President Donald Trump’s firing of inspectors general and independent agency board members in the last week sets up another major legal clash over Congress’ power to put limits on the removal of federal officials, experts said.
Since Friday, Trump removed more than a dozen inspectors general and Democratic members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and National Labor Relations Board, which Democrats and experts have criticized as violating legal protections on their removal.
Andrea Katz, an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in administrative agencies, said the firings appear to be “deliberately violating the law to provide a test case” to see if the Supreme Court will side with his efforts to control the executive branch.
