New Chevron ruling injures US Deep State
Now that the 40-year-old Chevron precedent has been overturned, what will become of the federal bureaucracy’s power?
This past week the US Supreme Court overruled the 40-year-old Chevron deference standard. Previously, the framework created by Chevron required courts to defer to regulatory agencies when it came to ambiguities in legislation passed by Congress, so long as such interpretations were reasonable. Despite the term “reasonable” itself being ambiguous, the courts previously under Chevron were hesitant to label any administrative agencies’ prescriptions unreasonable. To put into perspective how powerful this previous standard was, one study reported that in cases where deference to Chevron was cited, the administrative agencies won out on their interpretation of what was “reasonable” nearly 80 percent of the time. This gave remarkable latitude to administrative agencies to interpret (or reinterpret) policy. Now, the courts have reasserted their power to interpret statutes themselves, without being forced to defer to bureaucrats.
The mainstream media’s primary criticism, apart from typical hysteria, was that such a course correction could jeopardize countless past and future regulations, making them subject to litigation and reversal. While these are interesting developments, the far more significant facet of this case is not power being diminished from any specific regulations, but rather from the regulators who comprise the federal bureaucracy.
The United States has a massive federal government, consisting of just under 3 million employees working under 2000+ agencies. These agencies nominally work on behalf of the executive branch but were (because of Chevron) empowered by legislatures to clarify and interpret laws on their own. In other words, these are the people who have the final say in directly implementing and enforcing the decisions created by preceding bodies like the president and the Congress. Under Chevron, they were also given the power to interpret statutes, thereby handing these groups the powers from all three branches of government.
The individuals who operate these agencies are opaque, often completely unknown to the public. Furthermore, they are unelected officials, in many cases retrieved from the private sector given their knowledge in various specialized fields. Many also often remain in their positions for decades, outlasting whichever party is in charge of the executive or legislative branches of government.
To an astute reader, this would seem to coincide perfectly with the definition of another popular political term: the deep state.
While the deep state also includes those who pressure various agencies and government officials, such as the military, foreign spy agencies, NGOs, and lobbyists, a fair definition of the deep state is unelected individuals who influence government policy through subtle and overt manipulation. This is precisely how the modern federal bureaucracy functions.
One of the deep state’s greatest boons to this end, namely manipulating government policy, came from this 40 year-long monopoly on interpreting ambiguous language from the legislature. The power to reinterpret is far more powerful than writing the law in the first place, because interpretation can augment the meaning in a wide variety of ways, even ones totally unintended by the legislators. This fact is observed more prominently with respect to Supreme Court rulings, when the justices interpret various legal provisions. Roe v. Wade (1973) famously read into the Constitution absurd connections between privacy and constitutional penumbras to the murder of unborn children, and it was considered reasonable precedent by millions of Americans for more than half a century.
Additionally, the federal bureaucracy is responsible for implementing the changes ordered by the top of the executive branch, the president. This would be an inconsequential detail if one were assuming that those working under the president are interested in following the orders of their chief executive. Instead, we have seen in recent years egregious instances of government employees seeking to thwart the agenda of their president. Back in 2018 one such deep state actor, Miles Taylor, bragged in the New York Times in an originally anonymous article that he, “vowed to thwart parts of [Trump’s] agenda” from the inside along with other officials.
This is a complete inversion of a transparent, accountable constitutional order as espoused by the founders. In fact, much of the blame for why no administration is even capable of delivering substantive change comes from this arrangement. Disloyal actors working quietly within the bloated administrative state, usurping powers reserved for elected officials to enforce the agendas of elites and special interests above sovereign American citizens.
It is important to note that while the Supreme Court has ruled against Chevron deference, that does not mean that its usage will be universally halted. As some constitutional scholars have already pointed out, lower courts can still try to resist this change as they did with rulings like DC v. Heller (2008). While there may be short-term consequences, the main threat this decision poses to the regime is reshaping and replacing our occupied opaque government with a more conservative, patriotic one.
The overturning of this precedent also cannot be understood in isolation. It is occurring at the same time as Project 2025, Biden’s visibly declining mental state, and Trump’s plan to reclassify and fire several thousand government employees. These circumstances all converge into one massive opportunity: the destruction and replacement of the American deep state.
While deep state power will certainly remain a hostile and potent threat in the coming years, the overturning of Chevron has now blunted one of the tools in their arsenal. Still, it bears repeating that victory is not assured. Leaving aside the concerns which could hinder or prevent a second Trump term (assassination, voter fraud, cowardly staff, etc.) many of these conservative decisions celebrated by right-wingers often don’t report on their subsequent failures to deliver the change they promise. Furthermore, diverting the power of reasonable interpretations back to judges does not mean the judges are certain to interpret future decisions in a manner conservatives prefer.
For example, after Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), the nominally conservative, originalist, Trump-appointed Justice Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in which he injected the concept of gender identity retroactively into the term sex as it was understood in 1964, despite the concept being totally foreign to that era’s legislators and voters. Even without conservatives shooting themselves in the foot, the liberals are already preparing their counterattack in the now likely event that Trump wins reelection and an army of his loyalists populate his new administration. While the language Justices Roberts and Gorsuch used in their opinions denouncing Chevron was strong, the effects are at present still more theoretical than tangible.
The main takeaway from these developments should be optimism, albeit a deeply cautious optimism. The deep state is clearly descending from its once invincible monopolar status, and the broader conservative nationalist movement, both culturally and politically, is on the rise. For the first time in multiple generations an opportunity has been almost providentially granted to reshape the destiny of our country, and to reassert the sovereignty of its people. Whether or not we succeed then becomes a function of preparation, and will.