READ MORE: We’re All Michael Corleone Now)

Reinstituting Constitutional Government

Trump now has a clear and convincing constitutional theory to guide his second term: what scholars call “the unitary executive.” Quite simply, this theory holds that the Constitution means what it says in Article II: “The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States.”

The most crucial decision at the Constitutional Convention made the executive one person, not a plurality of persons. And the Constitution grants that person the executive power — not “some” executive power, or “executive power herein granted,” or “such executive power as Congress chooses to extend.” If a power is executive, it belongs to the president.

This theory does not deny the “checks and balances” built into the Constitution, which sometimes explicitly withhold or share executive powers. Declaring war and making treaties were powers that belonged to the king alone, but the Constitution gives the former to Congress and the latter to the Senate. But the removal power is the president’s alone. The Constitution gives him the right to control subordinate officers in the executive branch. But ever since the late 19th century — and especially since the New Deal — Congress has undermined the Constitution by creating a plural executive.

History of the Plural Executive

In 1887, Congress created the first “independent regulatory agency,” the Interstate Commerce Commission, to regulate railroads. The president appointed (with Senate confirmation) its members, but he could not remove them. Congress gave the ICC the vague task of ensuring “just and reasonable rates” — making the tough political decisions that congressmen didn’t want to make. When Congress increased the ICC’s powers in 1906, the agency promptly ruined the railroad industry, which had to be nationalized during World War I and reestablished under a new regulatory regime in 1920. (READ MORE: The Reality of the New Deal)

Since nothing succeeds like failure in Washington, progressives created a slew of new agencies under President Woodrow Wilson (who, as a political scientist, was the father of American public administration). Congress handed over to the Fed its power to set monetary policy. After each inept mishandling of economic crises, the Fed received more power, spawning spinoffs like the CFPB. The Federal Trade Commission, created in 1914, was told to stamp out “unfair methods of competition.” Since nobody defined those, the FTC has been an agency searching for a mission, the most recent being the corporate pursuit of “environmental, social, and governmental” (ESG) goals under Leah Khan.

The administrative state came of age with the New Deal. Congress had created so many new agencies that President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged to put them all under presidential direction — per the “unitary executive” theory. Though this was the right thing to do regarding constitutional structure, it would have only worsened the constitutional substance problem — that Congress had delegated to these agencies powers it did not possess (like regulating labor relations or agricultural production). Congress refused to give the president the power he sought, partly to preserve its influence over “independent” agencies and partly because FDR had also proposed to “pack” the Supreme Court.

The administrative state has only grown since the New Deal, especially during the Great Society of the 1960s. It destroyed Nixon when he took it on. Reagan was unable to do more than bend the curve of growth. The Bushes only augmented it. 

A restored President Trump would have an ally in this campaign — the Supreme Court he shaped in his first term. The justices have begun to rein in the administrative state, reconsidering the carte-blanche “deference” that it has given to the agencies since the New Deal, reviving the principle that Congress cannot “delegate” its legislative powers, and curtailing the insulated “independence” of administrators. 

Together, Trump and the Supreme Court might get Congress to do its job — to legislate within the bounds of the Constitution.