As awful as this is, it seems completely legal since the executive agencies operate at the mercy of the President. The President has the authority to tell the EPA to stop researching climate science, or to even disband the EPA.
Have we never considered this scenario before? Has there ever been an attempt to establish independent agencies, not subject to the whims of the White House? (IIRC, maybe the CIA or the FBI are independent agencies?)
IIRC the Executive gets to do this because the EPA is part of the executive branch. Can congress setup an agency that is outside of the control of the executive?
Has the president set up an alternative system to promptly and comprehensively communicate public research to the public? Has he given any indication as to what problem this action is solving? Why has he chosen only these particular departments to muzzle? Aren't the press departments of every other executive agency continuing to reinforce the notion that they are an unelected fourth branch of government with their own continuity and agendas?
I think your analogy is reasonable to a point, although corporations and governments are very different. To continue it, is the president going to be forthright to the public about climate change, if the EPA is no longer allowed to issue its own press releases?
Exactly correct. The EPA in particular was created by an executive order, rather than by Congress, so theoretically President Trump could make it disappear by executive order.
"Generally, the heads of independent regulatory agencies can only be removed for cause, but Cabinet members and heads of independent executive agencies, such as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, serve "at the pleasure of the president" and can be removed without cause."
That's not how the current administrative state operates. The white house can nominate the head of the EPA (and a layer of bureaucrats beneath them) and the Senate must approve the nominations. These are political appointees.
The white house cannot say "fire person X" who works for the EPA but was not nominated, because there is (supposed to be) a wall between the political appointees, who must be confirmed by the Senate, and the professional appointees, who are supposed to be protected by a web of laws and whistleblower protections.
So while many people think that the President is the "head" of the administration and can just order it to do whatever he wants, that's not how it's supposed to work. The set of things the EPA is supposed to be doing is set by legislation and the manner in which it does things is also subject to oversight. That doesn't actually stop the politicization of these agencies -- e.g. the CDC studying racism as a public health crisis or gun crime as a disease, or having the IRS investigate conservative groups, etc. The boundary of this tug of war in which the President tries to order an agency to do X and his opponents sue him saying "you can't do this" is exactly the issue of lawfare and the constitutionality of various executive orders. Many such attempts at directing Federal agencies fail or are ruled unconstitutional, but the overall effects of appointing ideologues to leadership positions is felt in things like the newspeak so common now in public announcements.
President Biden can’t create legislation. That has to come from Congress. McCarthy (R) is speaker of the house.
“Can’t the President issue executive orders?”
Yes but the Supreme Court has been striking down and limiting the EPA from executing on executive orders or other mandates that the agency has. For example last year [1]
> By a vote of 6 to 3, the court said that any time an agency does something big and new – in this case addressing climate change – the regulation is presumptively invalid, unless Congress has specifically authorized regulating in this sphere.
Biden actually has addressed the UN at least once [2] and discussed climate change. He wouldn’t address NATO on this topic because NATO is a defensive military alliance and most NATO members are well aware of climate change risks.
He doesn’t need to explain to other political leaders that his “hands are tied” because they already know and understand how the U.S. political landscape works.
It was a mistake putting these agencies under the executive in the first place. Gives the president too much power by far. No reason they can't be run directly by congress.
The President is not a dictator of the executive branch, he is there to execute the law, not set policy that contradicts congressional authorizations, so there are limits on what an EO can do.
* Second, if the money is given to the states as a grant, there isn't much the Federal government can do to restrict the funds. There were attempts, for example by the Trump administration to withhold money to states that don't cooperate with INS, but those were struck down. There were also attempts by the Biden administration to deprioritize farm aid to white farmers, but these were also struck down.
* Third, as the job of the President is to carry out the law rather than set his own policy, if the EO appears to contradict the founding charter of the agency or specific legislation passed by congress, then it can also be struck down. The role of the president in setting policy should be limited to signing or vetoing legislation, not trying to tip a federal agency to go one way or another. Of course no President honors this ideal, they are always trying to affect policy, and the courts are constantly striking down EOs that go too far in that direction.
As to pork barrel spending, it's generally money given to states, negotiated by congressmen. It's really hard to stop that kind of spending via executive order. Some of it you can, most you can't. One of the litigants of the line item veto was Robert Byrd, famous for successfully routing huge quantities of pork to Virginia, primarily by relocating every federal office to Virginia, and funding lots of programs for virginia schools, parks, etc.
Here are some examples:
* Bill to move FBI headquarters to Virginia, building a new office there -- spend up to $X (How will you stop the spending with an EO? Move the headquarters but only build half of the new HQ? The FBI will not like this)
* Bill to build a new post office in Virginia, spend up to $X (USPS is supposed to be independent, so hard to block with an EO)
* Bill to create a cancer research fund to be given to some Virginia university, that can spend up to $X. Again, you are going to tell the grant review board to turn down all those proposals? That's hard to do, especially if the review board works for an independent agency.
But here is stuff that you could do more easily with an EO
* Bill to provide up to $X in hurricane relief to qualified home owners. Now maybe you don't spend the full $X. You can set the requirement to screen applicants to be stricter as FEMA is not an independent agency (it used to be, but now under DHS). You have to be careful how you word the EO, but you could get away with spending less.
So while there are things the President can do to spend less, it's often quite difficult to do once the legislation is passed.
This is not how it works though. Congress created the EPA with a Mandate and the power to create more rules/regulations on it's own that carry the force of law. This makes it easier for them because in theory they get to pass a law and hand it over to what are supposed to be experts to carry out the purpose. But this creation of congress is governed by the Executive Branch; meaning they just ceded a bunch of power to the President. So that is why the EPA can do things on its own and also why the President can intervene in ways like this. This is the case for every piece of bureaucracy that congress creates.
Perhaps you're getting mixed up on the nomenclature?
There are "independent agencies" in the US Executive Branch, but these aren't independent of the entire US Government; they're just not part of a single Department. For example, NASA could have been part of the Department of Transportation (and thus report to the Secretary of Transportation), but it isn't and reports directly to the President.
Agencies are typically run by someone appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, but the agency heads are typically supposed to be less political than the cabinet. For example, the President can fire the Secretary of State on a whim, and might do so to indicate a policy shift. On the other hand, the members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, for example, are appointed for fixed five year terms and shouldn't be removed for political reasons.
Regardless though, they are still part of the government.
My argument is that we have been lax with the separation of powers. Congress is required to declare war before the President can direct the armed forces into combat, for example. This has failed recently. Congress also must not declare a permanent generic war, and then leave it up the the executive branch free to do whatever it wants with the military. Or, if they declare war on French Guiana, that doesn’t give the president freedom to attack Georgia.
The argument is not that the EPA should report to Congress instead of the President. The argument is that the EPA should be limited to doing what the laws Congress passed actually says. It is the executive branch’s responsibility to implement the law, not create, implement, and judge cases like they have been doing.
That justifies Trump's power to do it, but it doesn't make it good or acceptable. The President has the power to do many things that are wrong. Trump could order other employees to invade other countries and to kill and torture people.
> EPA scientists are executive branch employees so their boss is Trump.
And Trump's boss is the American people. Everyone in the executive branch and throughout the government reports to them, ultimately.
"Independent agencies exist outside of the federal executive branch. More specifically, the term is used to describe agencies that, while constitutionally part of the executive branch, are independent of presidential control, usually because the president's power to dismiss the agency head or a member is limited."
This is rather simple; EPA is a part of the Executive Branch. He is the Chief Executive. So he can do these things. This is the way the government is set up under the Constitution of the U.S.
"Independent" just meaning "not part of a cabinet secretariat" is not at issue. When the claim is that the governance structure and the pseudo judicial hearings by which they actually exercise authority are unconstitutional it's fair to qualify the argument as "the agency is unconstitutional".
No one would have an issue if the board and officers were fireable by the president at will, like they are at say the CIA or EPA, and if they had to actually go to court to allege violations of the law.
The constitution vests Judicial power in an independent judiciary, but provides that the POTUS shall be elected and that executive power shall be vested in him/her... and that legislative power shall be vested in Congress, with Representatives and Senators elected by the people.
To say that there are agencies that are simply outside of that system... it seems to fly in the face of the basic things that kids learn in Elementary school.
The Department of Defense (aka military) takes their orders from the POTUS / Commander in Chief. We should freak if the military went rogue and decided to invade a country without approval. Yet, we're supposed to want other executive departments to act without regard to the wishes of the elected president?
> [The FED] is an agency of the federal government and reports to and is directly accountable to the Congress.
I mean, it sounds as if they're claiming to be a Legislative Branch agency.
Have we never considered this scenario before? Has there ever been an attempt to establish independent agencies, not subject to the whims of the White House? (IIRC, maybe the CIA or the FBI are independent agencies?)
reply