The New York Times – no paywall: “Behind the scenes, the Trump White House went to extensive lengths to advance its theory of executive power, potentially giving the president remarkable leeway to install loyalists at nearly every echelon of government. In the tiny corner of the legal world that follows such things, the March ruling crashed down like a thunderbolt. It was issued by an obscure government agency called the Merit Systems Protection Board, whose purpose is to protect federal workers from unfair firings. But the decision backed President Trump’s assertion that he has broad authority to reshape the executive branch as he wants. The ruling broke with decades of precedent, accepting the White House’s argument that Article II of the Constitution gives Mr. Trump the power to dismiss officials without due process. By that theory, he can essentially erase civil service protections, even for public servants — in this case, immigration judges — whose engagement with the law often puts them at odds with Mr. Trump’s political aims. The board’s decision has no direct bearing on cases that the Supreme Court is expected to rule on this week, which could establish how far the president’s power over the civil service extends. But it defanged the most effective method for federal workers to challenge their dismissals, and if upheld on appeal could undercut protections for broad swaths of the civil service. And it came after the Trump administration leveled a concerted pressure campaign on the board in public and private, according to people with knowledge of the process. The private push — little different from calling a federal judge and telling him how to rule — was led by a White House aide who for years has been intently focused on making it easier to quickly fire federal workers. The story of how the ruling came about illustrates the intense effort by the Trump White House to advance its theory of the unitary executive, the belief among many conservatives that the president has sweeping authority over the entire executive branch, and can direct the actions of employees, including federal prosecutors and immigration judges, who handle sensitive matters of law. “Knowing that it was made with influence from the White House means the decision was not based on positions of law,” said Nicholas Bednar, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota who studies the federal civil service. The decision, he said, “reflects the same ideological considerations that is driving the evisceration of the federal civil service.”