The timeline that started, at least publicly, on January 6, 2021, has now circled back on itself through the looking glass. The US Department of Justice, Trump Edition, will seek to vacate the remaining most serious convictions, including seditious conspiracy, against about a dozen high-profile defendants. Every other one of 1500 defendants has already received a full pardon.
Do you remember that day and the immediate aftermath? Most Republicans were appalled, outraged, and very clear that Donald Trump bore at least some responsibility for agitating and provoking the rioters, then watching them on television for hours before suggesting that perhaps they should go home.
The outrage only lasted about two weeks before the beginning of the end of sanity as we then knew it. If a time-traveler from five years ago were to show up today, they would likely be incredulous at the extent to which the election-denial narrative, along with a complete retelling of the story of the insurrection, has taken root in the Republican party.
Looking back, the US Department of Justice has been responsible for some of the great civil rights decisions of the past seventy years. It’s been said that young attorneys aspired to work for the DOJ because the powerful and righteous cases meant far more than the higher salaries at private firms. Our Constitutional commitment to fairness, equality, and the rule of law represented the life blood of the renowned US Department of Justice civil rights division.
Did you know that 75% of the career prosecutors in the civil rights division have either resigned or been fired in the past year? The focus of DOJ cases has shifted to rooting out nests of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and prosecuting cases in which white people and conservatives complain of being victims of discrimination. Voting rights have also come under attack, with some of the foundational supports of free and fair elections being gutted or removed entirely.
In other words, the US Department of Justice, which had always prided itself on being independent of political influence, has become the personal law firm of Donald Trump, even literally employing his former personal attorneys Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche to lead the agency. Career prosecutors, who worked through many different administrations, now find themselves expected to carry out Trump’s wishes regardless of whether the evidence supported a case. Say no and be fired; say yes and risk disbarment, not to mention losing your self-respect.
Justice and fairness have similarly disappeared rom the process of enforcing immigration laws (yes, we do have immigration laws, we just have trouble remembering where we wrote them down). Illegal search and seizure, warrantless entry, ignorance of due process, all have become so common it seems any outcry is pointless.
Only something as egregious as throwing a five-year-old boy into a prison camp, or arresting an entire family including three young, award-winning mariachi musicians, evokes enough blowback that powerful people see fit to intervene. That leaves 60,000 people illegally detained in a network of substandard, inhumane concentration camps; more camps are in the planning stages. Do you feel safer now?
Possibly the most disturbing aspect of this nightmarish descent into lawlessness by our government is the total abdication of responsibility by the Republicans in Congress. The last time we heard any significant objection by them to Trump’s overreach into powers that were not his was the immediate aftermath of January 6, 2021. Since then, only the Epstein files and the President’s war of choice with Iran have shaken the MAGA base even slightly, but not nearly enough to give rise to many GOP defections.
As Trump’s decisions become increasingly bizarre, and he chooses a different voting group to alienate each week, there are signs that the American people are not ready to roll over and drink the koolaid. Hispanics, young men, and now Catholics are understanding that Trump was only pretending to care about their heartfelt desires and struggles. Working people do not feel respected by someone who pays them lip service while spending most of his time and attention lining his pockets and those of his rich friends.
This is no longer a partisan problem; we are all on this ship that has some big holes, blown in it by our own loose cannons. The captain is drunk and the crew is in hiding. The rats have deserted and taken all the lifeboats. Over on the horizon we spot a little island, too far away to see what lies beyond it, but a place we might land and get our bearings before taking our next steps.
That island is called The Midterms. We can do this together; we can get this badly leaking boat over to The Midterms and spend a little time figuring out what new direction might be best for all of us, not just a few of us.
Because sometimes, justice is just us.
Susan Hull is a retired clinical psychologist, a horse trainer, and an Independent voter. She urges everyone to check their voter registration to make sure they haven’t been purged off the rolls since Texas turned over all our private voting data to the good old DOJ.
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