In a letter that no doubt sent shock waves through Washington’s permanent, untouchable bureaucracy, President Donald Trump’s acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday informing it that the Justice Department will no longer defend the constitutionality of federal laws that limit the ability of the president to remove the heads of “multimember regulatory commissions.”
Those are the so-called independent agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
This effort to implement accountability is long overdue.
Congress has passed laws providing that the commissioners of many agencies can only be removed “for cause,” while at others like the Federal Election Commission, where I once served as a commissioner, the law provides that a…
