In one of the more striking reversals, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit paused Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s permanent injunction reinstating Hampton Dellinger, whom the White House fired from the Office of Special Counsel without explanation in a one-sentence note last month.

The firing was a test of power by Trump, who has sought to rid certain congressionally created bodies in the executive branch, like Dellinger’s office, of their ability to operate independently of him.

The Office of Special Counsel, which investigates complaints it receives from government whistleblowers, is “supposed to withstand the winds of political change,” Jackson, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote in her ruling. Not so, the appellate court said, finding in its own order that the case was “about the presidential removal power” and that Trump had it in Dellinger’s case.

The scope of Trump’s power to fire watchdogs and independent agency heads is still being hashed out through several other cases, however. Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee in Washington, D.C., found Trump improperly fired Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board, for example. The appellate court is still weighing that case.

Courts have seemed receptive to several challenges to the Office of Personnel Management’s and Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s sweeping attempts to fire swathes of federal workers, as well as DOGE’s cancellation of billions of dollars in contracts and far-reaching access to federal data. They have also, thus far, handily quashed all of Trump’s attempts to narrow the meaning of birthright citizenship, a matter that is now sitting before the Supreme Court.

A study by the Harvard Law Review found that Obama faced 12 injunctions that applied nationwide, the first Trump administration faced 64, and former President Joe Biden saw 14. The second Trump administration is far outpacing the first. The acting solicitor general, according to the New York Times, found that Trump has seen dozens of temporary restraining orders and more than 15 nationwide injunctions this time around.

Small victories for Trump as cases inch toward the Supreme Court have been intermixed with waves of setbacks. Trump and his Republican allies have been quick to allege that liberal judges and circuit courts are ruling against the president in record numbers because they are biased, while Democrats claim Trump’s perceived lawlessness has invited the barrage of successful litigation.

Jim Trusty, a longtime former state and federal prosecutor, told the Washington Examiner he believed some of the imbalance could be attributed to the army of lawyers bringing the lawsuits. Trusty, who once represented Trump in his criminal cases, said those lawyers are the main “villains in the piece” because of the lengths they go to bring cases in jurisdictions where Democrat-appointed judges are abundant.

Trusty said that in addition to the forum shopping, the plaintiffs are often seeking emergency relief, which results in hasty rulings.

“Judges are scrambling to hold hearings, issuing TROs without having a clean factual record, modifying the TRO on the fly,” Trusty said. “Those are recipes for judicial error.”

On Wednesday, Trump was dealt a blow in the D.C. Circuit, where a three-judge panel comprising two Republican-appointed judges and one Democrat-appointed judge rejected the president’s novel use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members. But that same day, that same appeals court reversed Judge Tanya Chutkan’s order for discovery in a case she is presiding over against Musk and DOGE, saying the Obama-appointed judge’s order was premature.

Tuesday was a good day in the courts for the Trump administration. Two appellate courts reviewing injunctions granted temporary relief to the White House by pausing emergency decisions made in the lower courts.

One was a three-judge panel for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said Trump could reactivate most of his ban on accepting new refugees into the country while the lawsuit proceeds, marking a positive development for Trump as he attempts to fulfill his immigration promises.

That ruling came in response to Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden appointee serving in Washington state, temporarily blocking the refugee ban in February, saying it improperly nullified a congressionally established program.

The 9th Circuit’s decision could be a foreshadowing of how it plans to address a second injunction Whitehead issued this week requiring the administration to continue honoring contracts with refugee resettlement groups.

DOJ ASKS SUPREME COURT TO HALT REINSTATEMENT OF 16,000 PROBATIONARY EMPLOYEES

The second small win occurred in the 4th Circuit, which granted an administrative pause on Tuesday on an order issued by Judge Theodore Chuang, an Obama appointee serving in Maryland who had blocked Musk and DOGE from making any decisions affecting the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Earlier this month, the 4th Circuit also showed a willingness to entertain Trump’s executive actions seeking to curb diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The appellate court judges noted in a temporary stay on a lower court’s order that while they felt some attacks on DEI were unwarranted and vitriolic, Trump’s DEI orders appeared narrow in scope.