President Trump on Friday fired a Democratic member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which the commissioner says is illegal.
In a Monday post on LinkedIn, Christopher Hanson said that Trump had fired him from the independent commission that regulates nuclear power safety.
“Late on Friday, President Trump terminated my position with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission without cause, contrary to existing law and longstanding precedent regarding removal of independent agency appointees,” Hanson said.
Hanson was notified of his termination through an email that was sent on Friday evening. The email did not contain any information about why he was being let go.
Previously, the commission had a 3-2 Democratic majority. Commissioners are appointed by the president and serve five-year terms.
Hanson, despite being a Democrat, was actually nominated by Trump in 2020.
A White House spokesperson defended his firing in a written statement.
“All organizations are more effective when leaders are rowing in the same direction. President Trump reserves the right to remove employees within his own Executive Branch who exert his executive authority,” said spokesperson Anna Kelly.
In a separate statement, the NRC acknowledged that Hanson is no longer with the agency but did not provide additional information.
“We can confirm that former Chair and Commissioner Christopher T. Hanson’s service on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ended Friday, June 13. The NRC has functioned in the past with fewer than five commissioners and will continue to do so,” the agency said.
The move comes as the White House has also sought to push Democrats out of other independent commissions and boards, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
While presidents typically appoint members to these panels, they operate independently from any given administration, unlike other federal agencies whose appointees answer directly to the president.
A judge ruled last week that Trump’s firing of three Democrats from the CPSC was illegal.
Hanson, in his LinkedIn post, said that he had been working to “prepare the agency for anticipated change in the energy sector, while preserving the independence, integrity, and bipartisan nature of the world’s gold standard nuclear safety institution.”
“It has been an honor to serve alongside the dedicated public servants at the NRC. I continue to have full trust and confidence in their commitment to serve the American people by protecting public health and safety and the environment,” he added.
The firing also comes as the Trump administration seeks to overhaul the nuclear safety agency. The president signed an executive order in April that called on the NRC to reconsider its safety standards, lamenting that they are are too stringent.
That order also called for a shorter timeline for environmental reviews and a quadrupling of the nation’s nuclear power capacity by 2050.
Safety advocates criticized Hanson’s firing.
“President Trump’s firing of Christopher Hanson from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is only his latest outrageous move to undermine the independence and integrity of the agency that protects the U.S. homeland from the types of nuclear power plant disasters that devastated the former Soviet Union and Japan,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a written statement.
“Hanson is a dedicated public servant and a strong supporter of the NRC’s public health and safety mission. The loss of such a highly knowledgeable and fair-minded individual will imperil the public from coast to coast as the White House continues to compromise the safety and security of the U.S. nuclear fleet,” Lyman added.
—Updated at 1:41 p.m. EDT
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