New York Times investigation revealed White House privately pressured Merit Systems Protection Board over federal-firing ruling

On June 28, 2026, a New York Times investigation revealed that the Trump White House had waged a private pressure campaign on the Merit Systems Protection Board — the independent agency that adjudicates appeals of federal-worker firings — before the board's March 2026 precedential ruling on presidential removal power. According to people with knowledge of the process, a White House aide long focused on making federal workers easier to fire privately pressed a board appointee to adopt the administration's unitary-executive position, conduct the Times described as little different from calling a federal judge and telling him how to rule.

The ruling arose from the appeals of Megan Jackler and Brandon Jaroch, two immigration judges removed in 2025 on the sole basis of Article II of the Constitution. An administrative judge had overturned their firings, but in March 2026 the board reversed, holding that inferior officers such as immigration judges may be removed at will and that statutory tenure protections under 5 U.S.C. § 7513 could not constitutionally be applied to them. The decision broke with decades of precedent and narrowed the most effective route for federal employees to challenge dismissals. Jackler and Jaroch appealed directly to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which agreed on June 17, 2026 to hear the case en banc.

The White House disputed the characterization of its contacts with the board, describing a meeting with the acting chair as a job interview for the permanent chairmanship rather than an instruction on how to rule.