The White Home reality sheet mentioned the aim of this provision is to make sure that the president and lawyer normal “interpret the regulation for the chief department, as a substitute of getting separate businesses undertake conflicting interpretations.”
John Bergmayer, authorized director of shopper advocacy group Public Data, said Trump’s order relies on a “unitary government” principle that “has made its method from the fringes of academia to the halls of energy.”
“On this newest Government Order, the Trump regime purports to grab for itself the facility Congress delegated to unbiased regulatory businesses, and as written, declares the White Home’s interpretation of the regulation as ‘authoritative,’ with no point out of the courts,” Bergmayer mentioned. “In fact, the president is just not, and by no means has been, the ultimate arbiter of what’s lawful. Attorneys working for the federal government owe their allegiance to the American individuals, to not President Donald J. Trump.”
Trump’s OMB director, Russell Vought, told Tucker Carlson in a latest interview that “there aren’t any unbiased businesses. Congress could have considered them as such—SEC or the FCC, CFPB, the entire alphabet soup—however that’s not one thing that the Structure understands. So there could also be completely different methods with every one in every of them about the way you dismantle them, however as an administration, the entire notion of an unbiased company must be thrown out.”
Extending Trump’s grip
Though the president nominates commissioners and appoints chairs at businesses just like the FCC, unbiased businesses are imagined to make their very own selections. A 2023 report by the Congressional Analysis Service mentioned an unbiased company is “a freestanding government department group that’s not a part of any division or different company,” and which has “better autonomy from the President’s management and insulation from partisan politics than is typical of government department businesses.”
Different unbiased businesses embody the Nationwide Labor Relations Board and Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau, the report mentioned. Legal guidelines accepted by Congress specify the authority of unbiased businesses together with the businesses’ “objectives, rules, missions, and mandates,” the report mentioned.