Trump Administration Wants To Dismantle Federal Watchdog Agencies
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theshmit.org. |
| 0:14.6 | I'm Nora Ball currently at the summit of sunrise peak on Juju Island in South Korea, where I'm studying abroad this semester. |
| 0:23.5 | This podcast was recorded at 2.10 p.m. on September 29th, 2020. |
| 0:29.4 | Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will hopefully be back down safely |
| 0:34.1 | enjoying some tangerines and fresh seafood. |
| 0:41.9 | Sounds delightful. I feel like I could hear the Zen in her voice. |
| 0:46.0 | Absolutely. Wow. Beam us over there. |
| 0:48.3 | That's what I was going to say. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. |
| 0:53.8 | I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. |
| 0:56.3 | And NPR's Labor and Workplace correspondent, Andrea Shue, is here with us as well. Hi, Andrea. |
| 1:00.8 | Hi, Miles. Thanks for having me. |
| 1:02.4 | 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. |
| 1:09.5 | And you both, Andrea and Carrie, have both done some reporting on trying to dismantle them. And you both, Andrew and |
| 1:11.0 | Kerry, have both done some reporting on changes to two oversight agencies, the Merit Systems |
| 1:16.0 | Protection Board and the Office of Special Counsel. Andrea, can you just explain big picture |
| 1:21.0 | what role these agencies play in the government? Yeah, so both of them are really a product of |
| 1:26.2 | the Nixon era when public distrust of the government was high. |
| 1:30.3 | 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. |
| 1:38.9 | Congress wanted to make sure that people could do their work free from political interference and free from |
| 1:44.2 | abuse by management. So the Merit Systems Protection Board, think of it like a court within |
| 1:49.1 | the executive branch that hears personnel issues, basically. If a federal employee faces some |
| 1:54.8 | kind of discipline or firing or demotion that they don't agree with, they can go to the board |
... |
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