"We need a 4th branch of Gov't"

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This is a short read about what I think could be a good idea.

Why our most vital institutions should be placed in a constitutional vault - beyond the reach of any President.
Asha Rangappa
May 30, 2026

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And yet, our current structure in the U.S. is simply not sustainable. That has been made crystal clear by <waves hands at everything> but especially with the latest January 6 “slush fund” — the “unitary executive” is, quite simply, incompatible with a theory of checks and balances. A President who is 1) above the law; 2) can hire and fire everyone under him at will; and 3) decide to withhold or spend appropriated funds as he sees fit with no real way to stop him other than impeachment is no longer a “coequal” branch. I mean, if we’re at the point where the President can basically siphon funds directly from the U.S. Treasury (via the Justice Department) into his own pockets, we have to go big or go home.
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So what would a fourth branch look like? Well, since my McGill talk, and particularly since Trump 2.0 and the Supreme Court’s expansive embrace of the unitary executive theory, I think a fourth branch would need to include more than just the Justice Department. It would also need to include any institution that must remain independent in order for the republic to continue existing. Professor Tarunabh Khaitan of Oxford University calls these “guarantor institutions” because they provide a “credible and enduring guarantee” of “non self-enforcing constitutional norms” — like, say, the independence of federal law enforcement and the administration of justice. But they could also include, he notes, institutions like “electoral commissions, human rights commissions, central banks, probity bodies such as anti-corruption watchdogs, knowledge institutions such as statistics bureaus and census boards, information commissioners, auditors general,” and so on. Essentially, it’s like putting the institutions most necessary for our democracy to function into a constitutional safe as a way to protect against the risk of the rest of the government going completely off the rails. As ours has now.

So which institutions would I place in the fourth branch? Here’s an initial list:

• Department of Justice
• Federal Reserve Board of Governors
• U.S. Treasury
• Office of Management and Budget
• Inspectors General
• Federal Election Commission
• Securities and Exchange Commission
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission

There are more (Claude lists sixteen independent agencies created by Congress whose independence rests with the Supreme Court at the moment) but this is a start.
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I think I'd also add the CDC, EPA, and FDA to that list. More at the link:

asharangappa.substack.com - We need a fourth branch

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