The constitutional issue in the West Virginia and Loper Bright cases is the separation of powers. These federal regulatory agencies perform two separate functions: writing the regulations and enforcing them. The nub of the West Virginia holding is that the former is properly a legislative function, outside the purview of the executive branch.

The problem, of course, is that Congress is not equipped with the expertise to draft detailed regulations on food safety, air quality, forest management, telecommunications protocols, and the myriad other subjects of federal regulation. So they simply legislate the broad policy objectives and delegate the details to the experts in the various agencies.

If the Court now insists that regulations must be generated legislatively, the answer is to sever the two functions, leave enforcement to the executive branch, and move the expertise for drafting the regulations themselves to the legislative branch. Congress already maintains entities like the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, the Library of Congress, the Capitol Police, and so on. Create a Congressional Trade Bureau, a Congressional Transportation Safety Bureau, a Congressional Civil Aeronautics Bureau, and staff them with the same subject matter experts now doing those jobs at the respective agencies. They can even stay in the same physical offices they now occupy; just move them administratively from the executive to the Congressional budget. Let them draft the regulations under Congressional auspices, to be enacted legislatively by Congress and then enforced by the executive branch.

All this, of course, is extraneous to the real agenda of this DOGE initiative, which is to eliminate federal regulation altogether, to the benefit of the oligarchs and the detriment of the public.