The Presidential Power Grab That Should Terrify Every American | Opinion

On Feb. 18, the Trump administration issued an executive order that would strip independence from agencies Congress designed to operate free from presidential control, while declaring the president alone can interpret federal law. Simultaneously, the administration demanded 2.3 million federal employees justify their work to political appointees or be "resigned," fired military lawyers providing independent legal advice, and dismissed thousands across agencies from Veterans Affairs to the National Park Service.

These actions are at odds with our nation's system of laws and they must not stand.

As executive director of the nation's largest grassroots organization of attorneys, I have watched with mounting alarm as each new executive order and action pushes us closer to autocracy. I have a duty to explain why these actions, culminating in the Feb. 18 executive order, cross a line from which our democracy may never recover.

Imagine a country where agencies created by Congress to protect investors, workers, and consumers must submit all their decisions to the White House for approval, where a billionaire political appointee can threaten mass terminations through a weekend email, and where independent regulators must either bend to the president's will or resign, even when his demands violate clear congressional mandates.

This isn't some dystopian fiction—it's exactly what this executive order would create: transforming our constitutional democracy into an elected autocracy where basic protections depend entirely on one person's whims.

Section 7 of the order declares that all federal employees—including independent agency commissioners appointed to fixed terms by Congress—must follow only the president's interpretation of any law.

This goes far beyond any previous expansion of executive power by attempting to seize control of independent agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Trade Commission—agencies that Congress deliberately insulated from presidential control to prevent political interference in their oversight of financial markets and fair competition. It's not just unconstitutional—it's anti-constitutional,directly contradicting Congress's constitutional authority to structure the government.

Consider what this could mean in practice:

● When the president orders the Federal Trade Commission to stop investigating his business allies for antitrust violations, enabling monopolistic control over American markets

● When the president directs the Securities and Exchange Commission to ease enforcement of securities laws for favored companies, letting political allies defraud investors with impunity

● When the president commands independent regulatory agencies to rewrite their rules according to his personal interpretation of the law, replacing professional expertise with political loyalty tests

Here's what every American needs to know: our Constitution created three co-equal branches of government because the founders feared concentrated power in any single person's hands. They had just overthrown a monarch who, like this president, claimed the authority to interpret and enforce laws as he pleased. Now, we face an executive order that would create exactly that kind of unchecked power.

The legal profession now faces its defining moment: will we remain silent while the fundamental principles of our democracy are dismantled? Or will we honor our oath to the Constitution and lead our fellow Americans in defending it?

For attorneys, the path forward is clear. We must immediately challenge this and every unconstitutional executive order in every possible forum and support our courageous colleagues who have been bringing cases since week one. We must educate our communities about why this order threatens their fundamental rights and we must unite across political lines to defend the basic principle that no one—not even the president—is above the law.

But lawyers alone cannot save democracy. We need every American to understand what's at stake. This isn't about right versus left—it's about preserving the last barriers between American democracy and one-man rule.

The choice before us is stark: either we draw a line in the sand now, or we accept that America's experiment with democracy ends not with a bang, but with a pen stroke. There is no safe middle path, no room for hoping this will resolve itself. As attorneys, we took an oath to defend the Constitution precisely for moments like this, when the entire structure of American democracy hangs in the balance. As citizens, we all bear the burden of ensuring that future generations inherit a democracy, not a dictatorship wrapped in the thin veneer of democratic language.

The time for polite disagreement has passed. This is more than a constitutional crisis—it is an attempt to fundamentally remake our government into an autocracy. Every day we delay brings us closer to where independent watchdogs become instruments of presidential power and democracy's guardrails are irreparably destroyed.

Traci Feit Love is the founder and president of Lawyers for Good Government, a national organization supported by a network of more than 125,000 lawyers and advocates in all 50 states working to promote equal justice under the law and uphold civil and human rights.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.