Trump's Efforts To Consolidate Executive Branch Power

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since returning to office, President Trump has moved quickly to reshape the federal government. His actions, which have moved to put more power under his purview, align with a belief in some conservative circles of the unitary executive: an idea that the president and the president alone controls all actions undertaken by the executive branch.

This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, political correspondent Susan Davis, and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.

The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.

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Transcript

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0:32.6	This podcast was recorded at 106 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, March 12th.
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0:57.4	Well, hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.
0:59.6	I'm Osma Khalid. I cover the White House.
1:01.4	I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.
1:03.0	And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.
1:05.2	And today on the show, we have some special in-depth reporting from Carrie and Sue about President Trump's efforts to dismantle the executive branch in its current form and make it more accountable directly to him.
1:18.4	And Sue, I just want to begin by asking you where the idea for this reporting came from.
1:23.8	Yeah, I mean, I think it comes as no surprise that Trump has taken dozens of actions since he took office, I think, just seven weeks ago.
1:29.7	And I think we were trying to find the cohesive string theory here. I think we had covered a lot of the one-off firings or what's happening in an individual department or what is he doing over here.
1:38.3	And then you realize as you talk to people and talk to people who support what Trump's doing, there's a bigger, grander design of what he's trying to do to the executive branch and how he wants to basically remake the way American government has worked, at least for the better part of the past 50 years.
1:53.7	So you just mentioned that Trump re-entered the White House just about seven weeks ago, so it hasn't been a whole lot of time.
2:00.4	I'm curious if you can explain what specific actions you all have looked at.
2:03.6	And, Carrie, why don't you start?
	...

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