One to watch:

Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to approve the firing of the head of a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers in the first appeal of Trump’s new term and a key test of his battle with the judicial branch.

It’s pretty tricky – aka impossible – to have a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers if the Big Boss is free to meddle with said agency. Trump wants to get rid of anyone who did or does or could blow a whistle on him, and that’s unfortunate, because he’s breaking rules and laws and constitutional norms all over the shop. Trump is the last person on the planet who should be able to fire all the whistleblowers.

Hampton Dellinger, the head of the office of the special counsel (OSC), is among the fired government watchdogs who have sued the Trump administration, arguing that their dismissals were illegal and that they should be reinstated.

That’s one reason right there. They think they can fire anyone they want to. That would be a dictatorship, not a presidency.

The OSC is an independent federal agency that serves as “a secure channel for federal employees to blow the whistle by disclosing wrongdoing”.

It is also intended to enforce the Hatch Act, a 1939 law designed to ensure that government programs are carried out in a nonpartisan way, and to enforce a merit system by investigating and prosecuting racial discrimination, partisan political discrimination, nepotism and coerced political activity. [I guess sex discrimination is allowed?]

Dellinger has said his office’s work was “needed now more than ever”, noting the “unprecedented” number of firings, in many cases without any specified cause, of federal employees with civil service protections in recent weeks by the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, the federal judge Amy Berman Jackson reinstated Dellinger to his position pending a 26 February court hearing, writing that the language of the 1978 law that created Dellinger’s position “expresses Congress’s clear intent to ensure the independence of the special counsel and insulate his work from being buffeted by the winds of political change”.

How about the tornados of political change?

According to that law, the special counsel “may be removed by the president only for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office”.

As the Trump administration implements sweeping firings throughout the federal government, Dellinger has argued that his dismissal, via a one-sentence email that did not specify the cause, was unlawful.

Also damn rude.