Rarely do politicians and bureaucrats give up their power. But when they do, it affects everyone.
Now a shocking resignation threw Capitol Hill into total chaos.
President Trump just scored another major legal victory, forcing special counsel Hampton Dellinger to step down rather than continue his fight to stay in office.
Dellinger resigned on Thursday after losing a key battle in the courts, marking a significant win for Trump’s efforts to assert control over his administration.
Dellinger, a Biden appointee, led the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which oversees federal employee protections. He had become a major obstacle to Trump’s agenda—most recently blocking the administration from firing more than 5,000 Agriculture Department employees. But after an appeals court setback on Wednesday, Dellinger finally threw in the towel.
“My fight to stay on the job was not for me, but rather for the ideal that OSC should be as Congress intended: an independent watchdog,” Dellinger said.
Dellinger was appointed by President Biden just a year ago for what was supposed to be a five-year term. But Trump, wasting no time, fired him on February 7—an action Dellinger tried, and ultimately failed, to fight in court.
Dellinger claimed his position was protected and that he could only be removed “for cause,” something Trump did not provide. The White House, however, had a different view—arguing that the president must have the power to remove executive officials who stand in the way of his agenda.
“In short, a fired special counsel is wielding executive power, over the elected executive’s objection, to halt employment decisions made by other executive agencies,” acting Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris told the Supreme Court last month.
While a lower court initially sided with Dellinger, calling Trump’s firing “unlawful,” the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision Wednesday night. That ruling stripped Dellinger of his position while his legal challenge continued—a blow that ultimately ended his fight.
“I strongly disagree with the circuit court’s decision, but I accept and will abide by it. That’s what Americans do,” Dellinger said after the ruling.
With Dellinger’s resignation, the Supreme Court dismissed the case as moot. The outcome clears the way for Trump to continue dismantling the bureaucratic roadblocks left behind by the Biden administration.
Legal analysts say this fight could set the stage for the Supreme Court to reconsider outdated legal precedents limiting the president’s ability to fire officials in so-called “independent agencies.”
Trump has already challenged these limits with his firings at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB)—both of which federal judges have temporarily blocked.
On Thursday, Judge Beryl A. Howell, an Obama appointee, ruled against Trump’s firing of Gwynne A. Wilcox, a member of the NLRB. In a move dripping with partisanship, she accused the president of a “power grab.”
“A president who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution,” Judge Howell wrote.
Unsurprisingly, the Justice Department quickly filed an appeal, pushing back against yet another attempt by activist judges to curb Trump’s authority.
Ironically, Dellinger and the MSPB had worked together to block Trump’s efforts to clean house. Dellinger even secured a 45-day pause on thousands of firings while conducting an investigation into their legality—an investigation that will now go unfinished.
With Dellinger out of the way and legal momentum shifting in his favor, President Trump is one step closer to restoring control over a federal bureaucracy that has long resisted his America First agenda.
