Supreme Court Considers Vastly Expanding The President’s Powers
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, labor and workplace correspondent Andrea Hsu, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | NPR's podcast Trump's Terms is your source for same-day updates on big news about the Trump administration. |
| 0:07.7 | Short, focused episodes, one topic at a time, about five minutes or so. |
| 0:12.2 | We carry it reporting from across all of NPR's coverage, so you are always getting the biggest, most urgent stories. |
| 0:19.0 | Listen to Trump's terms on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:23.6 | Hi, this is Chelsea. And this is Jeremy. And we're from Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. |
| 0:29.6 | After nearly a hundred days in the NICU, we're on our way to go pick up our son and bring him home. |
| 0:34.6 | Wow. This podcast was recorded at 136 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, |
| 0:39.7 | December 10th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we will finally have all |
| 0:44.8 | three of our children at home with us. Enjoy the show. |
| 0:51.9 | Wow, 100 days. Yeah, what a relief. Congratulations. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics |
| 0:58.2 | podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political |
| 1:03.4 | correspondent. And we also have NPR's Andrea Shoe with us today. Welcome back, Andrea. Thanks for |
| 1:08.8 | having me. And today on the show, the Supreme Court is |
| 1:11.6 | considering whether President Trump has broad authority to fire independent agency heads without cause. |
| 1:18.6 | Andrea, you've been following this case. It was brought by a woman named Rebecca Slaughter. |
| 1:23.5 | Who is Rebecca Slaughter? And what is she arguing? Yeah, so she was a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. And actually, she was President Trump's pick to fill a Democratic seat back in 2018. And then she was re-nominated by former President Biden. And she was supposed to serve until 2029. But then President Trump fired her in the middle of March this year. |
| 1:46.8 | He told her her continued service would be inconsistent with his priorities, and she sued |
| 1:52.7 | saying that was illegal. She pointed out that when Congress created the FTC, it said that |
| 1:58.3 | commissioners could only be fired for cause for things like neglect of duty |
| 2:02.8 | and malfeasance. And the administration isn't saying that there was some neglect of duty in this |
| 2:07.2 | case? That's right. The president didn't give her any such reason. So what is the Trump |
| 2:11.6 | administration's argument in this case? In a nutshell, that Congress never should have put restrictions |
... |
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