# Independent Regulatory Commissions Hub Independent regulatory commissions are multi-member bodies — usually five commissioners with staggered terms and a partisan-balance requirement — created by Congress to regulate sectors of the economy at arm's length from the President. Their defining feature is **for-cause removal protection**: commissioners can be fired only for cause (inefficiency, neglect, malfeasance), not at presidential will. That insulation, upheld in *Humphrey's Executor v. United States* (1935), is precisely what makes them the constitutional battleground of the present. The capture lens: under [[Unitary Executive Theory]], for-cause protection is itself unconstitutional — if these bodies wield executive power, the President must be able to remove their members at will. The Supreme Court has been steadily eroding *Humphrey's Executor* (*Seila Law*, 2020; *Collins v. Yellen*, 2021), and the second Trump administration has tested it directly by removing commissioners at independent agencies. If the protection falls, the entire independent-commission model collapses into direct presidential control — a core objective of the [[Administrative State]] dismantling project. ## Major commissions These are tracked as plain references until individual pages are built; the [[Federal Election Commission]] already has a full page via the campaign-finance work. - [[Federal Reserve]] (the Fed) — monetary policy and bank regulation; the most consequential and most fiercely independence-guarding - [[SEC]] (Securities and Exchange Commission) — securities markets and corporate disclosure - [[FCC]] (Federal Communications Commission) — broadcast, telecom, and spectrum - [[FTC]] (Federal Trade Commission) — antitrust and consumer protection - [[NLRB]] (National Labor Relations Board) — union elections and unfair-labor-practice adjudication - **[[Federal Election Commission]]** — federal campaign-finance enforcement *(built)* - **Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)** — civilian nuclear safety - [[CFPB]] (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) — a single-director hybrid, not a classic commission, and a repeated abolition target - [[FHFA]] (Federal Housing Finance Agency) — another single-director hybrid; regulator *and*, since 2008, conservator of [[Fannie Mae]] and [[Freddie Mac]] - **Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)**, **Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)**, **Surface Transportation Board (STB)** ## Related - [[Federal Agencies]] — parent MOC - [[Unitary Executive Theory]] — the legal theory threatening for-cause removal protection - [[Administrative State]] — the broader apparatus - [[Cabinet Departments Hub]] - [[Independent Executive Agencies Hub]]