Independent agencies that have significant authority, such as the Federal Election Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, or the Securities and Exchange Commission, should not operate independently of the president, Trump said in the order.

“For the Federal Government to be truly accountable to the American people, officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people’s elected President,” the Tuesday order stated.

In practice, the order would require Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to approve any major actions by the independent agencies. It would also require each agency to hire “White House liaisons” who would monitor their activities. The order tasks Vought, who helped craft Project 2025, with creating new instructions for independent agencies on how to carry out the order as well.

The order came as part of Trump’s aggressive effort to reshape the executive branch into a slimmer and more consolidated version of its former self. Vought has been a top proponent of this strategy, which is also known as the “unitary executive theory.”

As part of this effort, Trump also recently fired, or attempted to fire, heads of some of the independent agencies, including the FEC, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Office of Special Counsel. He also fired the head of the National Labor Relations Board, which investigates allegations of unfair labor practices. The move incapacitated the board because it now does not have a quorum to function.

The firings have alarmed Trump’s critics, who say the president is shutting out crucial government watchdogs and neutering independent agencies’ abilities to do their jobs in a neutral manner. Congress passed laws to create these independent agencies and specifically included provisions for agency heads like term limits and prohibitions on firing them without cause, the critics point out, in order to protect them from politicized personnel action.

Hampton Dellinger, who leads the Office of Special Counsel, is in charge of vetting whistleblower complaints about wrongdoing within the government.

Trump fired her without explanation in a one-sentence note, prompting Dellinger to sue Trump. Dellinger argued that she is owed, by law, an explanation for her firing. A judge agreed, and now Trump has asked the Supreme Court to step in and decide if Trump was authorized to fire her without cause or notice. Legal observers are closely watching for the high court’s decision, which could shed light on where it stands on independent agencies as a whole.

Conservative lawyer Andy McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, told the Washington Examiner Trump was right to sign an executive order that reins in independent agencies despite the inevitable legal challenges it will invite.

“The so-called independent agencies are unconstitutional because they violate separation of powers, but restoring order would require a lot of overhaul by the Supreme Court,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy predicted Trump’s executive order would be met with extensive litigation “because the concept of independent agencies — i.e., agencies that are not fully accountable to any branch of government (or to the public) and that exercise a combination of executive, legislative, and judicial power (which is a violation of separation of powers) — is essential to the progressive political project and the administrative state as it has existed and expanded over nearly a century.”

Jonathon Hauenschild, an associate counsel for the Republican National Lawyers Association, also defended Trump’s executive order in a statement on X.

“The problem is that agencies have acted, for far too long, as independent of both the president and Congress. Almost as if they were a fourth branch of government,” Hauenschild wrote.

TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE STRATEGY TESTS PRESIDENTIAL POWERS

Trump said in his order that the agencies had also been permitted to pass significant regulations in the past without the president signing off on them.

That activity prevents a “unified and coherent execution of Federal law,” Trump said.