And yet, that’s what the Supreme Court appears prepared to do.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem flank Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office, on August 25, 2025.
(Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
This week, the Supreme Court made clear that it was likely going to rule in favor of Donald Trump’s right to summarily fire board members of supposedly independent regulatory agencies. If and when such a ruling comes down from the hard-right justices who dominate the court, it will unravel basic government structures and guardrails that have been in place for almost a century. It will also hand even more executive power to a wannabe autocrat who has no internal moral braking mechanism and is already armed with the shameful Supreme Court ruling that he is immune from prosecution for acts committed in an official capacity. It will, quite simply, be a green light for capricious, corrupt, revenge-based politicking, and for the dismantling of the regulatory structures and government agencies established under law by Congress.
In all the key government departments and agencies, Trump uses his hiring and firing powers to tame honorable public servants and to replace them with the most amoral, pliant, sycophantic—and frequently grossly incompetent—men and women he can find. It’s as if he’s been given a who’s who of toadies and been told he can browse through the list to choose the very worst of the worst.
Hence the extraordinary events of the past weeks. America’s Caligula may not have made his horse a US senator, but he’s had no problem making his horse’s ass, willing to conjure up whatever war crimes du jour the boss orders, defense secretary. Witness the allegations that Pete Hegseth issued verbal “kill them all” orders regarding America’s rampaging assassination campaign against alleged drug mules in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Or look at Trump’s repeated use of the most foul, racist, and demeaning descriptions of the Somali American population. Instead of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem resigning in horror at how the presidency is being tarnished through the use of Hitlerian language, she has sought to out-compete Trump by issuing her own social media postings that are, somehow, even more odious. One of them, in particular, is worth quoting in full: “I just met with the President. I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies. Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”
Forget the soaring oratory of an FDR or a JFK. This isn’t even the language of a Reagan or a Nixon. Rather, it’s the guttural mewling of an insecure underling desperate to get the schoolyard bully’s attention by throwing in a few punches of their own against the friendless kids in the corner. This is what happens when government is captured by gangsters.
Similarly, the government’s new National Security Strategy—which explicitly allies the US with fascist parties in Europe, largely sides with Russia over Ukraine, and declares it to be a US national security priority to limit migration into Europe and thus “save Western Civilization”—ought to have had every staffer at the State Department, from Marco Rubio (a son of immigrants, it is worth repeatedly shouting from the rooftops) on down running pell-mell for the exits. But instead, they all hunkered down, made their peace with this mad statement of intent, and sat back as the rest of the world gasped in astonishment at America’s priorities in the Trump era.
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When news broke mid-week that Customs and Border Protection was going to start demanding five years of social media access, e-mail addresses, and a tranche of personal data for visa applicants from the 42 countries—mainly made up of America’s closest allies—whose citizens can currently apply online for a US tourist visa, and who can currently get that visa within a matter of hours, there was nary a peep from any Trump officials or GOP members of Congress; no matter that this could shred the US tourism industry, or that it could lead other countries to enact similarly invasive visa restrictions on Americans seeking to travel abroad. The boss and his henchmen want to wall off the country from the rest of the world, so it shall be done.
This is truly senescent autocracy; it is the peculiarly toxic combination of Trump’s instinct to personalize all power and what looks at this point to be a raging, impulsive, senility. And yet, no one is standing up and saying “enough already.”
What would it look like if the Supreme Court does indeed concentrate even more power in this vicious old man’s hands, allowing him to fire any and every federal employee on a middle-of-the-night whim? Ask Abby McIlraith and Declan Crowe, two of the FEMA employees who signed the Katrina Declaration warning of the risk of epic disasters because of the evisceration of the agency they work at. Both were among the signatories who were summarily placed on administrative leave after the letter was published; both, in the days surrounding Thanksgiving, received notices from the Office of Professional Responsibility clearing them of wrongdoing and approving their return to work; and both were then immediately placed back on administrative leave by the Trump administration within hours of their getting back to their office.
What about the legally enshrined protections for whistleblowers? For the birds.
Speaking to The Nation in their capacities as private citizens, McIlraith and Crowe expressed dismay at the breakdown of institutional safeguards. “We want justice for whistleblowers,” Crowe told me this week. “Not just in FEMA but all organizations. When things like this happen, FEMA’s ability to provide services is weakened.”
For McIlraith, the vindictiveness of the government repeatedly placing employees on administrative leave—paying them but preventing them from working—made neither economic nor political sense. “It’s certainly not government efficiency to be paying us to not do our jobs. That’s pretty egregious,” she said.
McIlraith had just about enough time back at the office to make plans to attend the upcoming holiday party when she received word that she would have to leave again. “It was pretty odd,” she said, “not a great feeling; I’m concerned I’ll be fired for this and will have to get another job.”
Now imagine Trump being able to treat quite literally every public service employee, every independent regulatory agency board member, the same way. This isn’t a recipe for making America great again; as even this uniquely myopic Supreme Court should be able to see at this point, it is, rather, a road map to utter chaos and corruption.
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