Independent Agency Rules — Week of Mar 31, 2025

Several executive orders signed the week of March 31, 2025, expanded presidential control over areas of government typically shielded from direct political influence. The most far-reaching, Exclusions From Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs, stripped collective bargaining rights from employees at agencies including the FDA, EPA, and CDC by declaring these agencies perform "national security work"—a designation that does not match their primary missions of food safety, environmental protection, and disease control.

This might matter because collective bargaining protections at scientific agencies help ensure that career staff can resist pressure to alter findings or suppress research for political reasons. Removing these protections could make it easier to direct agencies like the EPA or FDA to reach conclusions favoring political goals over scientific evidence—undermining the independence that allows these agencies to protect public health and safety. A separate order, Addressing Risks From WilmerHale, blacklisted a major law firm—suspending security clearances, canceling contracts, and discouraging agencies from hiring its employees—citing the firm's past legal work, including its connection to the Mueller investigation, alongside broader security and ethical concerns. This could amount to using government contracting power to punish a firm for the clients it chose to represent.

Additionally, a congressional floor speech promoted legislation to eliminate the ability of federal judges to issue orders that block executive actions nationwide, calling judicial review a "political weapon." And an order on Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History directed changes to Smithsonian Institution exhibits based on the administration's view of "proper" historical interpretation.

There are alternative explanations to consider. Presidents do have broad authority over security clearances and federal contracts, and some agencies named in the labor order (like parts of Homeland Security) genuinely do national-security work. The administration may view these actions as streamlining government operations or addressing perceived conflicts of interest. The labor order's legal basis has been used by prior presidents, though never applied to scientific agencies like the EPA or CDC at this scale. On the Smithsonian, administrations routinely influence federally funded institutions, though the Smithsonian's status as an independent trust makes this more unusual.

Taken together, these actions represent an unusually broad assertion of executive authority over scientific agencies, the legal profession, museum curation, and judicial oversight in a single week.

Limitations: This analysis is based on only 16 documents—a small sample with limited statistical reliability—and represents AI-generated assessment, not a finding of fact. Legislative proposals like the floor speech do not represent enacted law.