March 5, 2025
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Naturally, the big story today is the spectacular performance last night of President Trump during his speech to the joint session of Congress. It was phenomenal, history in the making. We’re so proud to support him. (And, of course, it was delightful to watch the Democrats utterly humiliating themselves, as detailed elsewhere in the newsletter. At this point, we can only assume that, yes, they really are that stupid.)
But one thing Trump didn’t talk about, likely because it’s in litigation, is his ability, as head of the Executive Branch, to actually run that part of the government, with the authority to hire and fire at will. Yesterday, we brought you the story of Biden appointee (and longtime, highly partisan Biden family friend and business associate) Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) until Trump fired him soon after taking office. Dellinger sued to be reinstated, and DC District Judge Amy Berman Jackson so ordered. The White House has appealed, of course, and this case will almost certainly end up before the Supreme Court, as is no doubt their strategy.
In our story yesterday, we noted that Dellinger had said he was helping some “probationary” employees who had also been terminated but wanted to keep their jobs. An OSC press release from last Friday referring to six such employees also said that “Dellinger is considering ways to seek relief for a broader group without the need for individual filings with OSC.” Sure enough, it turns out he’s working on behalf of over 5,000 such employees (!), from the Department of Agriculture alone, that he’s trying to get reinstated. (Not having to file 5,000 cases individually WOULD save him a lot of work.) Dellinger argues that these employees cannot be fired “without individualized cause.”
https://osc.gov/News/Pages/25-
How is Trump supposed to reduce the size of the branch of government he oversees if he can’t fire people?
POLITICO refers to the (temporarily) reinstated Dellinger as “a political watchdog for government workers,” which seems like a stretch but apparently is how he now identifies. And here’s the twist; from their report: “Dellinger’s petition on behalf of the fired USDA workers is now before another bureaucrat whom Trump is trying to remove from office: Cathy Harris, who heads a government board on workplace grievances.” That would be the three-member Merit Systems Protection Board.
That’s right, the case of these 5,000 employees whom Trump is trying to remove from their jobs is being heard by another official, a Democrat, whom Trump tried to remove from HER job. Not kidding. Think perhaps she might recuse herself from that case? No? And how DOES one recuse oneself from a three-member board? What if the other two members need somebody to break a tie? Somebody has to think about these things.
If she fails to recuse herself from such cases, it seems to us that that alone might serve as “cause” for her to be removed from the board. With her own job on the line, she comes to these cases with a tremendous conflict of interest.
Unsurprisingly, late Tuesday evening, the Merit Systems Protection Board ordered a 45-day stay on the firing of those first six employees.
Also on Tuesday, Harris, who had been terminated by Trump on February 10, was granted a permanent injunction that reinstated her as the Biden-appointed chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board. She’s baaa-aaack!
The judge who reinstated her is DC District Judge Randolph Contreras, appointed by President Obama in March 2012. “The President’s attempt to terminate Harris was unlawful,” Contreras wrote. As the WASHINGTON EXAMINER reports, Judge Contreras said that without documented evidence from Trump to justify her firing, “Harris retains all authority and benefits associated with her role while preventing the administration from installing a replacement.”
Of course, ABC NEWS latched on in their headline to the judge’s ruling that Trump’s firing of Harris was “unlawful.” Other than that, their report is pretty straightforward, at least for what they do say. There’s a lot they don’t say, however.
By the way, if the name “Judge Contreras” is familiar to you, it’s probably because he oversaw numerous January 6 cases. And if you want to know his mindset, this NBC NEWS report from about a year ago says the judge “expressed concern during [defendant Jeffrey Sabol’s] sentencing hearing...that the former president could trigger another violent attack in the lead-up to or aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.” Does that give you a hint of his anti-Trump bias?
At the risk of sounding like Paul Harvey, “the rest of the story,” or at least part of it, is included by THE RIGHT SCOOP. “Even if [Cathy Harris] was confirmed by the Senate,” they say, “she is still a political appointee and all of them serve at the President’s behest.” The Supreme Court has got to settle this, and, as we said yesterday, the Trump administration has been maneuvering to get the issue before them.
As FOX NEWS reports, Harris’ attorneys, in appealing her firing, cited SCOTUS’ 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that limited a President’s ability to fire certain agency heads. But some on the Court, they say, have “signaled a willingness to rein in or perhaps overturn that ruling.” Seems like the time is right.
THE RIGHT SCOOP put it in less lawyerly fashion, but White House attorneys express a similar strategy in court documents: “The American people elected President Trump to run the executive branch. And President Trump has determined that keeping [Harris] in office no longer serves the interest of the American people. That democratically accountable choice should be respected.”
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