The corporate apocalypse began not with a whimper, but with a giant, round, plastic head rolling down a deserted highway.In a boardroom fueled entirely by desperation and expired milkshake mix, the executives of Cock in the Box—a name change forced by a typo in a legal filing that they simply couldn’t afford to fix—unveiled their final turnaround strategy: "The Great Beaking."Since "Jack on Track" had resulted in the stock price falling so low it was technically being traded for POGs and loose buttons, the Board decided to pivot. They replaced the iconic Jack mascot with a six-foot-tall, hyper-aggressive rooster wearing a tiny suit and a headset. His name was Sir Clucks-a-Lot, and his first executive order was to fire all the humans and replace them with sentient deep fryers.The "Cock in the Box" era officially launched with these "strategic" pillars:The Franchisee Fight Club: To resolve the lawsuits, the company built an octagon in the middle of a parking lot in Fresno. Franchisees didn't get a settlement; they got three rounds with a pressurized grease cannon. If they survived, they were rewarded with a 0.05% discount on napkins. The "Debt-Crusher Meal" was upgraded to the "Bankruptcy Bucket," which contained no food—just a bill for the store’s electricity and a sticker that said "I Helped!"The In-Store Experience: To save on labor, they removed the "Box" entirely. Customers were now required to catch their own chicken in a backyard-style coop located behind the dumpster. Once caught, you had to negotiate the price of a sourdough bun with an AI bot that only spoke in bird squawks and crypto-slang.The Menu of Madness: Desperate to beat Wendy’s "Biggie Bag," Cock in the Box released the "Existential Crisis Combo." For $12.99, you got a mystery patty, a handful of fries that were actually just painted sticks, and a 15-minute therapy session with a drive-thru speaker that just screamed, "Why are we still here?"The Stock Market Hail Mary: To stop the 80% value slide, the CFO announced they were pivoting to a "Bird-Based Blockchain." Every chicken nugget was now an NFT. You couldn't eat it; you just owned a digital receipt of its grease content. The stock price didn't go up, but it did start vibrating, which the Board claimed was a sign of "latent energy."The Global Expansion: In a final act of defiance, they closed every remaining location in North America and relocated the entire company to a floating barge in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They called it "International Waters: The Ultimate Drive-Thru," where the only customers were confused seagulls and the occasional pirate.The story ended when Sir Clucks-a-Lot accidentally sold the company's remaining assets to a local petting zoo in exchange for a bag of premium corn. The Board of Directors declared it a "record-breaking exit strategy" and parachuted out of the corporate helicopter using golden parachutes made of actual lead.

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So with the weak administrative state is the supreme court likely to assume more power? Thought for 36s Yes — relative to the administrative agencies, the Supreme Court (and lower federal courts) have already gained interpretive power, and further weakening of the administrative state is likely to reinforce that shift.The clearest mechanism is the 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overruled Chevron deference. Under Chevron, courts deferred to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statutes it administered. Loper Bright requires courts to exercise independent judgment and determine the “best reading” of the statute themselves (with residual Skidmore “respect” for agency views and deference only where Congress has clearly delegated discretion). ballotpedia.org This transfers a meaningful share of the “say what the law is” role from agencies to judges. Combined with the major questions doctrine (which requires clear congressional authorization for actions of vast economic or political significance), courts now police the outer boundaries of agency authority more aggressively. Analyses note that Loper Bright has already been invoked in scores of regulatory actions, and lower courts are applying de novo review more often, though early data show agency win rates have not collapsed. bipartisanpolicy.org A weaker administrative state amplifies this dynamic for several reasons:Reduced agency capacity, political insulation (via Schedule Policy/Career and related personnel changes), and independent-agency protections make expansive or novel interpretations harder to sustain and easier to challenge. More disputes over statutory meaning land in Article III courts rather than being resolved inside the executive branch under a deference regime. The Court has simultaneously expanded presidential removal power over independent agency heads (e.g., Trump v. Slaughter), concentrating control in the White House while still subjecting statutory interpretation to judicial review. This is a unitary-executive move that weakens traditional independent agencies more than it empowers them relative to courts. It is not a pure zero-sum transfer of all power to the Supreme Court. Policy discretion that Congress clearly delegates stays with the executive; courts still defer on many applications of law to facts; and the bulk of day-to-day review happens in the lower courts. Power that leaves agencies can also flow back to the President (execution) or Congress (if it writes clearer statutes). Critics describe the overall trend as a judicial “power grab”; defenders frame it as restoring the constitutional allocation in which judges interpret law and the political branches make and execute policy. nybooks.com In short, the combination of Loper Bright, the major questions doctrine, and deliberate efforts to shrink and politicize the administrative state has already increased the relative influence of the courts over the legal limits of agency action, and that trajectory is likely to continue.