Marketplace - The president's new power over independent agencies

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

The Supreme Court’s ruling Monday expanded presidential power over agencies that would traditionally be viewed as independent, with the Federal Reserve as an exception. What does that mean going forward? Also in this episode, we look at rising transportation costs, infrastructure projects, Comcast’s spinoff of NBCUniversal, and the business of estate sales in Los Angeles.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

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I'm paraphrasing here, but one person's administrative state is another person's how the whole American economy works. from American public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizzol. It is Monday, today the 29th of June, good, as it always is, to have you along, everybody. A not at all hypothetical question as we get going today. Now that the Supreme Court has decided that the president, any president, to be clear,

can reach directly into the gears of this economy and manipulate them almost as he or she likes. What's going to happen? Two biggies, as you know, out of the justices today, one about the Federal Reserve, one about what until today we're called independent agencies. We have called Leah Littman for some analysis. She's a professor of law at the University of Michigan. Leo, welcome back to the program. Good to have you on. Thanks for having me. I want to take these one by one, and I want to take the Lisa Cook decision first, actually. It seems the most straightforward. Five to four, the Supreme Court said the Federal Reserve is actually special, yeah? Yes, that is basically the court's reasoning that the importance of the Fed means that the Fed is exempt from the

court's newly announced rule that independent agencies cannot exist because the president must have the power to fire the heads of any agency exercising significant executive power. So what do you think just as a matter of the law of them carving out this special thing for the Fed as opposed to independent agencies, which we'll get to the second case in a second? It is frankly ridiculous. In the other case, the one announcing the rule that there can be no independent agencies, Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the majority, included this incredibly far-reaching language, indicating that the president has to have the power to fire everyone, no ands, quazis about it.

Only he simultaneously issued an opinion that contained a big and, but except the Federal Reserve board. And the justification for that exception, to my mind, kind of amounts to insert economic reasons here. He averts to the importance of the Fed. And that's kind of it. Here's the thing that got me about this. They carve out this special place for the Fed because, oh my goodness, the economy, as you said. But then they said independent agencies fundamentally can't exist because reasons but the whole reason the U.S. economy works is because of these independent agencies, right? All the regulatory bodies, all the rest of them. Help me out here. No, I think that that's exactly right. When you think about the agencies that the court has effectively

demolished their independence, we're talking about the Federal Trade Commission, which protects consumers from fraud. We're talking about the Securities and Exchange Commission, which does the same. We're talking about the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which regulates the workforce. I could go on, but I hope those examples show that these agencies exercise sweeping powers over corporations, over the economy, over our health, over our safety. And the court just handed the president the power to dictate what the heads of those agencies do. And we've seen how agencies subject to his control exercise their power by persecuting perceived enemies and by granting favors to friends. Justice Sotomayor in her dissent in that case said,

chaos will follow. One imagines policy and political ping pong here with regulatory agencies every four to eight years. Yes, that's exactly right, because by handing the president the power to effectively remake the federal government every four years by firing the heads of these agencies, the court is allowing what are likely to be pretty stark vacillations between what one presidential administration will do and what the next will do. Can we talk about Congress here for a minute? What's that, according to the Supreme Court? Well, that's kind of my point, right?

The court said these independent agencies have amassed all this power. And I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure Congress gave them the power. That's exactly right. Congress has been establishing these agencies for the better part of a century. And the Supreme Court just fundamentally reordered the distribution of power within the federal government because they know better than Congress, it's really remarkable when you both read these opinions and also put them together with other opinions that the court has issued this term, which either invalidate laws that Congress has enacted, as was the case in Slaughter, the independent agency case,

or render them effectively toothless and unenforceable, like some of the decisions we got last week. And the decision in Slaughter, which again, erases independent agencies, seems to view the prospect of Congressional, oversight as somehow antithetical to democratic government. And by hamstringing, knee-capping Congress, my view is that the court is undermining democracy in the process. This is going to sound like a facetious question, but it's really not. Now what happens? Now what happens is my guess is the president will attempt to assert the powers that he has been granted. And he will also press the limits of those powers by asserting control over the career civil service as well and remake the entirety of the federal government.

Leah Lipman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan. She's got her own podcast. It's called strict scrutiny and also a book on the subject at hand. Now I think in paperback, right? Leah, it's called Lawless. Indeed, with a new chapter on the Unitary Executive Theory that was at work in Slaughter. There you go. Leah, thanks a lot. Thank you. Wall Street on the second and last day of the first half of the year, traders had not a care in the world. We will have the details when we do the numbers. Here's a little tomorrow's news today to get you ahead of the news cycle. It's Thursday's news today, technically, when we'll get the June jobs report, because Friday's the fourth. After a

pretty stagnant 2025, the labor market has picked up the past couple of months, more than 170,000 new jobs every month since March in this economy. Marketplace's Henry Ep, looks at what's been driving that and where it might be driving us. For most of the last year, healthcare was one of the only industries consistently adding jobs, says Nicole Boucho at ZipRecruiter. But when we come into the last couple of months this spring, we've started to see gains equaling out a bit across different industries. Local governments started hiring more. So did social assistance organizations think childcare and home care aids. And last month, leisure and hospitality companies staffed up, restaurants and hotels, possibly boosted

by the World Cup. Ron Hedrick is with the analytics firm Lightcast. Those aren't the lockdown career jobs that make people feel really good about the economy. Professional industries, meanwhile, like banking, insurance, and tech are stagnant or even shedding jobs. And that's frustrating to a certain class of workers. What they want to see is, are these white-collar better-paying industries hiring? And the reality is, no, they're not. So some workers who might otherwise try to climb the corporate ladder may be opting for lower-paid work, says Nicole Boucho at ZipRecruiter. We're seeing a lot of maybe established experience workers going and taking entry-level positions,

and that's leaving less room for somebody with no resume and no work experience to break into the market. Especially new graduates. Michelle Evermore at the National Employment Law Project says that's who she'll be keeping an eye on when the June jobs report drops this week. I'm hearing that people newly graduated or having trouble finding work, and June is where we will see them succeed or fail. Evermore says she's concerned about fraying around the edges in the job market. Along with youth unemployment, she's also watching black unemployment and unemployment among people with disabilities. If those numbers rise, it could be a sign of a weaker job market to come. I'm Henry App for Marketplace.

Energy prices have occupied a whole lot of our collective brain space the past, what, four months since president started bombing Iran. That's because, A, gas, but also because B, rising fuel costs factor into everything else. Transportation costs most notably. One example thereof? Over the past four months, the cost of sending a container full of goods across the Pacific has risen from around $1,800 to the shipping company, Frato says, almost $4,200. Marketplace's Justin Ho is on that one. Fuel costs are a major component of container shipping rates.

So when the war started and oil prices rose, ocean carriers started passing on those costs. And that's why we saw that kind of gradual increase in rates when this first started because they're trying to recoup those costs. That's Judah Levine, head of research at Fredos. Then in May, rates spiked. Levine says that's partly because a lot of importers loaded up on goods ahead of schedule, because they're worried that ocean carriers and overseas manufacturers will jack up prices even more. So this means that there's front loading. importers are pulling demand forward for various reasons.

Another reason is that importers are worried about tariffs. In about a month, the Trump administration will be able to replace its current 10% tariffs with a new set of import taxes that could go much higher. Rachel Brewster is a professor at Duke Law School. They could raise them to 20% to 25%. You know, there really is no limit. I mean, they could set them at 1,000%. Importers also want to take advantage of strong consumer spending.

And so companies have confidence in bringing in goods that we think will sell in the fall. Zach Rogers is a professor of supply chain management at Colorado State University. As a result, he says that's increasing demand for all kinds of transportation, pushing up the price of shipping by truck, for instance. And in turn, that even spills over into things like rail, which there's been a big shift in demand towards rail to try to get away from the cost of trucks. Rogers says a lot of those costs will eventually be passed on the consumer. I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace. Apologies in advance for this inconvenient reminder of the passage of time, but we're coming up on five years since the big $1.2 trillion-dollar

Biden-era infrastructure law. There is, in fact, a new bill working its way through Congress to reauthorize some of that money and add some new programs as well. But the point is building public infrastructure is expensive, and it turns out figuring out just how expensive it is, is way easier said than done. Leah Brooks is a professor of public policy and public administration at George Washington University, and she's got a new paper out about exactly that.

Professor Brooks, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. So I'm going to read you back the title of your own paper. It says, measuring the cost of building infrastructure over time, colon, very hard to do well. Why that bit after the colon? Why is it so hard to do well? Because it's so, so hard, guys. It's hard because there are lots of important things that go into building infrastructure that we can't measure in a standard way.

Okay, why? How come? Because if you're producing a private good like apple juice, you measure the things of the apple juice producer purchases to make apple juice, which could be apples and apples squishing machines and stuff like that. And that's his producer price index. And then you can measure a consumer price index for apple juice, which is the price at which the apple juice producer sells the apple juice to consumers. But unfortunately, for roads and bridges and ports, it's not quite so clear. And it's not clear because the government is both a producer in its purchasing, but it's also the final consumer, too. if you think about the government as being us, the people who voted in these politicians. So first, it's hard to measure all the parts. And then second, you know, economists like to think about net benefits. So not just the benefit to you, Kyra is all driving on the freeway to work, but the pollution and the noise that you give maybe as you pass the Hollywood Bowl and harm the as one does in L.A. Right. So all those externalities. But let me ask you something. I mean, because this is the thing

that confounds the citizenry at large, I'm sure, all the time. We are told that a new road will cost a billion dollars because that's what the contractors bid for it and that's what it's going to cost. And then, you know, five years later when the road is built, it winds up costing $17 billion because of markups and the cost of the government and all of those things. So there's, I mean, there's a lot that happens between the initial price tag and taxpayers finally paying the bill. That's right. And what we do really, really well is we measure the initial price debt. We're great. We're pretty good at measuring the initial price tag. We are very, very, very bad at measuring the final price tag. But then there's all the money the government puts into the project,

above and beyond the money it's paid to the private contractor. And that we have little to no visibility on. Is that like administrative overhead? Is that what you're saying? Basically, I mean, you know, that's a, that's a broad term, but basically? Yes, but there's so many things that go into overhead, right, that could be permitting, that could be litigation, thousands of community meetings you have in advance of a project. Those are, you know, those are important and valuable, and we should measure how much they cost. We are not, as much as Americans might like to think otherwise. We are not the only country in the world, and we're not the only country in the world that builds infrastructure. And yet we have a deserved reputation for building it more expensively than almost any other country on the planet, right?

The Chinese do it, the Japanese do it, the Europeans do it, and they all do it cheaper than we do. How come? That's an excellent question, guy. What Zach Liscoa, Yale Law Professor and I have written is that part of the reason it costs so much more in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world is because we give citizens an unparalleled ability to complain, which we call citizen voice, which arrived in the late 60s and early 70s as a response to truly awful things that the federal government did. but in response, we've created a system where not only do you give input before a project starts, but you give input endlessly after the project continues, sometimes in the form of litigation, but litigation also drags out projects. And the longer the project takes, the more expensive the project becomes.

I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around this because it seems so obvious that there are things that need to change. But we've been doing infrastructure in this country this way for decades and decades and decades and decades. and one despairs that there will actually be a solution. Well, I wouldn't say that you're wrong to be pessimistic. On the other hand, economists also say, is it economists or traders? The only solution to high prices is high prices. And, you know, maybe we just, it wasn't bad enough before. At some point, I think it will become so expensive that we realize that the tradeoffs we're making

are not the tradeoffs we want to make anymore. And that makes the politics change. Leah Brooks. She is a professor of public policy, also public administration at the George Washington University. Professor Brooks, thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you, Guy. Coming up. Fun little hanging birds and bird cages. A whimsical cat pillow. Sounds pretty nice. I don't know. First, though, let's do the numbers. Down dustra is up 306. Today, 610%. 52,182. The NASDAQ added 522 points, 2.1.1.1.000.

The NASDAQ added 522 points, 2.1%, 25,820. The S&P 500 up 86 points, 1 and 2 tenths percent, 74 and 40 there. So, Rocket Lab makes launch vehicles, you know, use them to put clients payloads into orbit. It's paying $8 billion to buy Eritium communications and its network of telecom satellites so it can compete against. SpaceX, Rocket Labs, up 15 and 9 tenth percent. Today, Eridium ascended 25 and 45. four-tenths of one percent. Meanwhile, SpaceX, discussing a deal to provide cell service with cable and internet provider charter. So says Bloomberg. Okay, SpaceX up seven and a tenth percent on the day.

You're listening to Marketplace. This Marketplace podcast is supported by Inuit QuickBooks. If you're trying to grow your business, Intuit QuickBooks workforce can help you lead your business with confidence, clarity, and in a way that makes sense for you. As a sponsor at Marketplace's my economy, QuickBooks Workforce recognizes that no one person or businesses finances are the same. As your needs evolve, QuickBooks Workforce evolves with you. Bringing together the core HR capabilities businesses expect with the flexibility to adapt to your specific needs. QuickBooks Workforce combines human intelligence and AI-powered tools, so you get smart automation without ever losing control, spend less time reconciling and more time deciding what to do next.

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medicine, tomorrow's cure is for you. It's the chart-topping 2025 Amby Award finalist podcast from Mayo Clinic. Back for a brand new season with new host award-winning journal. is Lindsay Sievert, tomorrow's cure explores the innovations changing the healthcare landscape. Featuring conversations with leading physicians, researchers, and medical experts, the new season examines everything from AI-powered diagnostics and cutting-edge cancer therapies to surgical technologies improving patient care today. Not sure where to start? Listen to the season premiere featuring MD Anderson Radiation Physicist Dr. Page Taylor and Mayo Clinic Radiation

Oncologist Dr. Adam Holtzman. They discuss why Carbon ion therapy is generating excitement in the medical community and what it could mean for the future of precision cancer treatment. So go ahead. Follow tomorrow's cure on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdal. You know how the streaming slash entertainment slash media slash TV slash film business is really fragmented right now? Comcast would like you to hold its beer. The cable conglomerate said today it's going to spin off its media subsidiary NBC Universal into a separate publicly traded company. It's going to have TV and film and peacock in it.

That's the streaming service, also Universal Theme Parks. Comcast keeps its connectivity businesses, broadband and wireless. The deal is going to take about a year to get done, which honestly is forever in this business. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes reports. When Comcast bought NBC Universal back in 2011, we were in a very different media landscape. The synergies that made sense 15 years ago are less than less apparent. Roger Entner is with recon analytics, which counts Comcast as a customer. He points out that since then, streaming has become a thing.

Satellite Internet, also more of a thing. Content creators are definitely a thing. All of these create challenges for Comcast. The attention that they deserve makes it much easier if they're, are two companies than one. Etner says Comcast and NBC have always been culturally pretty different and will be more at home in separate houses, so to speak. A cable company, he says, is by definition risk averse because it's got to help people get

and stay online. Whereas when it comes to content, this is all about not being boring, not being cautious, because that's like the worst content you can watch on television. This is not Comcast's first attempt to divide and conquer. Earlier this year, it spun off cable networks, including MSNBC and CNBC. One potential motive? It's a for sale sign. Charles Schrager is a professor at both NYU and Fordham and a former HBO exec.

He says it's tough to sell an entertainment company wrapped inside a cable company. No other business wants to eat something that big. There's too many things that they don't want. But would they be interested in buying a library? A library of movies. and TV shows with a streaming service as the cherry on top, that's a lot more digestible. I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace. Short, though it may be, this is a busy week economy-wise.

Those two Supreme Court rulings, Leah Littman and I were talking about, the June jobs report on Thursday. I mentioned that. And then tomorrow, the Case Schiller Home Price Index. Part of the challenge with home prices now, specifically with them staying high, is that home owners are staying in their homes longer. 12 years on average nationwide. That's data from Redfin. The longest tenure is here in Los Angeles where the typical homeowner hangs onto a house for 20 years. The longer you stay in one place, of course, the more stuff you were going to accumulate. And when it is finally time to move or to

sell all of that stuff can be a business opportunity. Here's today's installment of our series, Adventures in Housing. My name is Amy Beyer, and I am the owner-founder of Handled. We We do luxury estate sales in Los Angeles, and we are here at our latest estate sale in Beverly Hills. It is a beautiful home. What we have done is really trying to set the collection up for success by staging it like a desirable store. We have our main room in here. One of the exciting things about this sale is there are some really, beautiful rugs.

We've got ceramics in every color. We've got some art books, fun little hanging birds and bird cages, a whimsical cat pillow. I mean, we like everything from, you know, the kitchy, fun to serious things. We sell things from $4 for cooks tools, like whisks and spatulas and things like that to, I think the most expensive thing I've ever sold in a sale was $65,000 for a rare Porsche. It varies. This one, you know, the range, we're still pricing a lot of things. But, you know, it's a lot of work. I mean, we've been pricing all of this pottery every single piece. So we are going to research the artist. We're going to look at what similar things have sold for. And we're going to price it from there. We offer a full service where you can just, hand us the keys and we're going to do everything and deliver it empty at the end.

So for us, it means getting things donated and junking some things. That's a higher level of service. There's a second level where we still do phase one and hold the events, the exact same, except we just don't deal with what's left. Both options are just a flat fee. So the only reason I know about this, at least on the service side, is in 2015, my mother passed away and I hired a company to help me. And I didn't know what to do. If you look around, you don't know what to do with everything.

So I hired a company, handed them the keys, got on a plane back to L.A. And watched as they handled her things so beautifully. It was an online estate sale. I was blown away and I knew immediately I had found a new career path. I was really lost for a period of time. You know, I talk about real estate. I did it, but I fell out of love with it and was just floundering in a variety of weird attempts to just make ends meet. And then she gets sick.

My mom, I take care of her. She dies. And I find this business. I find a whole new path, a whole new path. new career. It's, I say it's her final gift to me because I'm just so lucky. I'm really lucky. Amy Beyer, she owns Handled Estate Sales here in Los Angeles. Whatever your adventure and housing might be, we would love to hear it, Marketplace.org slash adventures in housing. Send them to us, which is. This final note on the way out today, it was Friday, but it's kind of evergreen as we all fret over AI taking our jobs.

I saw this one on Bloomberg that Ford had to hire back a bunch of years. engineers, it had let go. 300 engineers specifically. The company had thought AI could do their jobs in quality assurance. Turns out not. Score one, I think, for humanity. Amir Bimbaoie, Kailanesh, John Gordon Noikar, Steve Mollis and Stephanie Seek are the marketplace editing staff.

Kelly Silvera is the news director. And I'm Kai Rizdal. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is 8 p.m. The United States is about to mark its 250 And so on the global story podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American dream is alive, but not well.

From the BBC, it's the United States at 250. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or find us on YouTube.