A 🧵 on Congress's anti-removal power: The Dems' Freedom to Vote Act would create a new independent agency, the Office of State Democracy Promotion, which would provide $$ to States to "carry out democracy promotion activities." congress.gov/bill/117th-con…
Understandably after the #SCOTUS Seila Law and Collins decisions, the current version of the bill does *not* restrict the President's ability to remove at will the single-head director of this new agency (congress.gov/bill/117th-con…): 
But Congress obviously still wants this new agency to be as independent as possible, as the agency would deal with elections and Congress usually insulates election administration from plenary presidential control (e.g., FEC, EAC).
Indeed, the current version of the bill (screenshot above) uses two soft tools to signal/reinforce agency independence: (1) it labels the agency as independent -- "an independent establishment in the executive branch" -- and (2) it provides the agency head with a six-year term.
As @Aaron_L_Nielson and I explore in a new draft paper Congress's Anti-Removal Power (ssrn.com/abstract=39416…), Congress can do even more, short of statutory removal restrictions, to create a measure of agency independence here.
First and foremost, Congress could require that the president provide reasons for any firing of the new agency head before the six-year term ends. Congress already does this, for example, with respect to the Comptroller of the Currency and inspector generals.
Second, Congress could commit in advance to an oversight hearing if agency head is fired -- or perhaps only if head is fired w/o providing good reason. There the fired head would testify along with other witnesses, to raise salience of firing (and thus president's removal costs).
Third, Congress could add enact other statutory signals of agency independence, such as legislative findings about the importance of this agency's independence and the non-partisan and expert-driven qualifications of the agency head.
Fourth, Congress could include explicit provisions concerning who can serve as an acting head, such as requiring the acting to have served in fed govt for a longer period of time. @NinaMendelson explores some of those reforms here: ssrn.com/abstract=36497…
In our paper, we also suggest some hard tools like heightened cloture vote, but those probably wouldn't make sense here. We also suggest as an another anti-evasion tool that Congress could limit the agency's power when it doesn't have a Senate-confirmed head.
Our toolkit is summarized in the following table from the draft paper (ssrn.com/abstract=39416…):
In sum, the current version of the Dems' Freedom to Vote Act uses some "soft tools" of Congress's anti-removal power to try to create a measure of independence at this proposed new election administration agency.
But it could do more if it wanted, even after Seila Law and Collins likely foreclosed statutory removal restrictions for a single-director agency head. @Aaron_L_Nielson explore how Congress could do so in our new draft paper Congress's Anti-Removal Power: ssrn.com/abstract=39416…
Post-script: The latest version of the legislation adopts my recommendation in this thread (and @Aaron_L_Nielson and my draft paper) to include a reasongiving requirement for removal!
https://twitter.com/chris_j_walker/status/1481455752288129025
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