In recent years, ABC’s The View has become a must-stop for political bigwigs - Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, J.D. Vance, and Hillary Clinton have all dropped by. It’s not exactly a policy wonk’s paradise, but it’s one of the few shows left that doesn’t just preach to the choir, thanks to its mix of left-leaning hosts and at least one token right-coder. That made it a rare bridge to non-junkie voters. Or it did, until Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chair, decided to investigate whether The View violated the FCC’s “equal time” rule by hosting some candidates but not their opponents. Carr argued it wasn’t a “bona fide news interview” program, which is exempt. Since then, according to Semafor, The View has hosted zero political candidates in competitive races and has rebuffed some it previously invited.

This isn’t just a government stick-up of the press; it’s a sneak peek of what’s coming. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that the president can fire members of independent regulatory agencies (like the FTC) at will, overturning a 1935 precedent that required cause. This is a big win for the unitary-executive theory - basically, the idea that the president should have total control over the executive branch. The Atlantic has written excellent pieces on how this betrays originalism, but let’s get real: most of us don’t obsess over “executive power” daily. What this means is that the president now has more sway over the parts of government that touch our lives directly - banks, labor boards, consumer protections. In short, partisan politics is about to invade areas where it previously had no business.

Project 2025, the policy blueprint guiding the Trump administration, explicitly sought to overturn Humphrey’s Executor (the old precedent). It aims to reshape American society along traditionalist Christian lines, and controlling these agencies is key. Carr, a Project 2025 author, has been acting like a White House puppet long before Slaughter. He pressured CBS over a Kamala Harris interview that angered Trump, and tried to get Jimmy Kimmel fired for jokes about Charlie Kirk and the Trump family. With Slaughter, Trump can now politicize bodies like the FDIC (which guarantees your bank deposits up to $250,000) or fire FTC commissioners who are too tough on corporations. He can also render agencies useless: in 2025, he fired a Biden-appointed NLRB member, leaving the board without a quorum for months. The Federal Election Commission has been in the same boat since May 2025. Meanwhile, Russell Vought, another Project 2025 author, has frozen the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and tried to strip its funding, effectively nullifying a law Congress passed to protect you from predatory lenders.

A recent Politico poll found that six in 10 Americans feel “like politics are everywhere these days where it does not make sense for things to be political.” Slaughter guarantees that problem is about to get a whole lot worse.