This case is not an appropriate vehicle for upending economic regulation that is vital for our nation’s security and well-being.

Also, FERC plays a direct role in our economy that, among the multimember agencies, is matched only by the Federal Reserve Board. Prices set by FERC are essential inputs across the economy that directly affect the cost of living and doing business.

The Court has repeatedly characterized ratemaking power as “legislative.” Ratemaking commissions may therefore warrant separate consideration from agencies that wield “executive” authority.

In this case, the President argues that because FTC commissioners wield “executive” power, as the head of the Executive Branch he may remove commissioners from office at any time.

If the Court overturns Humphrey’s (as the President wants) or modifies it, the brief asks the Court specify that its decision does not reach the distinct history and tradition of ratemaking commissions.

Because history can inform the Court’s separation-of-powers analysis, Congress’s long-standing practice of creating bipartisan ratemaking commissions with for-cause removal protections supports the Constitutionality of Congress’s ratemaking model.

For-cause removal protections and other constraints on the hiring and firing of commissioners tie the exercise of Congress’s ratemaking power to a deliberative body that is designed to sustain stable policies.

That phrase is from the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 (ICA), which put railroads under federal regulation. Over the next 50 years, Congress created several ratemaking commissions to oversee other capital-intensive networked industries. Each time, Congress used the ICA as a model.

The case is about whether the President may fire an FTC Commissioner. The 1914 law creating the FTC says commissioners can be fired for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, of malfeasance in office,” terms of art that prevent the President from removing commissioners from office.

Setting a high bar!

Only legislators can do the job. They're who we empower to structure our criminal justice system.

It's simple: “Criminal verdicts shall be reached by human jurors, unassisted by artificial intelligence."

The time to decree this is now, before we’re seduced by the lure of the next release.

/end

"the president will let the world's wealthiest man and his largest campaign donor shut down US foreign aid and access everyone's social security numbers"

Plus there's state-regulated distribution spending. I'm not going to wade through rate-case filings to figure this out. But I'm just writing a Bsky thread, not publishing a piece in the WSJ (although this thread has more relevant data than the WSJ piece).

RECs aren't free, and the data shows that NJ's RPS is among the more expensive policies, largely due to small-scale solar carve-outs. eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/defaul...

PSE&G has --- by far --- the highest transmission rates in PJM, due almost entirely to the decisions made by PSE&G. Maybe that's a bigger factor than clean energy policies?
electricitytransmissioncompetitioncoalition.org/wp-content/u...