Professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Virginia, Amanda Frost joins the show to discuss her book You Are Not American: Citizen Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers. Live-streamed on September 22, 2025.
Brendan Carr listens during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee hearing to examine the Federal Communications Commission on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 24, 2020. Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via AP
Brendan Carr listens during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee hearing to examine the Federal Communications Commission on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 24, 2020. Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via AP
On Thursday, the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, approved the $8 billion merger between Skydance Media and Paramount, a deal that would allocate more than a billion dollars towards the latter company’s staggering debt.
But the agreement came with one major caveat: The media company must appoint a “bias monitor.”
According to reporting from The Wrap, an FCC “ombudsman” would work directly with New Paramount’s president, Jeff Shell, to review “any complaints of bias or other concerns” regarding CBS News, a subsidiary under Paramount.
Paramount also agreed to eliminate its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, including scrapping all DEI messaging from its internal training programs and removing DEI objectives in its compensation plans.
This move comes after the company announced the cancellation of The Colbert Report only a few days after the eponymous host critiqued the network’s recent settlement with the president. Earlier this month, Paramount agreed to cough up $16 million to Trump after the president sued the network for allegedly unfairly editing an interview with Kamala Harris, an accusation that many legal experts have called “baseless.”
As my colleague, Inae Oh, has reported, Colbert’s cancellation marks a dark new chapter for our culture as a whole. Oh writes:
Though his second term has already produced a string of stunning capitulations by some of the most powerful forces in the country, one could argue that Trump’s attacks had yet to take down our actual culture. I’m talking about the literal content we consume—the television, art, movies, literature, music—no matter how much Trump complained. That it remained protected and free-willed, a rare area of control for a public that otherwise feels powerless to take action. Clearly, that was magical thinking. If this can happen to Colbert and a storied franchise, this can happen to anyone.
And when it comes to using his presidential power as a cudgel against the media that critiques him, Trump clearly shows no signs of stopping. This week alone, the president threw a tantrum over two TV shows that joked about him. On Wednesday, the White House issued a statement threatening the ladies of The View after host Joy Behar joked that Trump was jealous of former president Barack Obama’s “swag.”
A White House spokesperson told Entertainment Weekly, “Joy Behar is an irrelevant loser suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
A White House spokesperson toldEntertainment Weekly, “Joy Behar is an irrelevant loser suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome” who “should self-reflect on her own jealousy of President Trump’s historic popularity before her show is the next to be pulled off air.”
Behar’s joke was tame compared to the animated show, South Park‘s treatment of Trump, who was depicted naked in bed with Satan. In response, the White House claimed that the show hasn’t been relevant in “20 years” and said “no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.”
How long will South Park, whose creators just signed a 50-episode deal with Paramount, last under Trump’s regime? Let’s hope the ombudsman finds the Trump jokes funny.
Wow. A group that initially included no Jews hatched a plan to make support for Palestine a crime. The US is following their playbook and supporting the mass killing & removal of Palestinians.Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement http://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u…
Cooking the books? Fears Trump could target statisticians if data disappointsProposed rule change could pave way for president to fire economists whose figures prove politically inconvenientwww.theguardian.com/us-news/2025…
A think tank founded by Stephen Miller sued Roberts and the office that administers the judiciary, claiming that the White House should run the federal courts.
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 04: U.S. President Donald Trump (L) greets Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr as he arrives to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 04, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump was expected to address Congress on his early achievements of his presidency and his upcoming legislative agenda. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)LESS
Close allies of President Trump are asking a judge to give the White House control over much of the federal court system.
In a little-noticed lawsuit filed last week, the America First Legal Foundation sued Chief Justice John Roberts and the head of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.
The case ostensibly proceeds as a FOIA lawsuit, with the Trump-aligned group seeking access to judiciary records. But, in doing so, it asks the courts to cede massive power to the White House: the bodies that make court policy and manage the judiciary’s day-to-day operations should be considered independent agencies of the executive branch, the suit argues, giving the President, under the conservative legal movement’s theories, the power to appoint and dismiss people in key roles.
Multiple legal scholars and attorneys TPM spoke with reacted to the suit with a mixture of dismay, disdain and laughter. Though the core legal claim is invalid, they said, the suit seems to be a part of the fight that the administration launched and has continued to escalate against the courts over the past several months: ignoring a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a wrongly removed Salvadoran man, providing minimal notice to people subject to the Alien Enemies Act, flaunting an aggressive criminal case against a state court judge.
The executive branch has tried to encroach on the power of the judiciary in other ways too, prompting a degree of consternation and alarm unusual for the normally-staid Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. As TPM has documented, DOGE has already caused disorder at the courts and sent out mass emails to judges and other judiciary employees demanding a list of their recent accomplishments. Per one recent report in the New York Times, federal judges have expressed concern that Trump could direct the U.S. Marshals Service — an executive branch agency tasked with protecting judges and carrying out court orders — to withdraw protection.
These are all facets of an escalating campaign to erode the independence of the judiciary, experts told TPM. The lawsuit demonstrates another prong of it: close allies of the president are effectively asking the courts to rule that they should be managed by the White House.
“It’s like using an invalid legal claim to taunt the judiciary,” Anne Joseph O’Connell, a professor at Stanford University Law School, told TPM.
“To the extent this lawsuit has any value other than clickbait, maybe the underlying message is, we will let our imaginations run wild,” Peter M. Shane, a constitutional law scholar at NYU Law School, told TPM. “The Trump administration and the MAGA community will let our imaginations run wild in our attempts to figure out ways to make the life of the judiciary miserable, to the extent you push back against Trump.”
A FOIA from America First
The America First Legal Foundation filed the suit on April 22.
It came after the group first filed a FOIA request in July 2024 to the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts asking for “all records referring or relating to (1) Clarence Thomas or (2) Samuel Alito” and all communications with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), starting in April 2023. Both Democrats have led investigations into the influence of wealthy political donors’ money on the court, the conservative legal movement’s long-term plan to capture the high court, and alleged ethical violations by Justices Thomas and Alito. The Judicial Conference, which is composed of senior federal judges and operates via an array of committees, sets policy for the judiciary.
Ethan V. Torrey, legal counsel of the Supreme Court, rejected the request in a September 2024 letter, per an exhibit filed along with the complaint.
Daniel Z. Epstein filed the FOIA request, and is listed as lead attorney on the lawsuit. Epstein currently represents President Trump in his personal capacity in the lawsuit against CBS over an October 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
Stephen Miller, the longtime Trump aide, founded the America First Legal Foundation in April 2021, describing it as the “long-awaited answer to the ACLU.” Over the next few years, the group succeeded in slowing down or blocking several Biden administration policies, often by filing in the Northern District of Texas’s Amarillo courthouse, which is presided over by a judge who is notably receptive to conservative arguments. Its priorities often match those of Trump’s second term; it attacked diversity programs, protections for LGBT students, immigration, and supposed “wokeness” in corporate America. Miller himself has been a public driving force in the most aggressive and lawless elements of the second Trump administration’s effort to bulldoze through civil liberties in the name of increasing the tempo of deportations.
In an email after publication, an America First Legal spokesperson cited a 1991 9th Circuit decision in a case brought by a federal judge seeking to force the Administrative Office to pay for a private defense attorney he wanted to hire in a lawsuit brought over his work as a judge. In that ruling, the 9th Circuit found that AO was a “non-Article III adjunct,” akin to a magistrate judge or special master: a body that serves the courts, but is not a court itself. America First Legal didn’t immediately reply to a follow-up question from TPM about whether it could address its claim that the Judicial Conference is also an independent agency of the executive branch.
When the suit was filed in April, it received a small round of coverage that focused on FOIA element of the claim.
Legal experts suggested to TPM that the FOIA piece is something of a trojan horse. The Judicial Conference and Administrative Office’s denial of the FOIA request provides standing to sue, and thereby ask a federal judge to declare that the two judicial bodies “are subject to the FOIA as independent agencies within the executive branch.”
In terms of importance, a judge finding that core parts of the judiciary are independent agencies of the executive branch would dwarf any FOIA material America First Legal might receive. The lawsuit itself seems to acknowledge this. At one point, in language channeling that of a protection racket, America First Legal observes that “Federal courts rely on the executive branch for facility management and security. Federal judges, as officers of the courts, need resources to fulfill their constitutional obligations.”
New extreme for an old theory
There is a level of irony here.
For years, conservative legal scholars have pushed the idea that power in the executive is unitary, granting the President the ability to exert direct control over all federal officials who carry out federal law. It opens the door to a level of presidential power that hasn’t been seen until this administration, and which the Supreme Court may ratify this term.
This lawsuit asks the judiciary to extend that logic to its own operations, potentially dealing a fatal blow to judicial independence.
This argument reaches a provocative peak when it comes to the Judicial Conference of the United States. There, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court can appoint members to committees. The lawsuit says that this means Roberts may, at times, fall under the President’s power — for FOIA purposes, of course.
“Accordingly, if the Chief Justice does indeed have this power to appoint officers, then he must be acting as an agency head, subjecting the Judicial Conference to the FOIA,” the suit reads.
Melissa Murray, a professor at NYU Law, pointed out that the suit raises a number of bizarre scenarios. If it makes it to the Supreme Court, “does the Chief Justice have to recuse himself?” she asked.
“It does seem like poking the bear,” she added.
As of this writing, lawyers for Roberts and the U.S. Courts director have not appeared on the docket. In other cases filed against parts of the judiciary, the Justice Department’s Civil Division has appointed attorneys.
The DOJ did not return a request for comment. The Administrative Office of U.S. Courts declined to comment. The Supreme Court also did not return requests for comment.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that federal courthouses will soon start serving Trump steaks, or that Kid Rock will be called on to provide filler sound during sidebar sessions.
Blake Emerson, a professor at UCLA Law, called the suit’s claims “outlandish,” and said that if it somehow succeeded, it would grant the White House control over “the means by which the judicial branch functionally operates.”
O’Connell, the Stanford Law Professor, described it to TPM as more of an attempt to tell a story about “how much power they think the executive should have” than a serious legal claim.
“There is no chance that this will prevail,” she said.
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