Dem
47
GOP
53
Congress has created an alphabet soup of Executive Branch agencies that are by law independent of the president, including the CFPB, CDC, EEOC, FCC, FDA, FDIC, FEC, FHFA, FTC, NARA, NASA, NSF, NTSB, SEC, SSA, USPS and many others. Almost all are run by boards whose members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. In most cases, the members serve long terms that span presidential administrations, so they can do their work without political interference. This is what Congress wanted.
But Donald Trump doesn't care what Congress wanted. He wants to control all of them directly, taking away the independence that Congress granted them. Yesterday he signed an XO putting all of them under his direct control under the "unitary executive theory," which states that the president has absolute power over everything in the Executive Branch and Congress has no power to create agencies not under his direct control. OMB Director Russell Vought is a big fan of this theory. This XO fundamentally reshapes the federal government and gives the president extraordinary power that Congress never intended him to have. It is a massive power grab that no previous president has even dreamed of. Needless to say, this is going to end up in the Supreme Court sooner or later. Previous decisions suggest the Court might be willing to accept this theory.
If Trump immediately begins replacing agency heads and boards, despite their official tenures, he could stock them all with people subservient to him. Imagine an FDA head who approved only drugs Trump ordered him to approve (with his decision based on how much the pharmaceutical company paid Trump for approval). Imagine an FCC that renewed broadcast licenses for television stations based on whether Trump approved of their editorial views. Imagine an SEC head that went after companies based on whether they sucked up to Trump enough. The list is endless and doesn't actually require much imagination at all. So, even Trump could figure it out.
What the XO specifically does is create the position of White House liaison (translation: political commissar) who must review policies and priorities. It also states that no employee of any agency may take any position that contradicts the president's position on any interpretation of any law. It is the job of the political commissar to enforce that.
If someone aspired to be a dictator, a good step would be to order everyone in the government to obey him, regardless of existing law. We may soon find out how that works in practice. (V)