The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia handed President Donald Trump a major victory on Friday. The issue at hand was whether fired members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit System Protections Board would remain fired while the legal process continues. In a 2-1 vote, the appeals court found that overruling the firings of Cathy Harris and Gwynne Wilcox would cause irreparable harm by depriving Trump of his constitutionally vested authority as president. 

BREAKING: The federal court of appeals in DC has cleared the way for Trump to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, consolidating Trump’s grip on once “independent” parts of the executive branch. pic.twitter.com/Eb2kJd2rxS

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 28, 2025

In a sea of judicial decisions that appear heavily politicized, this is a nice return to sanity. Harris and Wilcox were both appointed by former President Joe Biden to agencies under the executive branch. While the press is rushing to call this an infringement on “independent” agencies, the reality is that no executive agencies are independent, nor should they be. Accountability and oversight of the bureaucracy are paramount, and that relies on the ultimate authority over it resting with the president. Anyone else would put government officials out of the reach of voters.

The dissenting vote was Judge Patricia Millet, who has been busy lately. She is also hearing a case involving the deportation of alleged gang members by the Trump administration, and in a recent hearing, she proclaimed that “Nazis got better treatment” than those being deported. So yeah, make of that what you will regarding her possible biases.