Beryl Howell: “An American President is not a king.”

is the President’s insistence that he has authority to fire whomever he wants within the Executive branch, overriding any congressionally mandated law in his way.

The president cannot bring the federal government down on his political opponents ... as he has done here.

Mr. Trump seems intent on pushing the bounds of his office and exercising his power in a manner violative of clear statutory law to test how much the courts will accept the notion of a presidency that is supreme.

An American President is not a king – not even an ‘elected’ one – and his power to remove federal officers and honest civil servants like plaintiff is not absolute, but may be constrained in appropriate circumstances, as are present here.