The agency tasked with protecting federal employees, including whistleblowers, should be abolished.
There have been a deluge of media reports and judicial rulings detailing the Trump Administration’s abuse of government workers and its violations of law. The singular nature of what President Donald J. Trump and his adherents are doing wrong can be concisely captured: Prior to Trump 2.0, federal employees would be fired for breaking the law, but this Administration is ousting government workers for following the law or insisting that others obey the rules. I have been practicing law for more than 30 years, and I have not seen anything approaching this level of lawlessness from the federal government. Not even close.
Who are the federal employees being hurt by the President’s war on government workers? Many of the federal employees affected are Black women, Americans whose grandmothers or mothers or sometimes they themselves were not hired or promoted when they should have been based on merit. Now the Trump Administration is firing them and others in historically marginalized groups without any consideration of individual performance, or they have been let go precisely because they exhibited the integrity that is the hallmark of so many federal workers.
Another group that has paid a heavy price for the President’s anti-federal employee agenda is military veterans. At the time President Trump took office again, roughly 30 percent of federal civilian employees had served in the armed forces. That is over 600,000 Americans who wore the uniform, put their lives on the line for us, and then continued their public service as government workers. So when Administration officials disrespected and ushered out federal employees through mass layoffs starting in 2025, it has been time and again disparaging and firing veterans. And lost in all of the Department of Government Efficiency’s “drain the D.C. swamp” rhetoric are the facts that federal employees work in all 50 states and a majority of them fulfill their duties outside Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland.
The Trump Administration’s attacks on federal workers have been found unlawful by multiple courts. But, of course, the reports of the Administration’s malfeasance go far beyond the abuse of executive branch employees. There have been staggering accounts of illegality, corruption, and misuse of taxpayer resources. If only there were an agency willing to protect government workers from unlawful treatment and initiate investigations into credible allegations of serious wrongdoing by federal officials. There used to be.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) was created more than 50 years ago in the effort to redeem the executive branch after a level of perfidy from the Nixon Administration that now seems quaint. OSC’s statutory mandate, although decades old, seems tailor-made for this moment: (1) Protect federal employees from “prohibited personnel practices” such as partisan favoritism and whistleblower retaliation, and (2) require agencies to investigate when a whistleblower disclosure shows “a substantial likelihood” that an agency or one of its officials has violated any law or regulation, engaged in “gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority,” or posed a “substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.” In addition, OSC enforces the Hatch Act, which generally prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan politics while on the job.
OSC’s independence was destroyed by President Trump in February 2025 when I was fired without cause, the first office head to be summarily dismissed in the agency’s history. A district court judge quickly held the termination unlawful. Unfortunately, my ouster was later blessed by appellate judges who found the law ensuring the independence of the agency head, and thus the agency, unconstitutional. Although OSC was no longer independent, the question remained whether it could still somehow justify its continued existence. A year later, the answer is clearly “no.”
My view that OSC should be abolished given its loss of independence should not be seen as criticism of OSC’s career employees. To the contrary, I know from first-hand experience that OSC personnel possess tremendous talent and integrity. None of the agency accomplishments achieved while I headed OSC would have been possible without the help of my colleagues. Should OSC be abolished as I recommend, the career employees there deserve every opportunity to serve in other government positions. It is not their fault that the now formerly independent agency they joined and have served admirably should exist no more.
Here is why OSC should be dismantled. Based on the publicly available information I have seen, it appears that OSC has done virtually nothing to protect federal employees harmed by Trump policies nor taken meaningful action in response to this Administration’s lawbreaking. And in several instances, it seems that the agency has, in fact, made bad situations worse. Exhibit A: OSC’s abandonment of probationary employees, workers who may have spent decades in public service but are in their current government position for less than two years.
Starting in February 2025, the Trump Administration has attempted to fire probationary employees en masse. In my final days on the job, I argued successfully to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the agency that decides whether another agency can remove one of its employees, that such layoffs were unlawful and was able to get thousands of workers reinstated. But soon after my ouster, OSC’s new leader repudiated my efforts and turned his back on those workers.
The Federal News Network, a leading chronicler of executive branch activity, stated that the “Office of Special Counsel, operating under new leadership, now says it believes agencies do have the authority to fire their probationary employees—for virtually any reason and at any time.” So much for OSC fulfilling the legal requirement that it “shall protect employees.” In my view, having an agency that actively undermines the rights of federal employees is worse, much worse, than having no agency at all.
Moreover, OSC has seemingly stayed inactive as longtime federal employees are fired or ousted for doing their job, blowing the whistle on alleged lawbreaking, or both. In response to this purge, OSC could have brought cases on the worker’s behalf before the MSPB. The agency could have filed amicus briefs as whistleblowers sought to challenge their firings in federal court. At the very least, having seen everything, OSC could have said something. Instead, it has been a frozen stillness and deafening silence that is affirmatively deflating to all who know what OSC could be doing.
As for the daily media reports and judicial rulings detailing violations of law and regulations, there is no evidence that OSC has referred all the major allegations for agency investigation. In fact, there is no indication that OSC has referred for investigation any serious allegation of wrongdoing by the Trump Administration, much less brought one to a conclusion.
Under the agency’s Hatch Act authority, OSC does not appear to have taken action against any senior Trump Administration officials, despite the fact that certain states and cities seem to have been targeted specifically and intentionally because of their Democratic leanings. And firing workers for their perceived political affiliation should be considered a blatant Hatch Act violation. The agency also wrongly rescinded my decision to apply the Hatch Act against White House officials even though the law as passed by the U.S. Congress demands it.
Finally, there are U.S. veterans who have been harmed by the Trump Administration either as federal employees or recipients of services from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or both. OSC has been missing in action for them. OSC’s putative leader feels differently and touts the agency’s “exceptional performance.” Readers can be the judge. Simply go to OSC’s news page. Then think about what the media has been reporting about the federal government over the past year. Has OSC met the moment? Not even close.
It is telling which Administration official wrote the recent op-ed extolling the agency. It was not an official confirmed by the U.S. Senate who was nominated specifically to head OSC. In fact, OSC is apparently not actually led by someone confirmed for anything. And it is not headed by a longtime career employee. Rather, a political appointee with the title “Senior Counsel” appears to have been in charge for over a year. There is no evidence that he is acting as if he headed an independent agency and willing to fearlessly protect federal employees while seeking to examine serious executive branch misconduct. Far from it. Put simply: In my opinion, an OSC that is not independent is a waste of taxpayer money and can do more harm than good.
There are plenty of hard questions about what comes next in the wake of the Trump-instigated, court-blessed destruction of OSC and other formerly independent agencies. I offer some answers with regard to federal employees in an accompanying piece, published in The Regulatory Review In Depth, which I am honored to coauthor with Benjamin Stern.
But here is an easy call: Abolish the Office of Special Counsel. U.S. taxpayers and federal employees, particularly veterans, deserve watchdogs. We should not have to pay for lapdogs.
This essay is part of a series titled, “In Defense of Regulatory Independence.” Hampton Dellinger has published a related article with Benjamin Stern in The Regulatory Review In Depth entitled, “When One Door Closes: What Federal Courts, and Congress, Owe Federal Workers as Independent Agencies Fall.”
