The executive branch contains agencies created by Congress to be independent, controlled by bipartisan commissions. Acting on a theory that concentrates power solely in the Oval Office, Donald Trump has been asserting his supremacy over these independent agencies. Walter Olson describes the implications: The February 18 executive order moving to assert White House supremacy over federal regulation is momentous, but not for the reason mistakenly surmised in some early reports. In declaring a general presidential authority to pronounce on legal interpretation, in particular, the order does not aim to aggress against the role of the courts in saying what the law is. Rather, the order seeks to conquer and subdue what separate interpretive authority has resided in independent agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). … If the Trump administration can make all this stick, it’s momentous. For example, the president could impose interpretations of broadcast law that Federal Communications Commission executives think are wrong but that serve his political objectives. … [T]o the extent that this or any future administration embarks on a policy of regulatory retaliation against businesses or other entities it perceives as enemies, controlling the full portfolio of regulatory agencies will enable retaliation to be fuller, more comprehensive, and sometimes more focused than if it controlled only a large share of them. As Olson points out, in multiple areas, Trump is acting as if he has already won landmark Supreme Court rulings altering the whole balance and structure of powers in our constitutional order. But he is doing so by personal fiat, with no input from Congress or the courts.

Power Consolidation