Noah Feldman, Columnist

‘Showerhead’ Executive Order Hides a Serious Surprise

Tucked in with the frivolity of low-flow showerheads and the “war on showers” is another of President Trump’s attempted power grabs.

April 11, 2025 at 12:59 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

More than meets the eye.
Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images North America

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Donald Trump has issued a new executive order explicitly challenging the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA) — the law most used by the federal courts to block his other unlawful executive actions. Disguised as a trivial order about (of all things) low-flow showerheads, it is, in reality, an invitation to the Supreme Court to gut the APA. That would be a disaster for the rule of law.

The APA requires federal agency actions to be based on reasons and thus functions as the constitution of the modern administrative state.