Live updates: Supreme Court weighs Trump’s authority over independent agency – NBC News

December 08, 2025, 12:46 PM EST

Solicitor General D. John Sauer delivered a brief rebuttal before the court adjourned.

He rejected the idea that the administration’s position would “change the structure of our government” and warned, on the contrary, that a certain interpretation of the independence of some federal agencies could result in the conversion of others into “multimember agency commissions outside the government’s control.”

If the justices construe the president’s powers narrowly, Sauer said, “then we have a situation where Congress could erect virtual, reconstruct, virtually the entire executive branch outside the president’s control. And that is not even a republican form of government. But that is the logic of the position that’s being advanced here. That is the parade of horrible as the court ought to consider.”

At the end of his rebuttal, Sauer urged the Supreme Court to “restore the separation of powers to our government.”

Supreme Court arguments this morning in Rebecca Slaughter’s challenge to her firing by Trump from the Federal Trade Commission could lead to a dramatic change to long-held Supreme Court precedent and give the executive branch significantly greater authority over federal agencies.

This has been, as we call it in the business, a “hot bench”: Every justice asked several questions of both sides, and the justices were at times stepping over one another in trying to get their questions in. (Lots of “Go ahead.” “Please.” “No, go ahead.”)

The three ideologically liberal justices provided perhaps the strongest commentary of the day during questioning.

“You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government and to take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.

“Once you’re down this road, it’s a little bit hard to see how you stop,” Justice Elena Kagan added.

“Having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the Ph.D.s and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said.

Amit Agarwal, the lawyer representing fired Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter, argued that the administration’s argument to allow the president to fire members of independent agencies would upend precedent.

“Petitioners are asking you to abandon precedent after precedent after precedent,” Agarwal said. “A lot of precedents would go south if their constitutional theory is correct, and a whole lot of history, and dozens of institutions that have been around for a long time that have withstood the test of time, that embody a distillation of human wisdom and experience, all of those would go south.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who is arguing on behalf of the administration, on the ramifications of independent federal agencies reporting to the president rather than Congress.

“Congress established them and can eliminate them,” she said. “Congress funds them and can stop, so to the extent that we’re concerned that there’s some sort of entity that is out of control and has no control, I guess I don’t understand that argument.”

The president plans to announce a $12 billion aid package for American farmers today, a White House official said.

The announcement is scheduled to be unveiled during an afternoon roundtable event at the White House where Trump, alongside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, will hold a discussion with farmers.

The aid package will include up to $11 billion in one-time payments under a new program administered by the Agriculture Department.

Read the full story here.

The Trump administration is doubling down on its campaign against alleged drug smugglers in various countries while also facing calls from lawmakers to publicly release video of the controversial “double tap” strike in early September. NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez reports for “TODAY.”

Trump lashed out at Paramount, which owns CBS News, over a “60 Minutes” interview with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, reigniting an old beef with the show and potentially complicating Paramount’s already messy fight to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.

“My real problem with the show” wasn’t Green, R-Ga., the president posted on Truth Social, “it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE! Oh well, far worse things can happen.”

The president’s post came while Paramount CEO David Ellison, whose father is major Trump donor Larry Ellison, was being interviewed on CNBC to defend his company’s hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount lost a bidding war for the company to Netflix, which agreed to buy Warner Bros.’ studios and HBO streaming assets, but Ellison isn’t deterred.

Trump’s dissatisfaction with Paramount could upend the regulatory process. Paramount and many critics within Hollywood have said a Netflix takeover of Warner Bros. would be anti-competitive. Trump himself said he could see an issue with Netflix gaining so much market share. But he also praised Netflix and co-CEO Ted Sarandos, who has reportedly cultivated a relationship with the president.

Washington, D.C., Police Chief Pamela Smith is stepping down after two years, she and Mayor Muriel Bowser announced this morning.

Smith was appointed in 2023 and is the first Black woman to serve as chief of the D.C. police department.

“I am deeply humbled, grateful, and deeply appreciative of my time with the District of Columbia,” Smith said in a statement. “Serving as Chief of Police has been the greatest honor of my career, and I want to extend my sincere thanks to Mayor Muriel Bowser for appointment me to this position and to the DC Council for their steadfast support throughout my tenure.”

Smith and Bowser’s statements didn’t say why she will leave the role or who might replace her. Her last day will be Dec. 31, the statement said.

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Trump said this morning that he will sign an artificial intelligence executive order this week aimed at superseding state efforts to regulate the technology.

On Truth Social, the president posted: “We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS.”

“I will be doing a ONE RULE Executive Order this week,” Trump added.

NBC News reported in mid-November that the administration had drafted an order that would challenge states’ ability to regulate AI technology. The draft order would instruct the attorney general to create an AI task force to target state legislation, a person familiar with the matter said.

Former Democratic Rep. Colin Allred announced this morning that he is ending his Senate campaign in Texas and running for the House, shaking up the primary just hours before filing deadline.

Allred’s announcement that he is instead running for the redrawn 33rd Congressional District in North Texas comes as Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett has been openly weighing a Senate run. She is announcing her decision later this afternoon.

“In the past few days, I’ve come to believe that a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic Party from going into this critical election unified against the danger posed to our communities and our Constitution by Donald Trump and one of his Republican bootlickers Paxton, Cornyn, or Hunt,” Allred said in a statement. “That’s why I’ve made the difficult decision to end my campaign for the U.S. Senate.”

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Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., will face a primary challenge from progressive state Sen. Julie Gonzales, who announced her Senate bid today.

Gonzales is the first major primary challenger to try to unseat Hickenlooper.

In her announcement video, Gonzales framed Hickenlooper as a longtime politician and criticized the “establishment.”

“I know we’re not fooled by his so-called ‘common sense approach, ’cause there is no sense in voting for Donald Trump’s nominees or parading across the country to tell us we don’t want universal health care when millions of families are struggling to make ends meet every month,” she said in the video. “This ‘go along to get along’ politics is robbing us blind.”

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, is making a “special announcement” today, the state’s candidate filing deadline, as she has been openly weighing a run for the Senate.

The announcement will take place at 4:30 p.m. local time in Dallas, according to an invitation obtained by NBC News last week. Crockett’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Crockett has suggested she is leaning toward challenging GOP Sen. John Cornyn next year, telling MS NOW her campaign has conducted polling. “The data says that I can win,” she said, adding that she can build a coalition of “Black and brown” voters.

“I am closer to yes than I am no,” Crockett said.

Republicans in Texas have moved forward with a new congressional map that significantly redrew district boundaries in North Texas, where her district is based.

In a high-profile interview, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., bashed Trump, accusing her onetime political ally-turned-foe of inciting death threats against her and her son and failing to live up to his campaign pledge to focus on improving the lives of Americans.

“For an ‘America First’ president, the No. 1 focus should have been domestic policy, and it wasn’t. And so, of course, I was critical, because those were my campaign promises,” Greene said in an interview that aired last night on CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” “Once we fix everything here, then fine, we’ll talk to the rest of the world.”

Later, CBS News’ Lesley Stahl asked Greene: “Are you MAGA?”

“I am America First. … MAGA is President Trump’s phrase. That’s his political policies,” Greene said, referring to Trump’s signature motto, “Make America Great Again.” “I call myself America First.”

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Trump has said he is “disappointed” with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who he said had not read the latest plan to end Russia’s war.

Trump’s criticism adds to mounting U.S. pressure on Kyiv as Zelenskyy prepared to meet today with top European leaders, amid fears on the continent that Washington was pushing a deal that was favorable to Russia.

Trump’s team held talks with Ukrainian officials in Miami after flying to the Kremlin with a revised version of the peace proposal, but the push from Washington has so far failed to find a breakthrough. The Kremlin has not publicly supported a plan and has stuck to its hard-line demands.

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The Supreme Court today weighs whether to drive the final nail into the coffin of the long-standing concept of independent federal agencies that operate at arm’s length from the president.

In a significant case on the structure of the federal government, the conservative-majority court is hearing arguments on whether Trump had the authority to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission regardless of a law enacted by Congress to insulate the agency from political pressures.

The court has already signaled, with strong opposition from the three liberal justices, that Trump is likely to win the case by allowing the Democratic-appointed commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, to be removed from office while the litigation continues.

Read the full story here.