President-elect
Democrats on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission appear to be prime termination targets because they’re on track to retain majority control of the agency into 2026.
The same goes for Democrats at the National Labor Relations Board, provided that its current chair wins Senate approval for another five-year term before December’s lame-duck congressional session expires. Management lobbyists raised that possibility in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election victory.
Depending on how broadly Trump tries to follow through on his campaign promise to “dismantle the deep state,” he might sack leaders at other agencies governed by bipartisan, multi-member bodies, such as the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission—even the Federal Reserve System.
Terminations at major independent agencies would rock the administrative state and test the durability of board and commission members’ for-cause removal shields. Job protections—along with leaders having staggered terms in office, partisan balancing on boards and commissions, and freedom from White House oversight on rulemaking—are what’s supposed to keep those agencies independent from the executive branch.
The Supreme Court has axed some removal protections, giving the president the power to fire independent agency directors without cause. But for-cause shields for multi-member bodies have survived thanks to Humphrey’s Executor v. US, a 1935 decision that upheld safeguards for FTC commissioners.
The high court in October passed on a chance to reconsider that 89-year-old precedent in a case involving the Consumer Product Safety Commission, despite several conservative justices criticizing its reasoning in recent years.
“The court has laid enough breadcrumbs to signal that it doesn’t think Humphrey’s is right,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional scholar at the University of Virginia. “But that’s not the same thing as whether the court thinks Humphrey’s should be overturned.”
Trump confronts the fourth branch of government.
