The Supreme Court last week expanded the powers of the “unitary” executive, raising fears among many that the presidency is becoming too strong. Yet as big as the ruling appears to be, it wasn’t even the most concerning news in the past month about the accumulation of unchecked power in the Oval Office.
The day after the court’s ruling, the Trump administration lifted restrictions it had imposed on access to top artificial intelligence models from Anthropic, a leading A.I. company, seemingly on the condition that the company submit to ongoing government oversight. On Tuesday, OpenAI finally announced that it will release broadly its new artificial intelligence model, GPT-5.6, access to which has been restricted at the request of the U.S. government. Only a limited set of customers — those approved by the Trump administration — have been allowed use the A.I. tool.
These restrictions on the A.I. industry are the latest instance of the White House creating its own parallel administrative state, sidestepping Congress. Congress and the courts must push back.
The right vigorously criticizes government control of private industry as a kind of communist central planning. Many Republicans objected to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze — a policy that is being imposed through the public processes of a legally created oversight board. The president’s unauthorized intervention in private business poses an even more direct threat to free enterprise.
True, the Supreme Court’s ruling last week gave the president more authority over agencies that Congress had wanted to insulate from political interference, such as the Federal Trade Commission. But agency leaders must still follow clear rules that Congress has written into the law. By contrast, the Trump White House’s ad hoc interference in private business decisions — exemplified by but not limited to its recent meddling in the A.I. industry — has come without congressional sanction. President Trump is planning product releases and choosing customers of a key industry in our ostensibly free-market economy.
No legislation authorizes the White House’s recent moves to effectively regulate domestic A.I. customers and model release timing. Congress has yet to pass comprehensive A.I. safety legislation, and the Trump administration has spent most of the last year and a half discouraging necessary lawmaking. The White House has filled the gap it helped create with whatever rules it sees fit to impose at any given moment.
In a normal process, an agency such as the Federal Trade Commission exercises powers granted by Congress, subject to various forms of judicial review. If the agency exceeds the scope of its legal authority, the courts nullify its illegal actions. Only Congress writes the laws. The executive carries them out.
Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion in last week’s ruling reminded us that the founders feared “when ‘the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person.’” Those fears should be especially great when unitary control is exerted over society-shaping technology.
On A.I., the White House has effectively created and put into effect its own mini-regulatory administration. The Trump administration’s directions to Anthropic and OpenAI follow its release last month of an executive order creating, by fiat, a regulatory framework for identifying “covered frontier models” and steering their release. The order contains some good ideas for Congress to consider, but it does not execute a law passed by Congress — it creates its own.
Apparently recognizing its lack of legal authority to do this, the Trump administration claims that compliance is “voluntary.” Yet few would believe a request from this White House is merely that. The Oval Office commands enormous power to threaten and cajole private companies into compliance. Indeed, the administration has already moved to exile Anthropic products from the Pentagon after the company failed to cooperate with the executive branch’s dictates.
After the Supreme Court ruling, the president has more power over the Federal Trade Commission and other agencies with oversight of these companies. The boost in presidential authority will enhance the White House’s ability to pressure businesses, who will want to avoid regulatory fights — even ones they are confident they would ultimately win in court. This dynamic, however, will not be new.
The A.I. business is not the only industry that Mr. Trump has subjected to his new form of unitary executive. Under pressure, the Japanese company Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel last year granted a special “golden share” to the American government as part of a national security review of Nippon Steel’s acquisition of the U.S. company. According to public reports, the White House now has authority over the company’s plant closures, headquarters moves and job transfers.
Mr. Trump also pressured Intel into selling the government a 10 percent stake in the company, while taking a 15 percent cut of Chinese sales from the chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia. On his busy Truth Social account, the president has issued orders on the pricing of gasoline, where Apple should build phones and the content broadcast on late-night TV — each backed by threats to use state power to force compliance. This week, Mr. Trump took credit for Walmart’s announcement that it would cut beef prices, saying the company was doing so “at my Administration’s request” to celebrate the country’s semiquincentennial.
The White House’s attempts to command the economy can and should be challenged in court. Model developers such as Anthropic and OpenAI may fear retribution too much to vigorously defend themselves. But those excluded from access to their products might have claims they can bring before judges.
The need to rebalance power in Washington was clear before the Supreme Court’s latest round of rulings. It grows more urgent each time the executive writes and enforces its own rules.
And Congress must take more control. If the safety risks posed by artificial intelligence did not already spur lawmakers to pass a comprehensive A.I. bill, the president’s unbounded direction of the industry adds urgency. In the meantime, Congress should aggressively probe the administration’s assertions of control over the economy, expose any favoritism or corruption and write new laws as needed to provide cover to those who fear or incur retaliation for defying a presidential “request.”
David Lawrence oversaw antitrust policy at the Justice Department from 2019 to 2026. He departed the government in March and now conducts scholarship and technology development related to law, antitrust and artificial intelligence.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post This Is a Lot More Worrying Than the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Executive Power appeared first on New York Times.
