> it will be confirmed that the executive branch has unilateral power to fire people working in the executive branch.

Do you hold the opinion that the Civil Service Reform Act is unconstitutional? What about the Reorganization Act of 1939? If the President can unilaterally fire any employee of the Executive Branch, why bother with Senate confirmation at all?

Since "at the pleasure of the president" is not found in the constitution quoting the constitution does not advance your argument.

On the contrary, of all the appointments that are to be made under Article 2 power by the executive branch, only the judicial ones are explicitly listed as being for life. Those appointments are the explicit exception to the rule that POTUS can fire people that he hires.

If you didn't have a dog in this fight you'd concede the constitution is silent on the topic of presidential firings, since that is a simple fact.

I'll thank you for providing the direct quote which highlights the gap between the talking point and the actual text itself.

You seem to be missing how every point there is underlined with "With the consent and approval of congress". No one can utilaterally do anything in an act of checks and balances. JUdicial interprets and enforces laws on every branch, Congress can re-write the law if they can agree to, And the president is more or less left with a variation of 10th amendment powers with pardons and EO's without needing to consult anyone else.

> it will be confirmed that the executive branch has unilateral power to fire people working in the executive branch

I could see it playing out like this, except that you can't fire so many that the departmental mission enacted by congress is substantially or totally hindered.

Fire any one particular person? Maybe. Fire everyone in a department? What power does congress have if that were allowed?

The power of the purse, like always.

Right, but if Congress allocates the money, and the executive won't spend it, then what?

Then we have rules against impoundment. That has yet to work its way through the courts; we'll see if those rules survive and have any teeth.

>...and the executive won't spend it, then what?

Strict reading of the Constitution, nothing. Our government was not set up to be efficient, more the opposite. The Founders were distrustful of government, especially a federal government over their states, so they set up a government that wasn't good at doing things.

Whether you and I still want that is a different question, but the ultimate legality of the congress not being able to compel the executive to take action seems pretty clear.

>rules against impoundment

this is congress making rules that the executive must do something, which again is not clear they have the authority to do

>Strict reading of the Constitution, nothing. Our government was not set up to be efficient, more the opposite.

Thankfully, 200 years of judicial interpretation and precedent disagree with this conclusion.

And of course, America's job is not to move fast and break things. it's to be as safe and stable as possible.

>this is congress making rules that the executive must do something, which again is not clear they have the authority to do

yup, like I said. Precedent on this has been proven wrong every time. That's exactly what the judicial branch should be doing.

> ... which again is not clear they have the authority to do

Those rules were passed in the 1970s. Has there been a Supreme Court decision on their validity? (Real question; I don't know.)

But if the president can decide to not spend the money, how does Congress have the power of the purse?

It only makes sense in the context of the government being designed to not do things. Congress has the power to not spend. It would appear it doesn't have the power to spend.

Your interpretation at this point makes no sense unless you really believe that somehow the Founding Fathers (after overthrowing a king) wanted to low key-install a king anyway. Even then, these are overly cynical interpretations with no real basis to back them up outside of nitpicking singular words from centuries ago.

We did a horrible job interpreting that for 250 years if true.

If congress has this power, how is the current executive accomplishing this?

I'm asking myself that as well. Even if Trump is convicted, JD Vance will still run some of their not-illegal-but-still-kinda-crazy plans. Is over half of congress really just okay with a President declaring himself King? It's a bit absurd.

Judicial branch is putting up a fight, though. But they are by design the slowest, most meticulate branch.

The executive branch has the power to fire people, but not to cut departments when those departments are established by congress.

If "legal" just means "whatever the supreme court says it is" without regard to corruption or logic then the word legal has more or less lost any useful meaning.

That’s always what the word legal has meant, at least in the US.

Not always. Since around the time of Reagan, the word legal has meant to be whatever the conservative elites want. They have gone to great lengths to corrupt the highest courts in the country.

The "original sin" there was Roe v. Wade. A right to privacy gives you a right to an abortion? That was highly motivated reasoning, and everybody knew it. (7-2 decision, on a court with 7 liberals and 2 conservatives... what a surprise.)

So conservatives said, all right, if that's the way the game is played, then we need to own the Supreme Court. And here we are.

Don't act like the game started with Reagan. It didn't. It's just that the other side was thoroughly winning before then.

I think you should look up what kinds of cases were rejected in the 60's/70's before claiming "liberals started it". They weren't super radicalized back then as to only vote on their own lines.

I argue conservatives started it with Citizens United. Thereby making the democracit process a game of who kisses the ring of the most billionaires.

So if Congress passes a law that a department must be created and has this budget and these powers and must do these things, but the President just refuses to hire anyone to staff it, you think that is legal?

Well, it will be really funny when the executive branch starts firing all the judiciaries security (USMS JSD, under DoJ) to save costs. But secondary outcomes have either not dawned or dissuaded the recent courts on their path to increasing executive power.

Ahh yes, the constitutional power the executive has to say “I don’t like what the legislative signed into law and funded, so I just won’t do it.”

You can thank Biden, actually.

On the merits, this Court previously held that no provision of § 8468 prevented the plaintiffs' removal. See Mem. Op. at 7. First, the Court noted that “the power of removal from office is incident to the power of appointment” “absent a specific provision to the contrary.” Id. at 6 (quoting Carlucci v. Doe, 488 U.S. 93, 95 (1988) (citation omitted)). Second, the Court held that the plain text of § 8468(b), which provides only that Board members “serve for three years each” on staggered terms, does not meet that standard. Id. at 7. Third, the Court read Parsons v. United States, 167 U.S. 324 (1897), and Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), to hold that term-of-office provisions, standing alone, do not confer removal protection.

https://casetext.com/case/spicer-v-biden-1

There’s a big difference between presidential appointments and the rank and file of the civil service. (For what it’s worth, I also think we should seriously consider a constitutional amendment to prohibit the firing of political appointees, in exchange for all their terms being staggered.)