Who is making decisions in the Trump Administration?

Unofficial “deciders” wield considerable power and shield the Administration from accountability.

In 2006, President George W. Bush famously barked “I’m the decider” at the Washington press corps amid speculation that his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was ignoring military guidance in conducting the Iraq War. At times, it’s unclear who the decider is in the Trump White House. In several instances over recent months, President Trump was caught seemingly unaware of or reversed decisions made by his own administration on core policies.

Migrant detention and deportation is one area where multiple decision-makers seem to be involved. In March, President Trump denied that he had signed a late-night proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants to El Salvador, saying Secretary of State Marco Rubio had. Trump’s signature, however, appears on the order in the Federal Register. White House Assistant Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has set target deportation quotas for the Department of Homeland Security, also seems to have contramanded the President directly on halting deportations of farm and hospitality workers.

On defense-related issues, Trump was surprised that the Pentagon had paused shipment of air defense weapons to Ukraine and reversed the decision after saying he didn’t know who had made it. In that case, journalists pointed to Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby as the person responsible for convincing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to pause shipments, as well as a decision to review a submarine development deal with Australia and Great Britain. Vice President J.D. Vance also tried to reverse Trump’s decision to bomb Houthi positions in Yemen in March in the infamous top-level official Signal chat about the plan.

In the loop?

In other instances President Trump seemed not to have a grasp on the details of key parts of his governing agenda. For example, he also was unaware that the recently-passed reconciliation bill, the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” cut Medicaid funding, which he told members of Congress shouldn’t be touched. As a result, some observers are questioning how much the President is in the loop.

“We live in a big country, and the president can’t be kept abreast of everything,” writes Gabe Fleisher. “It’s normal for parts of an administration to hum along without him. But these examples touch on key issues — foreign aid, trade, and his signature piece of legislation — that are at central to Trump’s agenda.”

Writer Garrett Graff describes the situation “as one where Donald Trump is the ceremonial head of state and there’s a separate ‘head of government’ — more akin to the king and prime minister of the UK than the normal US constitutional system.” The first person to step into the prime ministership was Elon Musk shortly after the election,” he argues. “In fact, looking back now,” he continues, “we can recognize that even just by early July we’re actually living in the third ‘geologic era’ of Trump’s ‘acting presidents,’ episodes where Trump has been willing to let others drive ‘his’ agenda until he tires of them.” Economic advisor Peter Navarro seized the role second during the announcement of Trump’s tariff policies, while Miller now heads the third era.

If this cycle continues, dozens more unofficial “deciders” may wield considerable power when they emerge from the dogpile of other aides over the remainder of his term. Paradoxically, this Administration is pursuing an unprecedented seizure of governing authority in the federal system even as its chief executive demonstrates little interest in controlling what comes out of the office.

Inside the White House

The Constitution does not expect the President to make every Executive Branch decision and grants him or her with expansive authority to appoint advisors and delegate decision-making responsibilities to others. Because the President lacks the constitutional authority to appropriate funds, however, presidential advisors in the first 150 years of the country had to fill roles within Cabinet departments, which required Senate confirmation. This situation changed permanently in 1939, when Congress passed the Reorganization Act of 1939. It approved the creation of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and an additional six assistant positions within the White House to help manage the federal bureaucracy that did not require confirmation.

From that New Deal-era creation, the EOP has grown significantly, now employing hundreds of aides. Most serve within advisory councils focused on specific policy areas, of which dozens have been created and eliminated since the 1940s. Some, like the National Security Council and Council of Economic Advisors, were created by acts of Congress, while others like the Domestic Policy Council were created through executive order. These core advisory groups have remained relatively constant in function from administration to administration. Typically, they prepare questions on which the president needs to make a decision directly.

It is not unusual for presidents to use EOP councils to formulate policy independently of federal departments and cabinet officials. For example, Richard Nixon utilized Henry Kissinger’s role as National Security Advisor to cut the State Department out of policy decisionmaking and centralize it in the White House. Secretary of State William Rogers was kept in the dark about the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, which he opposed, Nixon’s visit to the People’s Republic of China, and peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese. When Rogers resigned during Watergate, Kissinger succeeded him, becoming the only person to serve in both roles until Marco Rubio in the current Trump Administration.

Every president since Harry Truman also has employed a chief of staff (either formally or informally) to manage the EOP and perform other advisory duties. Deputies typically assist this position as well. The Clinton Administration was the first to designate separate deputy chiefs of staff for operations and for policy, a practice subsequent administrations have followed. Miller’s official job title is deputy chief of staff for policy. Nevertheless, Truman famously decorated his desk with a sign that read “the buck stops here” to emphasize his administration’s decisions were his own, which his predecessors have assiduously followed. Until now.

Delegating the details

Whereas Nixon’s consolidation of decision making on foreign policy inside the White House reflected his preference for personal control, top officials in the Trump Administration seem to be delegating actual decision making to EOB staff, particularly Miller. He reportedly issued direct orders to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials to target day laborers for deportation raids and set specific quotas for daily arrests without resistance from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. It was the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers near a Home Depot that touched off the protests in Los Angeles. Miller reportedly has similar control of some of the policy agenda of the Department of Justice, including prosecution of doctors performing gender-affirming surgeries. He also oversees the creation and direction of a federal law enforcement task force on organized crime, including decisions on whom to prosecute. Miller is not a lawyer.

In the case of military aid to Ukraine, senior Defense officials appear to have made a decision they assumed aligned with Trump’s preferences, but was actually that of one of their deputies. In June, as Israel and Iran began exchanging fire, President Trump requested a review of munitions stockpiles. CNN reported that the request did not include evaluating whether continuing aid to Ukraine would run those stockpiles down to dangerously-low levels. Military officers’ assessment of the stockpiles found they were sufficient even if shipments to Ukraine continued. Nevertheless, Undersecretary Colby reportedly advised Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to suspend them because of stockpile shortages. Sources told CNN that Colby made the recommendation based on his own skepticism of the policy. Hegseth then compounded things by failing to notify the White House of the halt of shipments, as he also had done in February.

Colby, the grandson of former CIA director William Colby, is a firm advocate of realigning American national security to focus solely on the People’s Republic of China and disengaging from Europe. Congress created his role in 1978, mainly to develop the National Defense Strategy and annual Defense Planning Guidance, which helps the Pentagon with budgeting and program execution planning.

Shuttling Accountability

While Congress retains significant powers in holding federal agencies accountable, including investigations, approving nominations, and impeachment of department heads, the same is not true of EOP. Because EOP staff are involved directly in the decision-making processes they want to keep private, all three branches of the federal government understand the President as enjoying the right of executive privilege to withhold information from the other two branches.

If major policy decisions are made within the EOP, therefore, they are largely insulated from court proceedings and congressional oversight, making accountability for decisions made there difficult. Much of what we know about the Trump White House has come from the press. With the President regularly waging lawfare with press outlets, that window into Executive branch decisions is imperiled.

The country faced such a scenario during President Nixon’s “secret war” in Laos and Cambodia, which included massive U.S. bombing raids in both countries and our invasion of Cambodia. The decisions to extend American military presence in both countries were made by Nixon and Kissinger and not shared with Congress. Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia on national television in April, 1970 after it had begun, generating a wave of new antiwar protests that resulted in the shooting deaths of four Kent State University students by National Guard Troops a week later. Congress attempted to wrest some oversight control over the White House in 1973 with the War Powers Resolution, with limited success.