Judge gives OK for Trump to fire heads of independent agencies

Donald Trump learned a lot from his first time in office, with possibly the biggest lesson being to rid the administration of officials who are not loyal to him.

To that point, Trump has been trying to have two agency heads removed, but he was blocked by yet another Democrat judge. However, Trump just won his appeal, and these two are gone.

Time to Go

Right after Trump took office, he tried to remove National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, Merit Systems Protection Board Chairperson Cathy Harris, and Hampton Dellinger, who heads the Office of the Special Counsel.

Wilcox and Harris came after Trump, saying the terminations were not constitutional.

Attorney Deepak Gupta argued, "Congress is elected too. We don’t have an elected king. Congress makes the law. The president enforces those laws."

Trump’s attorneys argued that a sitting president does have the authority to fire people at will who work in their administration.

Judge Says Firings Were Illegal

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, who was appointed by Barack Obama, drew the case, so we all knew how the first challenge would go.

Contreras ruled, “Because the President did not indicate that he sought to remove Harris for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office, his attempt to terminate her was unlawful and exceeded the scope of his authority.”

The government immediately appealed the case, and the battle was on.

Regardless of how the appeal turns out, this case was headed to the Supreme Court and everyone knew it.

Trump Gets the Appeal

On Friday, we learned that the appellate court ruling fell in favor of Donald Trump and his administration.

The court removed the previous order to reinstate Wilcox and Harris.

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, ruled, “Article II of the Constitution vests the ‘executive Power’ in ‘a President of the United States’ and requires him to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’ ‘To protect individual liberty, the Framers created a President independent from the Legislative Branch.'”

Walker was joined by a Bush-appointed judge, Karen LeCraft Henderson, in the majority opinion. This is one of those decisions where I am curious to see how the Supreme Court will rule, as I believe that Trump is on the right side of this one. He should have the ability to appoint his own people, but will the 6-3 conservative majority see it that way when this case goes before the Supreme Court? We will find out soon enough.