Trump Administration Wants To Dismantle Federal Watchdog Agencies

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I'm Nora Ball, currently at the summit of Sunrise Peak on Jeju Island in South Korea, where I'm studying abroad this semester.

This broadcast 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 a fresh seafood.

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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 Hsu, 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, Andrea 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 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 can go to the board and argue that it was wrong.

And the Office of Social Counsel 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

wasteful spending at my agency.

The special counsel would investigate this claim and they could ask the Merit Systems Protection Board to reinstate the employees.

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 Dellinger, 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, Kerry, 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 as 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 us that, you know, it may be that no other president has asserted this kind of authority and power over these quasi-independent agencies, but he says they've had the power all along.

There's a, I think, a quite strong Article II argument that the president has the authority to remove anybody who wields 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 a 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.

Andrew, 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, you know, 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, Kerry, 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 president 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.

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And we're back.

And we've been talking about changes 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 administrations?

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

any single president.

I spoke with Ray Lee 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, mostly as a human resources leader and an employment attorney.

And 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 a 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 who 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

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 have 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 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 en masse, 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.

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And with 108 square feet per hen, there's plenty of space for everyone.

Under the open sky, they can hear songbirds nesting in the trees.

They bask in the sounds of nature as they prepare to lay their rich, delicious eggs.

And when the sun starts to set, the crickets begin to sing.

Time to catch one last squiggly snack before bedtime.

To learn more about Pete and Jerry's organic pasture-raised eggs and the certified humane farms where their hens roam, visit peteandjerry's.com.