Snapshot · The Bulwark Podcast
Trump claimed the Slaughter ruling was 'the greatest increase in presidential power in 100 years,' overruling 90 years of precedent on independent agency heads.
Where this was said
At 12:50 · chapter starts 6:30
The TPS ruling draws out one of the episode's sharpest analytical tensions: French and Miller agree the Trump administration is being 'unspeakably cruel' and 'blatantly racist,' but the law they're exploiting was built to enable exactly this. [1] — David French "The TPS statute is congressional malpractice — it handed the executive branch unlimited discretion to revoke status and then explicitly bar…" 09:03 The statute grants enormous executive discretion to revoke TPS status and then explicitly bars courts from reviewing that decision — what French calls congressional malpractice at 11 on a 10-point scale. The legal path challengers tried — reviewing the process rather than the decision itself — was always an uphill argument. The racial animus question gets more complicated: the Supreme Court noted the administration has cancelled every TPS designation that came up for review regardless of nationality, which the majority used to argue neutral application. French then surfaces a striking inconsistency: in the Hawaii gun law case, the Court refused to credit a facially neutral 1865 Louisiana law because its real purpose was targeting Black citizens. But in the TPS case, it credited neutral application despite explicit racist statements. The asymmetry invites a Calvin-Ball charge — that constitutional principles bend to outcome preferences.
The TPS statute is congressional malpractice — it handed the executive branch unlimited discretion to revoke status and then explicitly barred courts from reviewing that decision. The cruelty of the Trump administration's actions is undeniable, but the law they're exploiting was written to enable exactly this.
The TPS statute explicitly bars judicial review of revocation decisions, which David French called 'congressional malpractice — an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10.'
The Slaughter ruling gives the president full control over independent agency heads — but simultaneously shrinks what those agencies can actually do. The next Democratic president can sweep out Trump's appointees on day one. The tradeoff: the post-Watergate regulatory architecture is mostly gone.
A total of 8 states have filed lawsuits against social media platforms, including an ongoing case in Tennessee, using product liability and public nuisance theories to seek accountability.
France built 56 nuclear plants in the 1970s and now has the cheapest energy in Europe, making it independent of Russian or Middle Eastern energy geopolitics.
Estonia has a single tax form, a law preventing the government from asking citizens for the same information twice, and a flat rate of tax — enabling competitive taxation.
Portugal's Lisbon, once a city with a major heroin problem, legalised drugs and redirected enforcement spending into rehabilitation and housing, dramatically reducing crime.
The first Boland Amendment banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras passed the House unanimously — yet the Reagan administration ignored it.
Over just two years, Saudi Arabia alone donated $32 million to the Contra rebels, giving loosely affiliated factions millions they had no way to spend on arms.
The National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty raised $6.3 million for the Contras but only $3.3 million reached them — a shockingly low 52% program expense rate.
Richard Secord and Albert Hakim marked up their arms shipments to the Contras by as much as 300%, making enormous personal profits from the covert operation.
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, tapped to run the entire covert Contra support operation, had no prior experience in covert operations whatsoever — he was learning as he went.
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