Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Readers of Paul Jacob’s Common Sense are quite aware that he has long targeted the FCC on this site, as can be seen by just a few of his past Common Sense commentaries:

• Net Neutrality, Dead Again (January 16, 2025)
• Gloating Time (December 17, 2019)
• Freak-Out, Death Threats and … Neutrality (December 17, 2017)

But if you yearn for something more, consult Robby Soave on Ayn Rand:

In 1962, Rand penned a prophetic warning about the public interest standard, which then–FCC Chair Newton N. Minow was citing to justify pressuring television companies to create more educational programming. Minow famously railed against a supposedly “vast wasteland” of shoddy television shows, and he claimed that the FCC’s charter empowered him to push for editorial changes to the medium that would align with his view of the public interest.

“You must provide a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives,” said Minow in his well-remembered 1961 speech. “It is not enough to cater to the nation’s whims; you must also serve the nation’s needs.”

Minow repeatedly claimed that he was not in favor of government censorship and was not trying to tell broadcasters what they could and could not say. Rather, he charged them to make nebulous and ill-defined improvements to the product that he believed would be better appreciated by the American public — i.e., the public interest.

In her March 1962 essay “Have Gun, Will Nudge,” Rand argued that this was censorship by another name. “It is true, as Mr. Minow assures us, that he does not propose to establish censorship; what he proposes is much worse,” she wrote. Unlike explicit bans on speech, Rand warned, the modern method of censorship “neither forbids nor permits anything; it never defines or specifies; it merely delivers men’s lives, fortunes, careers, ambitions into the arbitrary power of a bureaucrat who can reward or punish at whim.”

Robby Soave, “Ayn Rand Denounced the FCC’s ‘Public Interest’ Censorship More Than 60 Years Ago,” Reason (January 2026).

Read the whole magazine piece at Reason’s online site.

When Thomas Jefferson entered the White House, he promptly began firing civil servants, high-level and -low. It was a big house-cleaning effort, a streamlining after Federalist bloat. The new Democratic-Republican president demanded an efficient and minimal government.

Since then, it’s gotten harder for presidents to do such big house-cleaning jobs, as The Epoch Times explains in a new article:

For months, federal judges have been ordering President Donald Trump to reinstate heads of agencies despite his interest in removing them.

Their decisions have been based on a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent, known as Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, that says Congress can limit the reasons for which presidents remove officials like members of labor boards.

However, that precedent and various legal blocks on Trump’s firings could be removed depending on how the Supreme Court rules in an upcoming case — potentially giving Trump and his successors more flexibility with personnel.

Sam Dorman, “Supreme Court Set to Consider Trump’s Power to Remove High-Level Bureaucrats,” The Epoch Times (December 6, 2025).

The case, Trump v. Slaughter, goes before the union’s highest court on Monday. It regards Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Something to remember about this “balance of powers” case is that it is not about balancing the constitutional “three branches” of the general government. The permanent bureaucracy, insulated from firing by the “Executive,” has, arguably, become a de facto fourth branch, uncontrolled by an inertial Congress as well as the elected president.

Whatever the Supreme Court decides, the effects of its decision are expected to ripple through many other cases — including ones involving Trump.

For example, two fired labor board officials have filedamicus briefs suggesting the outcome of Slaughter’s case could impact their cases as well.

Trump has not only challenged Humphrey’s Executor but said that even if Congress can insulate certain officers from removal, judges shouldn’t be able to reinstate those officers.

Sauer told the court that while fired officers can seek back pay, their reinstatement intruded on executive power and forces the president to “entrust executive power to someone he has removed.”

Slaughter disagreed, arguing “there is no Article II problem with requiring the President to ‘entrust executive power to someone he has removed’ if he has no Article II authority to remove that person in the first place,” her brief added.

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions on its emergency docket indicated it was sympathetic to Trump’s position.

In at least five separate cases, including Slaughter’s, the justices have allowed Trump to temporarily fire officials as litigation unfolded.

The court has repeatedly said that the executive branch “faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.”

Ibid.

The issue is obviously complicated. The Epoch Times article does a pretty good job explaining that complexity.