President Trump’s firing of Hampton Dellinger ends up before the Supreme Court. Seeking the intervention of the highest judicial body in the United States this time is not the removed federal official, who has already gone to court and been granted temporary reinstatement, but the White House, which in doing so wants to know whether the president has the authority to fire even the “not dismissible ones” in the federal administration; those who have been screened and approved by Congress to check that the government does not commit abuses. A test sought by Trump, in short, to test the limits of his presidential power.
Hampton Dellinger is a Special Counsel in charge of the federal Office of Ethics OSC (Office of Special Counsel), a government agency established by the Hatch Act and strengthened in its independence by three other federal laws, to confidentially collect “whistleblowers” about any abuses the government allegedly committed and to protect the employees who made them. The Office is microscopically small—140 employees—in the mammoth public sector where more than 3 million people work.
Dellinger had been nominated by Former President Joe Biden in 2021 and his position had been confirmed by the Senate. In a three-line email, the White House had notified him of his dismissal in early February. After the letter, the Special Counsel went to court. Last Wednesday federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson reinstated him, decreeing that the dismissal had violated the law that enshrines the agency’s independence and specifically shields Dellinger’s position from political interference. After this initial decision, the White House had immediately appealed, and on Saturday a federal appeals court rejected the request for review, arguing that there was no legal basis for filing it. Hence the request to the Supreme Court. “This court should not allow inferior ones to seize executive power by dictating to the president how long he must continue to employ an agency head against his will,” Sarah M. Harris, attorney for the Justice Department, wrote in her brief filed with the Supreme Court on behalf of the White House.
Trump’s executive orders on immigration, “ius soli” (birthright citizenship), transgender, and government spending are already mired in dozens of lawsuits in federal courts. They could end up at the Supreme Court as well.
The onslaught of mass layoffs in the administration, ordered by Donald Trump and executed by Elon Musk’s DOGE to cut spending, is hitting the entire public sector indiscriminately, putting even nuclear and health security at risk.
In recent days, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has also ended up on Musk’s chopping block, firing staff indiscriminately, sowing fear and chaos. According to CNN, the decision was made by people who do not know the crucial role of the NNSA, which oversees the U.S. nuclear arsenal. So much so that after the cuts, some 30 of those fired were reinstated. A Department of Energy spokesman insisted on CNN that only 50 NNSA employees were left, mostly in “administrative” roles.
Jill Hruby, who served as NNSA administrator during the Biden administration, told CNN that the cuts are particularly troubling because the positions usually require top-level security clearances and in-depth knowledge of the U.S. nuclear industry.
“Congress is going ballistic because DOGE seems to be making the cuts not realizing that NNSA oversees the atomic arsenal. The nuclear deterrent is the backbone of American security and stability, period. That there are even small holes in the maintenance of that deterrent should be extremely troubling,” Hruby said.
“Now, Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is seeking access to a heavily guarded Internal Revenue Service system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business, and nonprofit in the country,” writes the Washington Post. According to the Post, the DOGE wants detailed financial information on every taxpayer. This request has raised alarm within the tax agency. Under pressure from the White House, the IRS is considering signing a memorandum of understanding that would give DOGE officials broad access to the tax agency’s systems, including information on assets and datasets. These include the Integrated Data Retrieval (IDRS) system, which allows IRS employees to access tax accounts, personal identification numbers (PINs), and banking information. In addition, the system would allow them to enter and edit transaction data, and automatically generate notifications, collection documents, and other data.
During his first term, Donald Trump had publicly expressed his intention to send IRS agents against his political opponents, raising fears for the agency’s independence.
A White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, told the Washington Post, “Waste, fraud, and abuse have been entrenched in our broken system for too long. To identify and correct these problems, we need direct access to the system. DOGE will continue to shed light on the fraud it uncovers so that the American people know how the government spent their tax dollars.”
So far, no evidence has been shown of the allegations made by DOGE about the federal government’s waste and abuse. On the $50 million that Musk says the federal agency USAID spent on condoms for Gaza residents, he has had to backtrack.
