alt Hacker NewsNo, the executive can’t do whatever it wants. But if the executive can do it, then the President must be able to do it. In principle you can have a unitary executive that’s also very weak.
The first line of Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The first three articles all start with a similar line. For the legislature and Supreme Court, everyone understands that the powers of those branches can only be exercised by the constitutionally designated actors. Congress can’t create a law that creates bodies within the judiciary staffed by employees that exercises power independently of Article III judges. Similarly, Congress can’t create independent agencies within the executive that can exercise executive power independently of the President.
This article isn't about that, though? USAID was never designated as an independent agency. But it was a statutory agency, which means that the President was required to run it according to its statutory structure.
Congress still directs the President, for example, to operate a Food and Drug Administration in coordination with the HHS secretary and the commissioner of food and drugs. All three of them have broad authority to direct its operations and efforts as they see fit. But they may not decide to stop regulating food and drugs entirely, nor recruit a toadie from Elon Musk as a sin-eater to make that decision.