How do you Trump-proof an agency?

In an effort to Trump-proof, NIH has designated an official to identify political meddling in the agency’s work and is tasking a soon-to-be-established scientific integrity council with reviewing those cases. The White House knows Trump could still cast those plans aside but is calculating that doing so will set off alarms with the media, Congress and the public.

  Politico

And the only faction there that MIGHT have any pushback would be the public.

The Biden administration likely hopes GOP lawmakers, even those who think the NIH needs an overhaul, will temper Trump’s moves.

Have they learned nothing?

The plan to protect the agency’s independence is critical because the public needs to be able to rely on NIH to “generate rigorous, trusted evidence to inform public health.”

That is absolutely true, but depending on "alarms" and, especially, GOP lawmakers is nothing short of pipe dreams.

In addition to assigning Jorgenson as the NIH’s watchdog, the White House has directed other health agencies that got caught up in the Covid wars, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, to strengthen their scientific integrity plans, both to ensure that research is rigorous, bias-free, transparent and reliable — and that nonpartisan civil servants are making the research decisions.

Hello?? Anybody awake in here?? Trump has specifically said he will be firing civil servants and replacing them with loyalists.

NIH’s scientific integrity plan [is] not written into law or regulation.

Nor will it be as long as Republicans hold power. Plus - Trump in a second term will not be concerned about laws and regulations. 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Chevron deference case

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a case that would take power away from federal regulatory agencies.

The 1984 decision the court is reconsidering said courts should side with a federal agency’s interpretation of a law as long as it’s a reasonable interpretation of what Congress intended.

[...]

The challengers want the Supreme Court to get rid of [the] landmark 1984 decision, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which is one of the most frequently cited Supreme Court decisions.

Ironically, that decision was created in a case that cut back on regulations – and it was applauded by conservatives at the time.

But more recently, conservatives have argued the decision gave too much leeway to agencies and not enough to the courts, which are charged under the Constitution with interpreting laws.

[...]

Dozens of outside associations and others filed supporting briefs in what could be one of the most significant cases the court decides this year.

  USA Today

And I suspect there are at least four, and may well be six, justices who are eager to take the power away from experts at federal agencies and give it to themselves.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 08:52 am:

The term “Chevron deference” comes from a 1984 case, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Counsel. At issue was a provision of the Clean Air Act that required manufacturing plants to get permits before increasing toxic emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency made a rule, pursuant to the Clean Air Act, that allowed some of these industrial plants to increase emissions in certain cases without a permit, and environmental groups sued. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled (albeit with three justices recusing themselves) that the EPA had the authority to make the rule and that the courts should “defer” to the judgment of executive agencies when acts of Congress are ambiguous or plausibly allow the agencies to make additional regulations.

[...]

[The conservative justices are] trying to place their unelected, unaccountable policy preferences ahead of the laws made by the elected members of Congress or rules instituted by the president. If conservatives get their way, elections won’t really matter, because courts will be able to limit the scope of congressional regulation and the ability of presidents to enforce those regulations effectively. And the dumbest justice of all, alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh, basically said so during oral arguments.

I’m contractually obligated to tell you that the cases were technically about fees that fisheries are required to pay to federal observers. But all the justices talked about was Chevron deference. Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor even bothered to mention the fish, three hours and 20 minutes into a three-and-a-half-hour hearing.

[...]

[F]or most of its history, Chevron deference was lauded by conservatives (including Federalist Society svengali Antonin Scalia), who thought that deferring to executive agencies put power back into the hands of elected officials and took power away from “liberal” “activist” judges who might otherwise do things like demand additional environmental regulations. Conservatives have flip-flopped in recent years, largely because it’s easier now for them to control policymaking through the unelected courts than it is to keep control of the executive branch and its agencies. Liberals, for their part, have generally been in favor of Chevron deference this whole time, because it places power with experts instead of with judges.

[...]

Without executive agencies with robust powers, it will be easier for companies to pollute the air and water, billionaires to cheat on their taxes, tech bros to monopolize markets, and mass shooters to buy restricted guns and ammunition.

[...]

The legality of every new financial product, workplace safety standard, abortion pill or contraceptive, will not be up to the elected representatives who crafted the law or the experts who were appointed by the president to implement it, but will come down to [...] what five Supreme Court justices think the law should be.

[...]

And then there was Justice Sam Alito, who defended his flip-flopping on the issue by saying that Chevron was necessary in the past when judges were motivated by policy considerations, but is not necessary now because judges like him no longer put their policy preferences into the law. I’m not making that up. Alito, of all people, the man who does nothing but make policy about abortion rights, voting rights, and affirmative action based on his own personal grievances, said that judges are no longer motivated by policy concerns.

[...]

Kavanaugh was the one who put that future on obvious display during yesterday’s oral arguments. While questioning Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, Kavanaugh complained that the law changes “wildly” every “four to eight years” depending on which party wins the White House. He seemed very concerned that new presidents get to carry out their policy initiatives through the executive agencies, and argued that if Congress tried to get rid of Chevron deference through legislation (which, I’ll note, Congress does not wish to do, because getting rid of Chevron deference is too stupid even for a Republican-controlled Congress), “the president would veto it.”

It fell to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to remind Kavanaugh that the fact that the law changes based on who wins an election is not a nefarious woke plot to confuse people who like beer but “a function of democracy.”

  Elie Mystal @ The Nation