J. Joel Alicea:
For much of our history, it was widely acknowledged that the president had plenary authority to remove anyone exercising executive power underneath him as a way of ensuring political accountability for those officials, since the president is the head of the executive branch who was elected by the American people.
That began to change in the 1930s. And so for the last several decades, there have been restrictions on the president’s removal power that the Supreme Court has recognized. But in recent years, the Supreme Court has started moving back towards the historical baseline of plenary removal power by the president.
So, insofar as President Trump has exercised his constitutional power to remove these subordinate executive officials in a way that the statutes don’t contemplate, well, I think his argument is that those statutes are just unconstitutional. They’re restrictions on his constitutional plenary removal power.
And there’s significant Supreme Court case law, especially recently, that would support that interpretation of his power.
