Donald Trump: Supreme Court rules against him for the first time in his second term

DER SPIEGEL Donald Trump: Supreme Court rules against him for the first time in his second term 17 hours • 2 minutes reading time Donald Trump can do whatever he wants, thinks Donald Trump himself. The Supreme Court of the United States is now making a statement for the first time since his inauguration - and dismissing an important official. Hampton Dellinger is an important official in the United States. He heads the office that receives complaints about government misconduct and investigates retaliatory measures against whistleblowers. He was appointed by former President Joe Biden. Anyone who has been following the situation in the USA since Donald Trump took office should not be particularly surprised that Dellinger received an email on February 7. In it, Trump released him from his role as watchdog with "immediate effect". Dellinger filed a lawsuit against this. The Supreme Court of the United States has now ruled: The government cannot dismiss Dellinger immediately, it must leave him in office temporarily. The case is important because it is the first time since Trump's inauguration that the Supreme Court has had to rule on one of the new US president's decrees. And it is unlikely to be the last, as Trump's powers are being challenged in more and more cases. Read here about the cases in which US courts are intervening. According to the AP news agency, the Supreme Court judges made a close decision: five were against, four were for, an immediate dismissal. The conservative judges questioned the court's authority to dismiss the president. Dellinger's job guarantee only applies until Wednesday, however. That is when an order from a lower court that temporarily protects Dellinger from dismissal expires. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson must decide on Wednesday whether to extend her temporary injunction. Depending on the decision, the Supreme Court may be called upon again. The temporary injunction caused outrage in the new US government. The decision to block the dismissal was an "unprecedented attack on the separation of powers," said Deputy Attorney General Sarah Harris. "This court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the president how long he must keep an agency head employed against his will." With this argument, she had appealed to the Supreme Court. Apparently in the hope that the conservative majority of the nine judges would prevail - three of whom Trump himself appointed in his first term. Trump wants to appoint Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins as head of the office. The president is taking rigorous action against agencies, his administration is repeatedly firing officials from independent agencies in an attempt to break up the federal bureaucracy. Breakup at USAID continues And so is the development agency USAID. Meanwhile, its breakup continues. A federal judge in the capital Washington reversed his preliminary decision in an expedited procedure to initially stop the layoffs in the agency. The plaintiffs, including a union, had not been able to prove that a lawsuit had a high probability of success or that those affected would have to endure extreme hardships. Trump himself had given Federal Judge Carl Nichols his influential position during his first term in office.