The Shadow Docket strikes again ...

From left, Federal Trade Commissioners Lina Khan, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya attend a House Judiciary Committee hearing in 2023. (Shuran Huang/For The Washington Post)

The supine sc does it again, using the shadow docket to make a ruling letting Trump fire a federal employee without for cause. As stated in Total Control, these are the steps needed for the orange menace to take over the country's finances as needs warrant.

Phase one. Fire a federal employee without for cause

"For cause" refers to the specific reasons that justify the termination of an agreement, such as an employment contract or business relationship. 

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to fire the sole remaining Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission, the latest victory in his aggressive push to exert greater control over the federal bureaucracy.

The justices overturned a lower-court injunction that reinstated Rebecca Slaughter to her position with the agency that oversees antitrust and consumer protection issues while litigation over her removal works its way through the courts.

The ruling — while provisional — is significant because the high court also said it will hear arguments in December on overturning a 90-year-old precedent that allowed Congress to set up independent, nonpartisan agencies insulated from political interference by the president if they do not wield executive power.

As is customary in cases decided on the emergency docket, the justices did not offer reasons for their ruling and it was unsigned, so the vote count was unclear.

The decision came over the objections of the court’s three liberal justices, who have regularly argued against such moves in a series of rulings by the high court allowing the president to fire the heads of several independent agencies.

“The majority, stay order by stay order, has handed full control of all those agencies to the President,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent. “He may now remove — so says the majority, though Congress said differently — any member he wishes, for any reason or no reason at all. And he may thereby extinguish the agencies’ bipartisanship and independence.”

Phase 2. Fire yet another without for cause

The final case is Trump v. Cook, which is likely to reach the Supreme Court as soon as Tuesday. Cook involves Trump’s attempt to fire a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, in violation of a federal statute which only allows Fed governors to be fired “for cause.” Late on Monday, a federal appeals court denied Trump this power — although it did so over the dissent of a judge who previously worked in Trump’s White House.

Trump, in other words, seeks total control over US monetary policy. He seeks the power to cancel federal grants or even eliminate entire federal programs at will. And he claims the power to raise trillions of dollars in new taxes by his mere decree.