This post was originally published on Legal Planet. Reprinted with permission.
At its core, the unitary executive theory (UET) says that the president can fire anyone in the executive branch for any reason or no reason. Although the UET purports to be based on originalism, it has become clear that the U.S. Supreme Court has no interest at all in examining the history. Supreme Court conservatives think complete presidential control is simply the ideal way to run the government. The deep flaws in that theory are now becoming apparent.
Critics of the unitary executive theory have tended to focus on why some decisions about broad government policies should be insulated from political influence. For example, we might want rules about securities markets to be decided by experts, not politicians. That may be true, but it doesn’t turn out to be the real problem with direct presidential control. The UET’s worst effects are in two other areas.
The first involves case-by-case decisions like whether to approve a merger or grant a broadcasting license. Politicizing these decisions has been a disaster because they’ve given the president credible threats to use against any company that crosses him.
The second serious effect relates to internal guardrails against government abuse. There’s an agency in charge of protecting government employees from arbitrary firings and demotions. If that agency is at the beck and call of the president, protections against the politicization of the civil service are meaningless. This means that none of us can be assured of impartial application of the law, or even that the government will make an effort to follow laws it doesn’t like, such as the Clean Air Act.
The rhetoric of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is almost as damaging as its actual rulings. The Court says that the president is the only person who constitutes an entire branch of government, that everyone else in the executive branch is merely his stand-in, and that the president has unique legitimacy as the only officer elected nationwide. This rhetoric actively encourages presidents to use all the power of government, all the time, to achieve their political goals.
Since Watergate, there’s been a norm against presidential interference with criminal investigations and prosecutions. But if everyone in the Justice Department is just an extension of the president’s will, it’s hard to see why the president shouldn’t just roll up his sleeves and make the decisions himself. We’ve all seen the consequences of that in Donald Trump’s vengeance campaign against perceived enemies like James Comey and Letitia James.
You would think that some of the Supreme Court conservatives would see the flaws in their ideas about how to run the government. Sadly, there’s no evidence they’ve seen the light. As recent oral argument indicated, they seem to be willing to make an ad hoc exception for the Federal Reserve. But other than that, they seem happy to allow a single person’s whims to control the government.
We’re going to need to figure out some new approaches if we want to have a government that implements the law in a rational, even-handed way.
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Daniel Farber | January 26, 2026
At its core, the unitary executive theory (UET) says that the president can fire anyone in the executive branch for any reason or no reason. Although the UET purports to be based on originalism, it has become clear that the U.S. Supreme Court has no interest at all in examining the history. Supreme Court conservatives think complete presidential control is simply the ideal way to run the government. The deep flaws in that theory are now becoming apparent.
Daniel Farber | January 9, 2026
In 2025, President Donald Trump rolled out new initiatives at a dizzying rate. That story, in one form or another, dominated the news. This year, much of the news will again be about Trump, but he will have less control of the narrative. Legal and political responses to Trump will play a greater role, as will economic developments. Trump’s anti-environmental crusade may run into strong headwinds.
Hannah Wiseman, Seth Blumsack | December 15, 2025
As projections of U.S. electricity demand rise sharply, President Donald Trump is looking to coal – historically a dominant force in the U.S. energy economy – as a key part of the solution. In an April 2025 executive order, for instance, Trump used emergency powers to direct the Department of Energy to order the owners of coal-fired power plants that were slated to be shut down to keep the plants running. But there remain limits to the president’s power to slow the declining use of coal in the U.S.
Daniel Farber | December 11, 2025
A recent U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memo proclaimed the Trump administration’s commitment to “deregulating at an unprecedented scale.” To advance that agenda, the memo tells agencies to put a thumb on the scale in favor of rollbacks. In contrast, most lawyers and economists would say that regulation and deregulation are subject to the same rules. Sometimes, the conventional wisdom is right.
Madison Condon | December 3, 2025
In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni traces the concept of the “externality” across the past century. This history begins in 1920, when the economist Alfred Pigou observed how private market transactions could impose uncompensated harms on third parties, such that the prices of goods failed to reflect their true (social) cost. Fortunately, he argued, these external costs could be rectified by government intervention: adding a tax equal to the social cost, which would cause market trading to “internalize” the harm and produce the optimum amount of the activity in question. Free-market advocates viewed such externalities as a rare exception to the general rule of the wisdom of the market. As Battistoni describes, however, this would change in the coming decades.
Sophie Loeb | December 2, 2025
On November 13, 20 folks attended the second annual rural clean energy convening in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, co-sponsored by the Center for Progressive Reform and the Center for Energy Education. Attendees included academics, energy policy advocates, small-scale developers, technical experts, and government representatives. We built off last year’s convening, addressing the new North Carolina policy landscape and context given the repeal of federal funding, the state’s proposed unfavorable carbon plan, and rising energy burden in communities.
Rachel Mayo | November 25, 2025
This November, we honor the leadership, knowledge, and resilience of America’s first peoples, who have safeguarded the land, water, and air that sustain us all.
Daniel Farber | November 13, 2025
Although Congress vetoed California’s most recent vehicle regulations, the state can pass new regulations so long as there are significant differences from the ones Congress overturned. The Trump administration has been arguing all along that California lacks the power to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles. Those regulations are a crucial part of the state’s climate policy. Sooner or later, courts will need to decide the extent of California’s legal authority over vehicle emissions. The issues are complex, involving an unusual statutory scheme. Here’s what you need to know, and why I think California should win this fight.
Minor Sinclair | November 12, 2025
After nearly five years of serving this amazing organization and its inspiring community of scholars, advocates, and activists, I’ll be stepping down as executive director of the Center for Progressive Reform.