(This story is developing and may be updated.)
Seeking to further expand his authority, President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued an executive order that directs a number of federal agencies to submit proposed new regulations to the White House.
The order, titled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies,” targets independent regulators like the SEC, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which have historically operated with broad autonomy from presidential control. Under Trump’s directive, these agencies and others would be required to submit draft regulations for White House review and align their priorities with presidential objectives.
Trump’s order, which is expected to receive swift legal challenges, represents a continuation of moves he has made to expand control over agencies whose independence has been established by Congress. It follows a regulatory freeze he issued not long after taking office, the firing of inspectors general who provided agency oversight, a Supreme Court challenge seeking authority to fire the head of a federal whistleblower protection office and mass firings of government employees.
In addition to a review of proposed regulations, the order gives the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) oversight of agency spending, with only the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy functions exempted from its scope.
The order’s most immediate impact would fall on major regulatory bodies, including the SEC, FTC and FCC, which are mentioned by name in a fact sheet about the order, but presumably its reach could extend to many other independent agencies, including National Labor Relations Board, FDIC, US Postal Service, CIA and the Federal Election Commission.
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Read moreDetailsTrump’s order justifies the move by citing Article II of the US Constitution, which vests executive power in the president: “These agencies issue rules and regulations that cost billions of dollars and implicate some of the most controversial policy matters, and they do so without the review of the democratically elected President,” the order says.
“This is a power move over independent agencies, a structure of administration that Congress has used for various functions going back to the 1880s,” legal scholar Peter M. Shane told The New York Times.
President Ronald Reagan in 1981 issued similar orders that also required agencies to submit proposed new rules to the OMB, but notably, that order did not apply to agencies established by Congress to run independently from the White House.
Though not mentioned by name, it can be assumed Trump’s White House would not have cleared recently published rules by SEC regarding climate or cybersecurity disclosures (indeed, the SEC has already halted defense of the climate rule it issued in 2024) or the FTC’s beleaguered prohibition on nondisclosure agreements in employment contracts.
