President Donald Trump is expanding White House control over independent agencies in a move his critics view as an alarming power grab.
The president signed an executive order Tuesday that aims to rein in independent regulatory agencies that Trump said “currently exercise substantial executive authority without sufficient accountability to the President.”
The move appears directed at cracking down on several agencies that were designed to have more independence than Cabinet-level departments. The White House explicitly named the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission in a fact sheet asserting that those agencies haven’t been subject to enough presidential oversight.
But the Trump order will reach so-called independent agencies across the government and could broadly reset the power structure in the executive branch, consolidating more authority inside the White House and inside the Justice Department with Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The order directs all executive departments and agencies — including “so-called independent agencies” — to submit proposed and final regulations to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs before they are published.
Trump also directed the head of the White House budget office, Russell Vought, to set performance standards for the heads of independent agencies and to regularly review those agencies’ spending for consistency with White House priorities. The order directs the heads of independent regulatory agencies to establish a position of “White House liaison” inside their agencies.
“Voters and the President can now hold all Federal agencies — not just Cabinet departments — responsible for their decisions, as the Constitution demands,” the White House said.
Consolidating regulatory power in the White House could impact energy and environmental policies inside agencies including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, all of which are defined as “independent regulatory agencies.”
The order “effectively provides the White House with a veto over agency actions,” said Dan Farber, faculty director of the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at the University of California, Berkeley.
Previous administrations have floated the idea of extending the jurisdiction of the White House regulatory review office — OIRA — to independent agencies, but no one had actually taken that step before, Farber said.
“These are independent regulatory agencies largely for a reason,” said Jenny Mattingly of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. “Because they do have regulatory authority over some things that an administration might want to do, some things that Congress is working on.” There’s “certainly concern if this is for partisan reasons,” she said.
Public Citizen Co-President Robert Weissman blasted the order as a “Trumpian power grab.”
The order will mean that independent agencies would become dependent on the “whims of Trump, [OMB Director Russ] Vought and their corporate buddies,” Weissman said in a statement Tuesday.
The independence of agencies like the FTC and the SEC are “designed to enable them to perform these duties without undue political pressure from giant corporations, the super rich and the super-connected,” he said.
“Trump’s EO would dissolve that independence and put the agencies under Trump’s thumb, ensuring they turn a blind eye to wrongdoing by favored corporations and leave consumers and investors out to dry,” he added.
Weissman also noted that both the FTC and SEC have ongoing investigations or enforcement actions against companies owned by Elon Musk, who has been heading the Trump administration’s fiercely contested efforts to slash federal government spending and reduce the federal workforce.
Empowering DOJ
The executive order also hands the president and Bondi exclusive authority over interpreting federal law, in a move that could have wide-reaching implications across federal agencies.
“The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties,” the order states.
“No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law,” the order says.
The executive order covers agency regulations, guidance and the arguments the Justice Department presents in litigation.
An official who seeks to deviate from Trump’s and Bondi’s interpretation of the law would have to be authorized by the president, or receive written permission from the attorney general.
The provision is “all part of an effort to centralize power in the hands of a single individual at the top of the pyramid,” Farber said.
“Just as OIRA gives the White House control over policy, this provision gives [the Justice Department] the same control over agencies’ legal positions,” he said.
Having the president and the attorney general interpret the law for the executive branch will avoid “having separate agencies adopt conflicting interpretations,” the White House said.
The move to “assert total presidential control over legal interpretations” is “legally questionable, especially where it concerns agencies that have independent litigating authority,” said Noah Rosenblum, a professor at New York University School of Law, in an email.
It’s part of a “power-grab approach,” Rosenblum said. The “president is here trying to bring the entire federal government under his thumb, including (in this part of the order) when it comes to interpreting the law.”
Vicki Arroyo, who led EPA’s policy office during the Biden administration, said the order’s “strong language about the power of the presidency” to interpret laws could have a “chilling effect” inside federal agencies.
At EPA, for example, where the Clean Air Act delegates authority to the EPA administrator, “It makes you wonder how many people are going to want to pick fights with the White House over the line of their clear regulatory authority under the statute versus what authority the big boss is claiming,” Arroyo said.
In practice, the president and attorney general would likely not want to weigh in on all the legal interpretations that agencies make, said Ivan London, a senior attorney at the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which has argued in favor of greater independent agency oversight.
“I wonder how granular this ends up becoming,” London said.
He suggested the order may be a way for the president to signal to a particular constituency that he was taking care of “out of control” regulators.
The directive could also provide some cover to the Justice Department as it prepares to roll back Biden-era regulations, even as procedural law still requires them to explain why the agency is reversing course.
DOJ attorneys would be able to tell a judge the agency is just responding to the president’s order.
“It seems a little less fickle that way,” London said. “I have no idea if that’s the intent of this or not.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
