Dem 47
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GOP 53
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Federal Judge: Trump Can't Fire Agency Head without Cause

On Saturday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson (a Barack Obama appointee) ruled that Donald Trump's firing of Hampton Dellinger, who heads the Office of Special Counsel, was illegal. The law states that the president may remove special counsels "only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." Trump did not claim that Dellinger did any of these things. So Jackson reversed the firing. Dellinger's job is to protect federal whistleblowers. The judge said that if he could be fired on a presidential whim, he could not do his job running an office Congress created to protect whistleblowers. The DoJ will naturally appeal. As usual, this will eventually end up in John Roberts' lap. Everything does. In practice, there are three copresidents (in alphabetical order): Elon Musk, John Roberts, and Donald Trump.

This case could be enormously important. If Trump can't fire the head of this agency, can he fire the head of any agency? Is this agency different from all the others? This case could be a direct challenge to the "Unitary Executive Theory" that Republicans love (currently). This theory states that the president controls the entire Executive Branch and can fire anyone at any time for any reason. De facto, it says that Congress has no power to create agencies whose head serves a fixed term and is immune to being fired absent fairly gross malfeasance. In other words, this theory greatly limits the power of Congress to set up agencies in such a way as to protect them against a president who wants to subvert them. It is a separation of powers issue that pits the powers of Congress against the powers of the president. Only the Supreme Court can handle this. While the Republican appointees' first thought may be to give Trump what he wants, surely during the justices' meeting, one of the liberals is going to point out that if they side with Trump, the next Democratic president will fire every Trump-appointed agency head on Day 1 and do they want that? (V)



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