The Wall Street Journal reports:

The debate over how to respond to Omnicom Group’s $13 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group to create the world’s largest advertising business came down to two people: Federal Trade Commission chairman Andrew Ferguson—and President Trump.

Sitting in the Oval Office with Ferguson last August to discuss the deal, once considered a run-of-the-mill review left to FTC staff, Trump invited an interested party to weigh in. He dialed his friend Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, who had been lobbying the president to block it, on speaker phone, according to people familiar with the call.

The head of the conservative news channel had claimed he was a victim of an advertising boycott and that Ferguson hadn’t been returning his calls. Earlier in the summer, the FTC had reached settlement terms with Omnicom, but the terms hadn’t been completed. “Make your best case,” the president told Ruddy.

Ruddy told the chairman that he shouldn’t approve the deal, and if he did, the merging companies should agree to pay $250 million to a fund to compensate Newsmax and other parties harmed by the boycott, the people familiar with the call said. Trump laughed at Ruddy’s request, calling it “bullshit.” Ferguson said no, and allowed the deal to close.

Ruddy, through a spokesman, disputed that characterization of the call, including that he asked for $250 million. Newsmax last year sued Fox News alleging anticompetitive practices, which Fox has denied. Fox News and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.

Trump has gotten involved in regulatory decisions big and small that once were made by independent agencies, according to interviews with business executives, lobbyists and administration officials, dramatically shifting the balance of power across Washington and reordering how influence campaigns are waged.

Political appointees by nature tend to be closely aligned with the president’s worldview. But former agency officials across administrations say it is highly unusual for presidents to be so intimately involved in the details of regulatory reviews. Previous presidents were careful to avoid the appearance of influencing agency decisions, typically making a point of not publicly weighing in on matters until reviews were complete.

Congress over the years authorized certain agencies to operate independently from the White House to keep some key government functions separate from politics, most of them governed by bipartisan boards whose members can only be removed for cause.

A few weeks after returning to the White House last year, Trump signed an executive order requiring independent agencies for the first time to submit major regulations to the White House budget office. Trump has fired the Democratic commissioners at multiple agencies, including the FTC, whose five-member commission is down to just two members, both Republicans. The Supreme Court is revisiting the question of whether a president can remove such officials without cause.

These days, companies are directly approaching the president instead of pleading their cases with staff or senior officials at the agencies. [Continue reading…]

NPR reports:

President Trump has issued an executive order turning an estimated 8,000 federal workers into at-will employees, which means the government could fire them without providing any reason.

The move culminates an effort Trump launched during his first term to strip vast numbers of federal employees of civil service protections designed to insulate their work from political interference.

Nearly all of the 8,000 people affected are at the highest level of the civil service, known as GS-15. The Trump administration characterizes the roles as senior positions with significant influence over policy. They include leaders of policy offices and their chiefs of staff, heads of regional offices, program managers, senior public affairs officers and those overseeing spending and grants. [Continue reading…]