Every time the Supreme Court reminds Washington that the Constitution still exists, the same chorus erupts. Experts are clutching pearls. Editorial boards are lighting candles. We’re told democracy is dying because federal agencies might—might—have to answer to someone who actually ran for office.
This week’s outrage, fueled by rulings curbing bureaucratic power and cases like Trump v. Slaughter, follows a familiar script: unelected administrators lose a little authority, and suddenly the sky is falling.
Here’s the inconvenient question no one wants to answer:
Who elected the bureaucracy?
Trump v. Slaughter isn’t about Donald Trump’s personality, his tone, or his tweets. It’s about whether career officials can sit inside agencies and quietly veto the lawful decisions of a president they don’t like—then call it “neutral governance” with a straight face.
For years, we were sold a fairy tale: that bureaucrats are apolitical monks, guided only by data, immune to ideology, nobly protecting us from the messy business of democracy. Meanwhile, those same agencies wrote the rules, enforced the rules, reinterpreted the rules, and delayed the rules—depending on who was in the Oval Office.
That’s not expertise. That’s power.
The Supreme Court, through Trump v. Slaughter and its broader rollback of Chevron deference, is finally saying the quiet part out loud: the executive branch is not a self-governing monastery. It answers to the president. And the president answers to voters.
Cue the meltdown.
Suddenly, the people who warned endlessly about an “imperial presidency” are openly defending an imperial bureaucracy—a permanent ruling class insulated from elections, accountability, and consequences. Executive power was dangerous when exercised by someone they disliked. Bureaucratic power, apparently, is sacred so long as it produces the “right” outcomes.
That’s not constitutional concern. That’s selective outrage.
The Constitution never created a government run by credentialed lifers with job protection thicker than Fort Knox. It created a system where power is supposed to be visible, traceable, and removable. If a president screws up, voters can fire him. If a bureaucrat screws up, he gets a pension.
Trump v. Slaughter blows a hole in the comforting myth that democracy is best protected by people who can’t be voted out. It reminds us that “guardrails” are not supposed to replace elections—and that internal resistance is not a constitutional role.
This isn’t about liking Trump. It’s about whether elections still mean something—or whether we’ve quietly outsourced governance to people whose names you’ll never know and whose authority you can’t challenge.
The Court isn’t ending democracy.
It’s telling the administrative state: you work for the public, not the other way around.
And that, more than anything else, is what has them so upset.
The Valley Viewpoint 