The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Administration Wants To Dismantle Federal Watchdog Agencies

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

The Trump administration has taken steps to effectively dismantle the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Office of Special Counsel, two agencies that protect federal civil servants. We discuss why changes at these agencies matter and how the U.S. Supreme Court could grant the president broad powers to make changes at other independent agencies. This episode: voting and election security correspondent Miles Parks, labor and workplace correspondent Andrea Hsu, and justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Is the American dream a scam? Allegated Tears, a new memoir by Edgar Gomez, tackles that question. Who are the people who are benefiting the most from this idea that we need to keep working, that we need to keep, you know, our heads low, that we need to keep going out and risking our lives? You can hear more about that on Code Switch from NPR wherever you get your podcast. I'm Nora Ball currently at the summit of Sunrise Peak on J-Jew Island in South Korea. where I'm studying abroad this semester. This podcast was recorded at 2.10 p.m. on September 29th, 2025.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will hopefully be back down safely enjoying some tangerines and fresh seafood. Sounds delightful. I feel like I could hear the Zen in her voice. Absolutely. Wow. Beam us over there. That's what I was going to say. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And NPR's Labor and Workplace correspondent, Andrea Shue, is here with us as well. Hi, Andrea.

Hi, Miles. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. And today on the show, we're talking about watchdog agencies within the government and the Trump administration trying to dismantle them. And you both, Andrew and Carrie, have both done some reporting on changes to two oversight agencies, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Office of Special Counsel. Andrea, can you just explain big picture what role these agencies play in the government? Yeah, so both of them are really a product of the Nixon era when public distrust of the government was high. So Congress created these agencies to better safeguard the civil service, you know, the federal employees who carry out the functions of the government day in and day out. Congress wanted to make sure that people could do their work free from political interference and free from abuse by management. So the Merit Systems Protection Board, think of it like a court within the exact.

executive branch that hears personnel issues, basically. If a federal employee faces some kind of discipline or firing or demotion that they don't agree with, they can go to the board and argue that it was wrong. And the Office of Social Council was created to investigate claims of wrongdoing. So think of that office like a prosecutor. So someone says, I've been illegally fired because I blew the whistle on, you know, wasteful spending at my agency. The special counsel would investigate this claim. And they could ask the Merit Systems Protection Board to reinstate the employee. So those two agencies kind of work in tandem. Got it. And so your reporting focused specifically on controversial firings at these agencies. Can you talk us through who was let go and why this is such a big deal?

So early this year, President Trump fired Hampton Delinger, who was a special counsel appointed by President Biden, even though he still had four years left in his term. And now there's an acting special counsel who's also the U.S. Trade Representative. But for all intents, and purposes, that office is no longer independent, and so we don't really know how it's functioning. And Trump also fired Kathy Harris. Now, she was a Democratic member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and she still had three years left in her term. Now, her agency is still functioning because there are administrative judges who are still hearing cases and issuing decisions, but since Harris is firing, the agency has no quorum on its three-member board. Kathy

Harris was one of those three members. And it's that board that hears appeals of decisions. So these cases are rapidly piling up. As of the end of August, there were more than 400 cases waiting for the board to have a quorum again so they could hear those appeals. Well, and these agencies, right, Carrie, are considered basically independent, but it seems like the Trump administration is kind of pushing back on that idea. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely, Miles. In fact, the Trump administration has been pushing a maximalist view of its power. in this area is in so many others. And I reached out to James Burnham, who worked in the White House Counsel's office during Trump's first term. Earlier this year, he served as General Counsel of Doge.

And Burnham told us that, you know, it may be that no other president has asserted this kind of authority in power over these quasi-independent agencies. But he says they've had the power all along. There's a, I think, a quite a strong Article 2 argument that the president has the authority to remove anybody who we basically any modicum of authority. Anybody. So he's talking about, you know, a prosecutor, a person who makes regulations at the Food and Drug Administration when I asked him whether there was anyone who wouldn't be eligible to be fired under this theory of White House's huge power over the whole federal government. Burnham basically said, well, maybe, you know, the receptionist at the U.S. Attorney's Office,

somebody who has nothing to do with prosecutions or regulations that affect people's basic rights. So I feel like as is the case with any controversial firing, there are lawsuits and a number of them related to these firings. Andrea, can you kind of get us up to speed on the latest legal developments here? Yes, so many lawsuits. With all these firings have come lawsuits. And in Kathy Harris's case, for instance, at the Merit Systems Protection Board, there's been a lot of flip-flopping. She was reinstated. She was removed again. She was reinstated. She was removed again. And the Supreme Court on its shadow docket issued a decision basically allowing President Trump to go ahead. and fire her. The argument being what Kerry outlined that the Supreme Court found, the Constitution likely does give the president the power to fire someone like her, even though the law that created the Merit Systems Protection Board states that board members can only be fired for cause, such as neglect of duty or malfeasance. And I talked to Kathy Harris about this, and she said there's

a reason that Congress put these restrictions on the president. Our country is built on a separation of powers, a balance of powers. And when you give the president unfettered power, which I don't think the Constitution provides, especially in this instance, you're taking away the power from Congress. Well, Carrie, can I just ask about the broader downstream effects for the federal government if the Supreme Court ultimately says that Trump is allowed to fire people like Kathy Harris? I mean, what would that mean big picture? What it would mean big picture is that a 90-year-old precedent called Humphrey's executor basically is out the window and that the president has the ability to hire and fire the vast majority of the federal workforce at will

without providing any reason or cause like neglect of duty or malfeasance or anything like that. And that would really continue this massive restructuring and reshaping of the federal government. We've already seen Trump and Doge. try to implement this year. Interestingly enough, the Supreme Court on its emergency docket has mostly sided with the president on this question. And even if it hasn't issued major substantive decisions on the merits yet, it's allowed many of these people like Kathy Harris to be fired. So the effect is that Trump is in full control of the federal government as he and people who believe in the unitary executive theory believe he should be and has been all along.

All right. We'll dig into that a little bit more after a quick break. More in just a moment. At all Latino, we celebrate Latin music all year round. But during Latin Music Month, we really amp it up. Once again, we're turning the tiny desk into El Taini and bringing you 11 hot-off-the-desd performances. Hear musical giants like Gloria Estefan in a more intimate setting and get to know newer artists like Macario Martinez. Celebrate Latinidad with us all month long on the All-Latino podcast from NPR. Keeping up with the news can feel like a 24-hour job. Luckily, it is our job. Every hour on the NPR News Now podcast, we take the latest, most important stories happening, and we package them into five-minute episodes, so you can easily squeeze them in between meetings and on your way to that thing. Listen to the NPR News Now podcast.

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to the federal government systems meant to insulate civil servants from politics. And I want to back up just a second. Carrie, can you just explain how the civil service system has worked under previous administration? Sure. So more than 100 years ago, the government pivoted to a system where you had to kind of have some skills and expertise. And before that time, it was more about patronage and who you knew, not what you knew. And that has big consequences. for things like regulation of the medicines and the environment, but it also has some consequences for the Justice Department. So I've covered DOJ long enough to remember when there were scandals about hiring on the basis of politics in the George W. Bush years. There was a big

crackdown on that. And then lo and behold, this year, the administration has been firing prosecutors who investigated Donald Trump. They've, fired some very, very senior FBI officials, one of whom filed a lawsuit and said that when he was interviewed for a promotion at the FBI this year, someone in the White House actually asked him for whom he voted, which is totally not allowed in modern times to be asking that of an FBI official. And it seems like that system that many administrations have respected is now changing. Yeah, I've had multiple federal employees, former federal employees remind me that civil servants, they take an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to uphold, you know, any single president. I spoke with Ray Le Mohn.

He retired, actually, from the Merit Systems Protection Board in February. But before that, he'd spent nearly three decades in other roles in the government, you know, mostly as a human resources leader and an employment attorney. And, you know, he kind of outlined a scenario that, you know, he feels that we're headed toward. He said, you know, people should be able to get their social security checks and challenge problems with their social security checks, like the amount. No matter if they support the current administration or not, But he said, like, imagine we return to our patronage system.

That might not be true. He came up with this imaginary scenario. If you don't show your MAGA credentials at the door, you may not get an answer or you may not even get a check. We're not there yet. But what I'm saying is we're on that path. How critical are these agencies for enforcing this norm that became the case around 100 years ago that you guys are telling me about? what does the law say about whether the government can hire or fire civil servants for political reasons? How does this exactly work? Well, at stake here are the very civil service protections

that we've been talking about, that the Merit Systems Protection Board helps uphold and evaluate. But this year, increasingly, some people have worked inside the Justice Department and the FBI are not only going to the board, but they're also filing lawsuits in federal courts saying the administration did not respect these kind of civil service rules and laws, but also that they may have been targeted in violation of the First Amendment, targeted because of their political beliefs or lack of political beliefs. And these are the kinds of things we're going to see federal courts evaluate in the months and years to come. And I will say, Miles, that among the heads of these independent agencies that Trump has fired, they're the Democratic

members. These boards were set up to be bipartisan with Republican and Democratic members. and the ones that he has fired are those occupying the Democratic seats. These were agencies created by Congress, and Congress traditionally doesn't love it when the executive branch comes in and usurps power that is supposed to be theirs. Have they had any response at all to the idea that, you know, President Trump is essentially kind of exerting more control over these quasi-independent agencies? Most of what I've seen is sternly worded letters out of Congress, with one exception. And that is when the president was making a lot of noise about wanting to fire Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve, members of Congress seem to be a little bit more vocal about why that would be a bad and dangerous thing for the markets.

We've seen far less action and even statements from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle with respect to some of these firings outside of the Federal Reserve context. Well, and staying on Congress for a second, Tuesday night is the deadline for Congress. Congress to avert a government shutdown. Andrea, does the Merit Systems Protection Board play a role there at all? Yeah, well, you know, if federal employees are laid off on mass, as the White House Office of Management and Budget has threatened, you know, federal employees may be able to challenge their removals. They might be able to go to the Merit Systems Protection Board, but only after they've been

removed, and that typically takes 60 days, at least. But let's say there are mass layoffs during the shutdown. we could see a flood of cases filed with the Merit Systems Protection Board. And, you know, that would keep them very busy. And then if there's still no quorum on the board itself, those, you know, appeals of those cases could just pile up. And those people could be left in limbo for an undetermined amount of time. All right.

Well, we can leave it there for today. Thank you so much for joining us, Andrea. Thank you for having me. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics. podcast.