Quite so. My apologies, and thanks for the correction. Not a nitpick.
They can construct layers of insulation. The Fed is probably the biggest example here. It is an executive agency but the president gets to appoint people to the board of Governors. But they serve 14 year terms, so no one president can stack it. The FTC is another big one where congress clearly intended to limit the impact of executive swings because stability was desired.
Hasn’t that pretty much always been the case? I always thought the AG had considerable sway over the US Attys’ actions. I’m far from expert, but I thought the AG could aways tell a local US Atty “prosecute this/don’t prosecute that”, and the US Atty’s sole recourse was to resign.
And the AUSAs simply get their marching orders, and need to hold their noses and argue anything their bosses tell them to. (That is one reason I never pursued a career w/ DoJ - assuming they would have had me. There is too much federal prosecution I do not agree with and would not want to be a part of.)
Another area I am not expert on, but I thought some “agencies” such as SEC, FEC… were created by Congress, and intended to be relatively free from Presidential oversight - other than appointing members. (He already showed his willingness to fire folk w/ time left on their terms of office. Will be interesting to see how the Supremes respond.) I really do not know how many such agencies there are.
It will be interesting to see if Congress/courts are willing to simply allow him to ignore the Congressional grants of authority.
But WRT the vast majority of executive agencies/office/etc, my understanding has always been that the President has considerable authority to influence - if not overtly direct - their actions.
I’m not saying this is a “good thing.” But I’m not sure this is hugely worse than the countless other “bad things” he has done.
Possibly off this narrow topic (which I do not understand why it deserves its own thread), but my personal concern is to see what is done WRT the order that bargaining unit employees return to office. No, no one should give a shit about any particular fed employee having to go into work. But I suggest most folk OUGHT to give a shit about the direct contravention of a collective bargaining agreement. Think of it as a contract. Ought contracts between employers and employees be respected?
I can easily see him withdrawing the recognition of public unions. I believe (again, no expert) that could be done by executive order. Frankly, I’m surprised it has not been done already.
You know Trump is too stupid and disinterested to be coming up with all of this shit on his own. I wonder what cabal of folk like Miller, Vought, Musk are coming up with all of these ideas.
Apparently not. My understanding is that this part of Bondi’s memo
It is therefore the policy of the Department of Justice that any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the Administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the Department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law.
was specifically because prior practice at the AUSA level , in at least some offices, was that someone else who didn’t disagree would handle it. I mean, Bove could have just signed that motion to begin with and not ended up in court today trying to explain himself and apparently that’s what would have happened in the past rather than forcing a prosecutor to advance arguments she didn’t believe were in good faith.
That may be the case - tho I am not sure how far it went. I mean, I doubt an AUSA could get hired in the criminal division and say, “I don’t want to handle any drug cases.” Further, I suspect the practice would have varied from office to office, depending on the pressure coming down from above, and depending on there being appropriate other staff to handle a matter.
Speaking of which, the portion of my post which you quote was speaking about the levels above AUSAs.
The way it was explained in another article I read was that this is actually more of their war on Federal bureaucracies setting policy without any sort of Congressional or elected oversight. Sort of a counterpart to the Chevron decision.
For example, if the head of the Postal Service makes a decision that holds the force of law, they’re of the opinion that he shouldn’t get to make that decision without some sort of oversight, and this EO is basically intended to say that the President and Attorney General retain the signoff/oversight power over those decisions and how the laws are interpreted.
In that light, it’s maybe not so terrifying, although it does seem very much like they’ll be selectively applying it to overturn decisions they don’t like for ideological reasons, because it’s too big of a thing to actually do for everything. So if the head of the USPS decides that they aren’t going to deliver on Saturdays, Bondi and Trump can countermand it, which wasn’t previously the case.
The Fed is one agency that this EO scares me about; I could totally see Trump countermanding a decision to raise interest rates because he doesn’t like it, not because it makes good economic sense.
Why would the president or attorney general know more about, say, SEC rulings than the professionals at the SEC? Know more about FTC decisions? And so on, and so forth.
Whoops - I meant to quote this
Regulatory agencies aren’t allowed to have any regulations that don’t have Presidential approval. Others have already pointed out that the President couldn’t possibly have the time to approve all regulations. That’s the point. If all regulations need approval, and there’s no time for approval, then what we’ll end up with is no regulations at all.
But that’s always been true. Congress gives them the power to formulate regulations, but they can always remove that authority if the department goes off the rails.
This is more about their general hatred of regulations at all, because that’s the means by which most legislation is given effect. They hate it when the government gets into the nitty-gritty of their business, because that’s where the dirt is.
And also, these practices were based on the assumption that everyone was acting in good faith. You can have honest disagreements about a case - should you charge murder or manslaughter? That sort of thing. At some point, a decision needs to be made, and that’s when The Boss makes the call.
But “Murder or manslaughter?” is very different than the boss telling you, “We’re going to charge Bill instead of Bob, despite all the evidence pointing to Bob.” That’s not a legitimate disagreement, it’s just making shit up.
They wouldn’t, but that’s not their point. Their ostensible point is that the pros at the SEC aren’t elected, and don’t have a mandate (so to speak) to make decisions on behalf of the nation.
It’s idiotic, because there just aren’t enough elected officials to go around, even if they did nothing but review and sign these sorts of things all day.
But it makes sense if you want to implement starkly political policies, because you can then take it out of the hands of the pros through EOs like this.
I’m not so sure it’s strictly a matter of anti-regulatory animus, so much as it’s more a way to basically put their fingers in a lot of places where politics rarely actually penetrated. I mean, if the head of the NOAA in some region puts out a weather warning for the homeless, it used to be that it was pretty much their choice to do something like that. Now the White House can make them get rid of it, because they politically disagree.
It lets them push their political agenda a lot lower into the Federal government than before.
How long will this dictator role work for Trump? Musk was smart to hop on and see how stupid and easy to manipulate Trump was. Just let him take credit for a few things. And it’s not like there was another candidate so foolish as to think himself as a beleivable dictator. Trump was it, the only chance for decades.
But Trump, though still doing his reality show as president-dictator quite well, will soon get tired of it. As soon as he loses his first case in the Supreme Court, his interest will be mostly golfing, revenge on individuals and owning the libs. He will try his best in 2026 to push his candidates in congress races. But after that, I think he just gives up. Last thing he will do is pardon himself. The Supreme Court will wag its finger a bit, but will not block it.
Congress has created many “independent agencies,” that are subject to much more limited oversight by the president. Independent agencies of the United States federal government - Wikipedia
In general, the president appoints the people who head the agencies and, under the authorizing statutes, the president is limited to firing them for some sort of cause. In most cases, the agencies are headed by a multi-member commission or board and generally, only a bare majority of the commission or board can be from the same political party. They often serve staggered terms so one president doesn’t have the unilateral authority to appoint them all at once. The intention is to moderate political partisanship in the agencies’ decisions and to promote stability of decision making across administrations, with a side order of allowing dedicated professionals to make complex regulatory decisions.
However, those agencies are also authorized to make rules, interpret rules, and in many cases, to take legal regulatory actions independent of the president’s or attorney general’s wishes. This order eliminates that independence.
So do the executive orders contradict their statutory authority?
Speaking broadly, yes. There is nothing in the agencies’ authorizing statutes that would require them to submit their decisions to the executive or that gives the executive the authority to require them to do so.
However, the independence of administrative agencies is a constitutional question that isn’t fully resolved. The independence of these agencies depends in large measure on the status of the Humphrey’s Executor precedent and the predicted adoption of the “unitary executive” theory.
Recently, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to determine whether independent agencies were unconstitutional in Leachco v. CPSC, which squarely presented the issue to the court. Surprisingly to me, they denied cert but I expect the issue to be raised repeatedly in the next few years until the court finally bites. I expect they will overrule Humphrey’s Executor and strongly endorse the unitary executive theory.
IIRC, Trump recently fired a Dem member of the NTSB, such that they now lack a quorum. So that’s another way to improve such boards’ efficiency. /s
So they get paid for literally doing nothing?
I guess they really did find some fraud and corruption! /s
Well, since he knows that all airplane crashes are caused by DEI, why do you need a transport safety board?
Oops - my typo - NLRB.
So folk who might complain of unfair labor practices may seek redress from the courts, who will likely direct them to the NLRB. But, lacking a quorum…
Most of the actions brought by federal workers and their unions go before the MSPB - Merit Systems Protection Board. They lacked a quorum for some 5 years from 2017-22. So it would be a slight understatement to say they have a bit of a backlog. It would surprise me not a bit to see Chump fire a couple of MSPB members…