President Trump has fired a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent federal agency that oversees America’s nuclear reactors. It is the president’s latest dismissal in defiance of job protections established by Congress.
The former commissioner, Christopher Hanson, received an email from a White House official on Friday saying that he had been terminated “effective immediately,” without providing a reason for the termination. Mr. Hanson, who led the agency during the entirety of the Biden administration, said in a statement on Monday that Mr. Trump had fired him without cause “contrary to existing law and longstanding precedent regarding removal of independent agency appointees.”
The dismissal came as Mr. Trump is considering several executive orders aimed at cutting regulations for nuclear power plants. One draft executive order reviewed by The New York Times would require the independent agency to undertake a “wholesale revision” of its safety regulations and impose a deadline of 18 months for deciding whether to approve new reactors. It would also urge the agency to reconsider its limits for radiation exposure, saying that current limits are too strict and go beyond what is needed to protect human health.
Mr. Trump’s firing of Mr. Hanson was unusual: The president’s efforts to purge agency appointees have been aimed at those picked by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., but Mr. Trump himself first appointed Mr. Hanson to the commission in 2020. Mr. Biden elevated Mr. Hanson to chairman on his first day in office and subsequently appointed three of the five members of the commission.
Courts have blocked some previous efforts by Mr. Trump to fire leaders of independent agencies. On Friday, a federal judge in Maryland reversed Mr. Trump’s firings of the three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which monitors the safety of products such as toys, cribs and electronics. Last month, another federal judge ruled that Mr. Trump broke the law when he fired Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent civil liberties watchdog.
In both cases, Mr. Trump had purported to fire the officials without cause, while statutory job protections established by Congress protect those officials from being fired without a valid reason, usually “neglect of duty or malfeasance.” The law establishing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that a commissioner can be removed “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
Claire Brown covers climate change for The Times and writes for the Climate Forward newsletter.
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