It has long been needed, and is great to see.

There is a lot of sound and fury emanating from the White House these days, and it can be hard to tell which executive actions are significant and which are just kicking up dust.

I think the most important of the Trump executive orders so far has been the one that ended racial discrimination in federal employment and contracting, reversing decades of misguided affirmative-action policies in both the public and private sectors.

But the second most important may well have been issued yesterday. The president signed an executive order that finally brings the so-called “independent” agencies into the fold of the executive branch for purposes of regulatory review and administrative oversight. It’s a step that seems mundane, but is vital for the sake of reining in the administrative state.

This is a move that has long been championed by many conservative legal and constitutional scholars. I’ve written a lot about it here and elsewhere over the years, and make the case for this reform in my most recent book. Here’s the essence of the point, from a post around here about seven years ago:

One crucial change that’s needed, and could be undertaken without new legislation, is to bring the so-called “independent” regulatory agencies more clearly under the control of the executive branch, so that they might be made more answerable to our constitutional system.

From the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the rest of the dozen or so commissions that regulate the national economy, these agencies are generally considered independent because there is a limit on the president’s ability to remove their leaders. But as a practical matter, they are also generally independent of the review and coordination process by which the president and his senior appointees oversee the regulatory function of the executive branch. Even the Treasury Department, which is run by a secretary who obviously can be removed by the president, exercises this peculiar form of independence from review.

Bringing these agencies under the umbrella of presidential review and control would be a step toward bringing them more generally into the fold of the constitutional system, which has only three branches of government and no fourth super-branch of regulators.

That’s what Trump’s order from yesterday does. In a sense, this is the natural completion of the regulatory reform Ronald Reagan launched with Executive Order 12291 44 years ago, almost to the day, back in 1981. It’s about time, and very good to see.

There is a lot of confusion about the new administration’s assertions of executive power. Broadly speaking, as I suggested here a couple of weeks ago, I think those rooted in the view that the president commands the executive branch are appropriate and useful, while those rooted in the view that the executive branch commands our government are misguided and pernicious. We are seeing a fair number of both, and it’s important to separate them.

This latest move will help this president and future presidents of both parties be better executives. It has long been needed, and is great to see.