ABC Whines SCOTUS Case Allows Trump to ‘Stick His Fingers in’ ‘Independent’ Agencies

Curtis Houck
June 29th, 2026 4:51 PM

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While the Supreme Court didn’t hand down the birthright citizenship or transgenderism opinions on Monday, the government agencies case landed with the Trump v. Slaughter case, largely allowing him to fire appointees to boards overseeing government agencies. This left Disney-owned ABC News in a tizzy, fearing they would no longer “be independent, protected from presidential interference,” and President Trump can now “stick his fingers in there” and “dismantle” them.

First, on a network special report, Supreme Court reporter Devin Dwyer lamented the Court turned away from Congress’s desire to have agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) “insulated from politics, only allowing people to be fired for cause.”

Pitching in on the main network, ABC News Live host Kyra Phillips told virulent Trump-hater Rachel Scott that “clearly, this is going to give President Trump the ability to dismantle other agencies.”

Scott concurred in the laments that appointees to other “federal agencies...could potentially be at risk here and most likely be going away.” In contrast, she said a separate ruling against Trump about the Federal Reserve would keep them free of “politicization...for now.”

Continuing after the Special Report on the aforementioned ABC News Live, Dwyer told morning host Diane Macedo this “sweeping decision” could lead to “a major overhaul” of everything from “the NTSB to the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Election Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission,” all of which “touch all aspects of American life, setting regulations, doing enforcement of those regulations.”

Dwyer then leveled his biggest gripes and machinations about Trump “stick[ing] his fingers in” agencies when they should be “independent” (and thus unaccountable to the people):

[T]hey are helmed by Republicans and Democrats. In many cases, they were designed to be independent, protected from presidential interference. But what Chief Justice John Roberts said today, in this opinion, is that the President does have the have the power under the Constitution to stick his fingers in there and design those agencies as he wants, that it was a violation of the separation of powers for Congress to prevent that.

He concluded by huffing, “It really spells the end now of the idea that we have agencies in our government meant to be independent, meant to be bipartisan, meant to be staffed by subject matter experts, and a huge win for conservatives here, Diane, who had hoped for this separation for quite some time and fought for it in addition to President Trump.”

“Subject matter experts” free from, again, any criticism.

Legal contributor James Sample was also somewhat crestfallen (click “expand”):

MACEDO: James, how do the justices differentiate between these two officials, and what sort of precedent does this set?

SAMPLE: Well, at oral argument, Diane, there was much discussion about the idea that the Federal Reserve is a unique agency, that it has a unique historical pedigree. On the other hand, it had the exact same for cause removal protections from the exact same statutes that the other agencies with, who also had independent agency commissions had. And so the carve out for this exception is arguably inconsistent, but arguably sensitive to the core nature of monetary policy. And just to underscore Devin’s point, Diane, just how big a deal this case — the Slaughter case — really is in terms of the independent agencies, unless you’re over 90 years old, then this marks a fundamental structural change in the organization of almost every government agency that exists. So, in the short term, it is a victory for President Trump. But in the long term, it’s really a victory for the President, regardless of party. And this will produce some significant and big swings on matters of policy that affect everyday Americans over the years.

Shifting over to CBS’s streaming platform CBS News 24/7, chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes feared what will happen at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC), as in the latter case, she speculated this could mean any Democratic complaints to the FEC about elections could be ignored as long as Trump is in office (click “expand”):

[I]f you think about it, the Federal Trade Commission, which has five commissioners, three Republicans, two Democrats, is like so many other agencies that have been designed this way to be bipartisan. And this shakes all of that up. So, consider, for example, the Federal Communications Commission, which is very powerful, which makes decisions about broadband, makes decisions about broadcast licenses and internet licenses, and now suddenly, if there is no Democratic representation on that board — you know, we don’t know exactly what the Trump administration is going to do, that really changes the way debates take place and decision gets made. So, we’ll see how far the President wants to go with this.

(....)

Think about the Federal Election Commission, which takes complaints from across the political spectrum. Imagine if now, instead of a couple of Democratic commissioners and a majority of Republican commissioners, when Republican is in the Oval Office, if it's all Republican commissioners, does that mean that only complaints by Democrats about — about complaints by Republicans, about Democratic candidates, that those are the only complaints that really get attention, and then it flips four years later if a — if a Democrat is in power. So, I think that there are a lot of unknowns here. And it's not just the FTC, the FEC, the FCC, it's the National Labor Relations Board. This really could be a very far-reaching decision.

In contrast to all this hyperbole, here was how longtime CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford broke down the Cook and Slaughter cases.

Can we have a news media that’s more like this that is straight to the point and no meandering punditry?

To see the relevant transcripts from June 29, click here (for the ABC News Special), here (for ABC News Live), and here (for CBS News 24/7).

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