President Donald Trump’s “unprecedented” actions regarding independent agencies “will directly undermine the safety and well-being of workers, consumers, and the public,” the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and The Century Foundation said in a joint report released Wednesday.
The report, which was co-authored by former National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFerran, details how the functions of independent agencies “would be compromised if brought under the direct control of the Trump White House.”
“Independent agencies are an invaluable part of the government because they make decisions based on expertise to serve the public good, not the president’s political agenda,” McFerran, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, said in a statement. “For decades, these agencies have been uniquely capable of holding corporations and other powerful actors accountable regardless of their political connections, but that independence is disappearing before our eyes.”
Soon after taking office, Trump unilaterally fired several federal agency leaders before the expiration of their terms, including Democratic NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, Democratic U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioners Jocelyn Samuels and Charlotte Burrows, and Democratic Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Dec. 8 in Trump v. Slaughter to determine if the president has the power to remove heads of independent agencies. The lawsuit centers on arguments to revisit the Supreme Court’s 90-year-old decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., in which the court reaffirmed Congress’ power to establish independent commissions whose members are not subject to at-will removal by the president.
“While it is unclear how broadly the Court’s ruling will sweep, eliminating these removal protections would jeopardize all facets of agency independence, as agency leaders would be reluctant to engage in regulatory or enforcement actions without coordinating with the White House for fear of termination,” the report’s authors wrote.
The authors noted that “while all government agencies need to have some ability to make decisions based on policy expertise rather than political considerations, Congress deliberately chose to structure certain agencies to be more independent for good reason: Their decisions particularly benefit from expert analysis and collaborative decision-making rooted in a variety of perspectives.”