WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily kept on the job the head of the federal agency that protects government whistleblowers, in its first word on the many legal fights over President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda.
The justices said in an unsigned order that Hampton Dellinger, head of the Office of Special Counsel, could remain in his job at least until Feb. 26. That’s when a lower-court order temporarily protecting him expires.
The high court neither granted nor rejected the administration’s plea to immediately remove him. Instead, the court held the request in abeyance, noting that the order expires in just a few days.
Conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito sided with the administration. Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have rejected the administration’s request.
The conservative-dominated court has previously taken a robust view of presidential power, including in last year’s decision that gave presidents immunity from prosecution for actions they take in office.
The Justice Department employed sweeping language in urging the court to allow the termination of the head of an obscure federal agency with limited power. Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in court papers that the lower court had crossed “a constitutional red line” by blocking Dellinger’s firing and stopping Trump “from shaping...
Legislators in Sacramento, California, are mulling over one of the most (if not the most) troubling state and local tax bills of the past decade. Senate Bill (SB) 799, introduced earlier this year...