Will the Supreme Court Overturn the Case That Created the Deep State?
Two cases, one being argued today, could wipe away the Deep State, “independent” power beyond the voters’ reach, and FDR's 90-year coup.
by Rod D. Martin
January 21, 2026
This morning the Supreme Court will hear Trump v. Cook, a case that began with an unprecedented move: President Trump fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. As usual, lower courts blocked him.
The press is framing this as a fight about “central bank independence” and even inflation fears. But that deliberately misses the real question at stake: Do we still have a Constitution, or do we have a permanent ruling class — credentialed, insulated, and effectively unfireable — running the country while elections serve as a ceremonial change of figureheads?
Trump v. Cook is not an isolated dispute. It is the Federal Reserve chapter in the same story the Court already confronted last month in Trump v. Slaughter, the FTC case that squarely asks the Supreme Court to admit what has been obvious since 1935: Humphrey’s Executor was a constitutional disaster.
Simply put, today’s argument is about whether the Supreme Court will continue to bless an unconstitutional fourth branch of government, run by “experts,” insulated from the voters, and wielding coercive power without democratic accountability.
Or to put that another way, does the Constitution’s Article 2, Section 1 have any meaning?
If the Court is serious about dismantling the legal architecture of the administrative state — as it was when it finally killed the awful Chevron decision in Loper Bright—then it cannot stop halfway. Chevron was one pillar. Humphrey’s is another. Kill one and keep the other and the Deep State survives, merely inconvenienced.
The Mistake That Made a Fourth Branch
In 1935, the Court faced a simple problem. Franklin Roosevelt fired an FTC commissioner. Congress had written a statute trying to prevent that — saying commissioners could be removed only “for cause,” such as malfeasance. The commissioner died; his estate sued for back pay; and the Court chose the bureaucracy over the elected executive.
To justify that outcome, the justices did something extraordinary: they invented a category of power that does not exist anywhere in the Constitution. They described the FTC as a “body of experts,” exercising “quasi-legislative” and “quasi-judicial” powers — therefore, not really executive, and therefore not truly subject to the President’s removal power.
This was a constitutional sleight of hand. The FTC doesn’t just write binding rules. It investigates. It prosecutes. It punishes. Those are executive functions, whether you label them “quasi” or “semi” or “expert.” “Executive” means executing the law — using the state’s coercive power against citizens. That is exactly what the FTC does.
Ask yourself: if the FTC doesn’t fall under the Executive Branch, under which branch should it fall? You actually have to pick one: if it doesn’t fall within the Constitution’s boundaries, it’s a separate, unconstitutional form of government. And that’s exactly how most of government has operated for nearly a century.
The Founders built a system where you can trace responsibility. Congress writes laws. Courts interpret and apply them. The President executes them. And because the President is a single person elected by the whole nation, accountability is direct: if the executive branch governs badly, the people can remove its head.
That doesn’t mean the President is a king. He is checked by Congress, checked by courts, checked by federalism, checked by elections. But he is in charge of execution. That is the bargain. That is what “The executive Power shall be vested in a President” means. It’s also why we abandoned the Articles of Confederation for the system the Founders created.
If Presidents can’t fire bureaucrats, you have no say over them. But they have plenty of say over you: government yes, but not by the consent of the governed. The executive power has been vested in them, not the elected President. And when the voters cannot fire the people governing them — any and all of them, albeit indirectly through elections — you are not governing yourselves. You are being governed.
Ruled, actually.
That is why this question sits at the center of everything I’ve written about the Deep State, and Trump’s counterrevolution against it: elections have to matter. And if elections do not actually change who wields power, they are just theater.
So what did Humphrey’s Executor really do?
