The Administration’s approach to Nuclear Regulatory Commission policy reflects its plan for other agencies.
The commentary following Trump v. Slaughter and its companion case Trump v. Cook has rightly focused on the President’s removal power. The U.S. Supreme Court held 6-3 that the U.S. Congress may not restrict the President’s authority to remove the heads of independent agencies exercising executive power, overruling Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. In Cook, a 5-4 majority preserved limited protections for members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on statutory grounds. As Harvey Reiter, Graham Steele, and Peter Conti-Brown have each analyzed, these decisions reshape the constitutional landscape for agency independence.
But removal is only one instrument. A second, less examined instrument is directive power: the capacity of the President to order an independent agency to rewrite its regulations on a fixed timeline, install aligned leadership, and then frame the result as a template for replication. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) offers the first completed case of this second instrument, used three times before Slaughter was even decided.
The sequence begins with a February 2025 executive order, “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies,” which declared a policy of “Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch,” requiring independent agencies to submit significant regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs—located within the Executive Office of the President—for review. As Baker McKenzie observed, this policy significantly restructures the New Deal-era regulatory apparatus.
Three months later, a May executive order, “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” made the NRC the first test case. The order directed the Commission to undertake a “wholesale revision” of its regulations, installed a dedicated team of officials, and set mandatory timelines: proposed rules within nine months, final rules within 18. The President then removed Christopher Hanson as a commissioner and appointed Ho Nieh and Douglas Weaver—both former NRC staffers with subsequent industry experience—who were confirmed and sworn in by December 2025.
The NRC complied ahead of schedule. On March 25, 2026, the Commission finalized the first new reactor licensing framework since 1989. Nieh, the chair, subsequently described the Administration’s broader regulatory overhaul as one that “strips out rigid frameworks and unnecessary conservatism.” Note the sequence: The President directed the rewrite, installed the leadership, and the agency delivered—all without needing to fire a single commissioner for cause.
A report from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy shows that these actions reflect the Administration’s approach to directive authority generally, not simply its approach to nuclear regulation. In July, the Office’s director, Michael Kratsios, transmitted “Science: A New Golden Age” to the President. Chapter III, “Securing U.S. Dominance in Critical and Emerging Technologies,” contains a section titled “The Freedom to Build” that frames the NRC’s regulatory overhaul not as an isolated policy update but as an exemplary case of executive-led deregulation. The report celebrates “the most sweeping nuclear reforms in a generation, taking down the old system that placed the status quo above the American people.”
Crucially, the report then applies the same logic to other independent agencies. On biotechnology, it describes “the largest deregulatory effort in the Department’s history” at the Department of Health and Human Services. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been directed to accept real-world evidence and a single, pivotal trial as default pathways for drug approval. Chapter V declares that the “central role of the Federal Government is to shape the arena rather than direct discovery.” The NRC is not presented as an exception. It is presented as the model.
This distinction between removal power and directive power matters for how administrative law scholars assess the post-Slaughter landscape. Note the sequence: The President directed the rewrite, installed the leadership, and the agency delivered. The removal of Hanson reinforced the outcome, but the directive mechanism—order, timeline, compliance—did not depend on it.
Post-Slaughter, both instruments are now available simultaneously. The President can direct a regulatory rewrite and, if agency leadership resists, remove them. For the multi-member commissions that share the NRC’s structural features—the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and others—this combination represents a qualitative shift. As Arden Rowell and Jud Mathews have recently asked in this publication, whether nuclear safety can survive presidential control is a vital question. But the broader question is whether the NRC is a one-off or a template. The Office of Science and Technology Policy report answers that question in writing.
This analysis takes no position on whether the NRC’s new reactor licensing framework is good nuclear policy. It may well be. The question is structural: When the executive branch directs an independent agency’s regulatory rewrite, installs aligned leadership, and then publishes the result as a model for other agencies, administrative law should have a name for what happened. Removal power is the instrument Slaughter resolved. Directive power is the instrument the NRC case reveals. Both now operate without constitutional constraint outside the narrow Federal Reserve exception.
