The U.S. Supreme Court’s Trump v. Slaughter decision altered the constitutional framework for agency independence by affirming the President’s removal power over independent agencies. Yet a second, less examined mechanism is reshaping executive influence: directive power. This authority allows the President to mandate regulatory rewrites, install aligned leadership, and frame the outcome as a template for replication. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) marks the first completed test of this approach, executed three times before Slaughter was even decided.
Executive Orders Reshape Regulatory Process
The sequence began with a February 2025 executive order declaring “Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch.” The order required independent agencies to submit regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review, restructuring the post-New Deal regulatory model. Three months later, a second order targeted the NRC, directing a “wholesale revision” of its regulations and setting strict deadlines: proposed rules within nine months, final rules within 18. The President simultaneously removed Commissioner Christopher Hanson and appointed two former NRC staffers with industry ties—Ho Nieh and Douglas Weaver—both confirmed by December 2025. The NRC complied ahead of schedule. On March 25, 2026, it finalized a new reactor licensing framework, the first since 1989. Chair Nieh later framed the overhaul as eliminating “rigid frameworks and unnecessary conservatism.” The agency’s compliance occurred without coercive removal, demonstrating directive power’s effectiveness independent of the President’s removal authority.
White House Report Positions NRC as Blueprint
A White House Office of Science and Technology Policy report, transmitted to the President in July 2025, explicitly connected the NRC’s restructuring to broader deregulatory goals. Titled “Science: A New Golden Age,” the report celebrated the NRC’s changes as “the most sweeping nuclear reforms in a generation, taking down the old system that placed the status quo above the American people.” It then applied the same logic to other agencies, citing the FDA’s adoption of real-world evidence for drug approvals as another example. The document declared that federal agencies should “shape the arena rather than direct discovery,” positioning the NRC not as an exception but as a model. This framing shows directive power’s potential to override traditional checks on executive influence. Unlike removal, which requires cause-based firings, the NRC’s compliance relied on presidential orders, timelines, and leadership alignment, all executed without triggering legal challenges to agency independence.
Constitutional Implications Beyond Nuclear Regulation
The combination of removal and directive power post-Slaughter creates a dual mechanism for presidential control over independent agencies. For commissions like the SEC, CFTC, FCC, and FERC, this represents a structural shift. Arden Rowell and Jud Mathews have questioned whether nuclear safety can survive such presidential oversight. The broader concern is whether the NRC’s experience signals a template for systemic deregulation across the executive branch. The White House report’s language suggests it does, explicitly linking the NRC’s transformation to a national strategy for reshaping regulatory frameworks.
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Administrative law scholars must now grapple with categorizing this dynamic. While Slaughter resolved removal power’s constitutional limits, directive power reveals a parallel pathway for executive influence, one that bypasses traditional agency autonomy by leveraging presidential orders, timelines, and leadership appointments. The NRC’s case is not an outlier but a prototype, as the White House report argues, for recalibrating how independent agencies operate under presidential authority.
