The Magic Phrase Behind Donald Trump’s Power Grab

Hi, I’m Tim Marchman, WIRED’s manager of politics, science, and security, and I’m filling successful for Jake this week.

On August 7, the White House issued an executive order giving governmental appointees authorization implicit national grant-making. This made the nonpartisan experts who person agelong decided however agencies similar the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation nonstop funds subordinate to, well, commissars.

Nestled successful the bid was a operation that’s go progressively acquainted to maine implicit the past 7 months arsenic I’ve work piles of boring documents issuing from the administration, trying to fig retired what it’s doing.

“Discretionary awards must, wherever applicable,” it read, “demonstrably beforehand the President’s argumentation priorities.”

This phrase, and variants, travel up a lot. It has popped up everyplace from the White House’s statement of the Office of Presidential Scheduling (it works to “create an docket that strategically advances the President’s priorities,” apparently) to a website wherever the Coast Guard explains that its caput is assigned to “fully align the Service to execute the President’s priorities.”

“It’s go a benignant of all-purpose catchphrase from this administration,” says Zachary Price, a prof astatine UC Law San Francisco, “and they’re besides peculiarly assertive astir claiming this powerfulness of the unitary enforcement subdivision to nonstop however antithetic agencies execute their functions. So it fits into the wide benignant of this administration, of wanting beauteous beardown top-down control.”

Examples abound. A February enforcement order, for instance, said that going forward, the manager of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would “review autarkic regulatory agencies' obligations for consistency with the President's policies and priorities.” An April memo from the acting head of the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) offering guidance to bureaucrats astatine affected agencies connected implementing the bid explains what happens erstwhile a important regulatory enactment is submitted to OIRA for review: “Executive Branch reviewers reappraisal the materials for consistency with the President’s priorities, adherence to statutory requirements, and analytic cohesion.”

What precisely the president’s priorities are spell unstated; the accent the president’s insubstantial pushers enactment connected them, though, raises questions astir what happens erstwhile they struggle with those of others—including the authors of the Constitution.

The Importance of Showerheads

Talk astir the president’s priorities surely didn’t originate with President Donald Trump. His predecessors, including successful the Biden and Obama administrations, utilized the phrase, and mounting priorities for the portion of the national authorities they oversee is simply a cardinal portion of the president’s job.

That doesn’t mean determination isn’t thing caller successful the expansive usage of the operation and its variants, though, oregon that determination aren’t issues with defining the occupation of officials passim the enforcement subdivision arsenic intuiting the priorities of a antheral who connected a fixed time whitethorn beryllium focusing connected the Cracker Barrel logo, Roger Clemens’ Hall of Fame case, oregon his long-standing feud with Rosie O’Donnell.

“Agencies similar the Coast Guard person a strategical priority-setting process,” says Jody Freeman, a prof astatine Harvard Law School. “It isn’t usually a clump of officials sitting astir and wondering what the president thinks today. It’s a truly weird instruction.”