President Trump is pushing the boundaries of executive power to limit transparency within the executive branch. Congressional Democrats are grappling with how to respond.
Transcript
EMILY FENG, HOST:
Over the past year, the Trump administration has taken steps to evade scrutiny and official oversight in many ways, both quietly and very publicly. Just this week, President Trump made headlines when he confirmed he was secretly removed from Air Force One in Turkey last month following a threat from Iran. Trump explained it as a security necessity, but it is just one incident in a string of recent events, and Democrats are preparing to push back. NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson and congressional reporter Eric McDaniel join me now in the studio to explain. Hi to you both.
ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: Hey there.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Hi.
FENG: Carrie, let’s start with you because this plane is one example, but can you explain what other steps this administration is taking to shield themselves?
JOHNSON: Absolutely. This week, the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that would extend executive privilege to outside advisers, not just a president’s inner circle. That memo says the administration can shield these private advisers so long as they’re talking to the president or his direct reports and that the topic relates to presidential decision-making.
Now, the timing here is interesting – just a few months before the midterm elections, where polls suggest Democrats could retake control of at least one chamber in Congress. Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, posted on X that this should be seen as a, quote, “partisan measure to insulate the president and his corrupt activities from congressional subpoenas when the majority flips.” I also spoke with Carlos Iriarte (ph). He’s a lawyer and expert in congressional investigations.
CARLOS IRIARTE: This opinion gives Democrats a window into how the administration is preparing on their side for a change of control in Congress. And I’m sure Democrats, similarly, are taking this opinion into account as they think about, you know, what tools and strategies they may use to try to make sure they can get the information they need.
JOHNSON: Now, for its part, the Justice Department says this opinion simply reaffirms precedent. And a White House spokeswoman says restricting executive privilege to only communications within the executive branch would make it impossible for President Trump to rely on important outside sources.
FENG: Eric, Senator Schiff is already raising red flags about what the administration is up to. Do we know what Democrats in general want to do in response?
MCDANIEL: You know, I think the best way to think about Democrats’ agenda in a hypothetical future Democratic majority isn’t what they plan to start but what they want to continue from their time right now in the minority but with the full oomph (ph) of the full coequal branch of the Congress behind them. Democratic staff on the House Judiciary and oversight committees tell me that they want to use their oversight powers to do things like compel the Trump administration to engage over the remaining Epstein files after months of shadow hearings and to try and push for some real accountability for his victims.
FENG: Let’s pause for a second on Epstein because this issue has become inescapable for Trump. Congress compelled the Justice Department to release those files, but that did not end the scrutiny, as we know. Where are we today on that?
JOHNSON: Yeah, that’s right. Sponsors of that Epstein Transparency Act in Congress are not at all satisfied with what DOJ has done so far. This week, Judge Emmet Sullivan in D.C. said he was frustrated that the Justice Department might be holding back some materials, and he says the public has a right to know what’s going on.
MCDANIEL: Right. And Democrats have made clear that this is going to be a major, major focus.
FENG: OK. So what else is on their list, Eric?
MCDANIEL: Well, they also want to investigate the president’s business dealings. Remember, he’s investing right now in companies that have major business before the federal government, from AI to the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. And this is at a time when 90% of Americans feel that the government is corrupt, according to polling data out this summer from the Brennan Center for Justice.
And Democrats see that kind of accountability work as a winning issue, especially if they can tie that perceived corruption back to things like a high cost of living. And many voters actually do make that connection. Something like because politicians are focused on themselves, they’re not acting on the things that matter most to me. And there’s no question that democratic leaders are frustrated by this DOJ opinion that Carrie’s been reporting on. They see that as an effort to further block them from their constitutionally guaranteed role or their constitutional-guaranteed responsibility of overseeing the executive branch.
FENG: Carrie, turning to you. I’m drawing on my high school civics classes here, but isn’t overseeing the executive branch what Congress is supposed to do?
JOHNSON: In part, yes, but we have not seen Congress work like it was supposed to work in a long time. There’s very little legislation, very little groundbreaking oversight on Capitol Hill right now. But I remember even a few decades ago, Congress exposed a lot of new information about accounting scandals at major companies that actually led to criminal prosecutions. Lawmakers exposed lies by big tobacco companies, and they uncovered new information about mistreatment and torture of detainees by the United States after the attacks on September 11.
MCDANIEL: And look, I imagine our audience might be receiving that point Carrie’s making in two pretty different ways. Either that the intel committee’s torture report happened in pretty recent memory, just during the Obama administration, or that it was a lifetime ago. You know, in my reporting, I think a lot about how much Congress is shaped by its staff. And right now, the average staffer is 32-years-old, according to an analysis by LegiStorm, and the average career on the Hill for a staffer is just three years per the New America Foundation.
And so that means in practice, it’s pretty safe to assume that more than half of staffers might not remember 9/11 and certainly weren’t working during the last real vestiges of muscular congressional oversight. And as excited as some Democratic lawmakers are, like Jamie Raskin of Maryland, for a return to form, and the January 6 Committee which Raskin was a part of was rigorous, there’s definitely some rebuilding of capacity that needs to happen to do this at the scale that folks like Raskin are pushing for.
FENG: Are these efforts about scoring political points, or is there something bigger behind it?
JOHNSON: This does have real world implications. Congress has subpoena power and the might to go to court and enforce those subpoenas. People in our business, as reporters, we don’t have that kind of power. And the other parts of the government that are designed to root out fraud and waste and abuse, they’ve been hurting. President Trump fired some inspectors general last year. Other jobs have been vacant a long time. Just this week, the president nominated Dennis Kirk, an author of the Project 2025 report, to be inspector general at the Interior Department. That’s the office that would investigate ineptitude with contracts and repairs at the reflecting pool.
MCDANIEL: And, Emily, I think it’s probably also worth noting that this is going to be the most visible and probably the most impactful thing Democrats will do if they retake both or just one Chamber of Congress. Remember that the president still has veto power over their legislative efforts. And the president’s effort to obstruct them is going to be a major point of frustration, if not a big surprise to lawmakers. But the Justice Department opinion that Carrie’s been talking about is just more digging in on the part of the administration for what was already set to be a major clash with congressional lawmakers.
JOHNSON: And ultimately, all these fights between Congress and the White House are going to go to the courts and eventually the Supreme Court, which has a very strong view of executive power.
FENG: Thanks for breaking that down. That’s NPR’s Carrie Johnson and Eric McDaniel. Thanks so much, both of you.
MCDANIEL: Thank you.
JOHNSON: Thank you.
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