~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗚𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗡𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧~𝗕𝗬 𝗘𝗟𝗢𝗡 𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗞, 𝗢𝗙 𝗘𝗟𝗢𝗡 𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗞 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗘𝗟𝗢𝗡 𝗠𝗨𝗦𝗞

 From the editor: Below is an excerpt from an article published in "The New Republic," written by Matt Ford, entitled "Elon Musk Has Broken the Constitutional Order."

The author predicts two agencies Musk will attempt to dismantle once he finishes destroying USAID.  

Evidently, Musk/Trump have already started tearing apart the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, removing the agency's director.  

It is hard to predict exactly what the Trump administration will do next after it finishes off USAID. One cannot help but notice, however, that the administration has taken similar steps against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The White House forced out Rohit Chopra, the agency’s director, on February 1. It has not named a nominee for Senate confirmation to replace him. Instead, the White House designated Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent as its acting director. Bessent promptly ordered the agency to stop almost all of its existing regulatory work.

The CFPB, which was established by the Dodd-Frank financial reforms of 2011, is dedicated to policing fraudulent and abusive practices in the nation’s consumer-facing financial industries: mortgages, insurance, debt collection, credit reports, payday lenders, and so on. In short, it exists to protect Americans from predatory practices by capital. Unfortunately for Americans and the CFPB itself, those predators donate extensively to right-wing politicians and organizations.

Republican lawmakers have waged war against the agency since its creation. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, said last month that he wanted to “delete” the agency outright. Through litigation, the CFPB’s foes managed to persuade the Supreme Court to end protections that preserved its independence, allowing Trump to install his own leadership over the agency during his first term. Payday lenders even convinced right-wing judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to declare the entire agency unconstitutional at one point because of its funding mechanism during the Biden administration.

The Fifth Circuit’s ruling was ultimately overturned by the justices last term. But it would be a mistake to interpret that ruling as a sign of the court’s favorability toward the agency. Indeed, if I had to choose an independent agency to dismantle that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority would care the least about, I would choose the CFPB. The court’s conservatives have palpable disdain for it. They often find themselves sounding like the Continental Congress decrying the British Crown when writing about it.

Take, for instance, how Justice Brett Kavanaugh generally described independent agencies like the CFPB in a lawsuit against the agency while he served on the D.C. Circuit. “The independent agencies collectively constitute, in effect, a headless fourth branch of the U.S. government,” he wrote. “They exercise enormous power over the economic and social life of the United States. Because of their massive power and the absence of presidential supervision and direction, independent agencies pose a significant threat to individual liberty and to the constitutional separation of powers and checks and balances.”

In the dismissal case I mentioned earlier, Chief Justice John Roberts warned in his majority opinion that the agency “has the authority to bring the coercive power of the state to bear on millions of private citizens and businesses” and could levy “knee-buckling penalties against private citizens.” And in the appropriations clause case last term, Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented outright, complaining that the agency enjoyed “a degree of financial autonomy that a Stuart king would envy.”

Like one of the Stuart kings, other agencies besides USAID and the CFPB may be on the chopping block. The White House is reportedly drafting an executive order to “eliminate” the Department of Education, a long-standing conservative policy goal that also cannot lawfully be done without an act of Congress. With lawmakers either impotent or supine, the last independent check on Musk and Trump is the Supreme Court. And if the court either rules in their favor or finds its rulings against this misrule ignored, then Americans will only know government by Elon Musk, of Elon Musk, and for Elon Musk.