A Civil Rights Commissioner Who Needs To Go

Since he took office, President Donald Trump has been firing biased, partisan swamp creatures from the top levels of government agencies and commissions. These bureaucrats should have been thrown out of office a long time ago—and unless she changes her behavior, so should Rochelle Garza, the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Moments after he took the oath of office, Trump informed Garza she had been “de-designated” as chair—but she still refuses to step down.

Garza continues to defy Trump and supports the invidious discriminatory policies of the federal government that he seeks to end. And given her misbehavior, one has to question whether she should not only be removed as chair, but removed from the commission entirely, even though her regular term doesn’t end until Dec. 2028.

I wrote a piece to that effect five months ago—yet to this day, Garza continues to cling to power, claiming she is still the chair. She has also been openly thumbing her nose at the president on X.

She has presented herself and her leadership of the Civil Rights Commission as the lone bulwark against Trump on civil rights issues. She has attacked President Trump on his constitutional view of birthright citizenship. And she has turned the federal agency into a tool to recruit volunteers who will fight to maintain and reimpose discriminatory DEI policies inside the federal government.

Recently, Trump designated Carissa Mulder to be the new staff director of the commission, but Mulder has not started working in that capacity. Why? Because the commission itself must approve Mulder, and Garza cancelled the August meeting where the approval would take place.  She hasn’t fled to Chicago or Boston, but you get the idea.

Under statute, a majority of the eight commissioners must approve the president’s pick for staff director of this supposedly “independent” executive branch commission. This is an impairment and restriction of the president’s executive authority—and it’s certainly suspect under the Constitution.

The president has also designated Commissioner Peter Kirsanow to be the new chairman and Commissioner Stephen Gilchrist from South Carolina to be the vice-chair. Yet Garza has declined to allow the approval of these nominations by refusing to schedule commission meetings or put them on the agenda.

Meanwhile, Garza has presided over a budget disaster, with the commission running hundreds of thousands of dollars in the red each of the past few years—the result of large bonuses career employees received at Garza’s behest. Other personnel issues also exist and deserve the attention of oversight authorities in Congress, such as the hiring of relatives for career civil service slots.

The commission fancies itself as an “independent agency.” Yet it receives millions of dollars from Congress each year.

So far, Trump has succeeded in winning cases in court to bring to account so-called unaccountable federal agencies. Courts have upheld his power to remove commissioners and board members like Garza who serve at such “independent” agencies.

That’s the way it should be. The founders didn’t want a federal government that had nodes of power untethered to one of the three branches in the Constitution.

That’s what makes our Constitution of 1787 so brilliant. There are no independent agencies, no commissars, no Star Chambers.

The next meeting of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is scheduled for Sep. 19. On the card for that meeting should be Kirsanow and Gilchrist’s nominations as chair and vice chair, as well as Mulder’s selection as the new staff director. But given their past behavior, it wouldn’t be surprising if, led by Garza, the four Democrats continue to block Trump’s nominations and directives.

They may do so at their own risk, as the president holds all the Trump cards. For starters, I’m told that the administration may be planning to halt pay to senior assistants of the Democrats on the commission and to terminate other of their allies. 

All that’s needed is a few keystrokes in the pay management system—wholly controlled by the administration—and more bureaucrats will experience life on the outside.

Trump has other cards, too.

Two of the commissioners, Garza and Vice-Chair Victoria Nourse, were appointed by the president, albeit one named Biden. Nevertheless, the power of an office to appoint is the power to remove. Nourse and Garza may find their commissions revoked by the same office that provided it.

There is a third possibility. As the last intransient Democrat standing, Garza may cave and decide she prefers to be a commissioner on the Commission on Civil Rights with staff members who are paid, instead of a former commissioner without staff members—meaning she’d move the president’s picks to approval.

The battle over her position is no small fight. The administration is committed to establishing a unitary executive and dispensing with bureaucrat-dominated “independent” commissions that contradict our constitutional structure and evade the president’s supervisory authority.

Trump is also committed to ending the malevolent discriminatory policies infesting the entire executive branch—morally repugnant policies that Garza promotes and sponsors.

She may find out the hard way how committed Donald Trump is to winning the battle to root out recalcitrant bureaucrats and indefensible discrimination.

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