Donald J. Trump, the current American President, who IS a convicted Felon, who has little to NO use for the Law, Experts or much of ANYTHING except MONEY and Leaving his name on things HAS adopted the United State Justice Dept. in his image….
Being that the next American President just could be a Democrat or at least NOT Trump?
People ARE busy drawing up plans on how to put ‘Justice’ BACK in the United States Justice Department….
Just last week, we learned that the Justice Department is so desperate to refill its dwindling ranks that they are tossing aside longstanding practice and are now hiring prosecutors straight out of law school.
Those are a few of the most visible examples of the degradation in the culture, capacities and professionalism of the Justice Department in Trump’s second term, but the damage runs much deeper than the surface.
Thousands of lawyers have left the department since last year, and many of them have watched in dismay as Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and the rest of the department’s current leadership have severely curtailed critical department functions — in the areas of national security, public corruption, white-collar crime, civil rights enforcement and more — while shifting resources to a highly unpopular immigration enforcement agenda and regularly berating federal judges, members of Congress, the mediaand even the private defense bar.
With nearly three years left in Trump’s term, it is hard to say how much worse things will get, but we are likely to find out the hard way. Fortunately, people are already thinking about the future.
In recent months, I have had wide-ranging conversations with a series of officials who previously served in high-level positions in both the Justice Department and the White House, and there is an emerging recognition that there will need to be a serious and concerted DOJ reconstruction effort after Trump leaves office — and that planning for that period should begin sooner rather than later.
It is a worthy conversation to begin, even if it may seem premature given the time that remains in Trump’s second term and amid other pressing matters, like the ongoing war in the Middle East. If and when there is a truly post-Trump DOJ, people will need to be ready to rebuild it.
“Former DOJ career employees and political appointees — from Republican and Democratic administrations — are deeply disturbed by what they are seeing and are invested in thinking through what rebuilding the department looks like,” said Vanita Gupta, who served as the third-ranking official in the Justice Department under Joe Biden and led the Civil Rights Division during Barack Obama’s presidency.
“This includes how to restore and strengthen the career workforce and its expertise, the national security infrastructure, and the Civil Rights Division; how to reestablish DOJ’s independence from political interference in criminal enforcement; and what policies, norms, and operational changes might be necessary to build a Department that is more effective, more resilient against abuse and corruption, and more trusted by the American people. It is not too soon to start these conversations given what’s been happening,”….
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“It’s not premature to remind Americans that Donald Trump will not be the only president — that there will be a Democratic president in the future,” Neera Tanden, the veteran Democratic White House hand, told me. She added that Democrats had already begun thinking about how “some of the powers that have been claimed by the president and sanctioned by the Supreme Court” could be used “to actually reform the government to serve people better.”
“If you can destroy an agency,” she said, “you can certainly make an agency serve people better.”….
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In a nod to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has been a blueprint for Trump’s second term, there are two different Project 2029s. One is a volunteer-driven effort that is currently focused on developing high-level proposals for a future Democratic administration; the other is a separately run initiative announced more recently that is being led by a former Biden White House aide and seems likely to garner party support….
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In the meantime, a large contingent of former federal law enforcement officials remains both dismayed and eager to jump back into action.
“To live up to its name,” Young told me, “the Justice Department must be apolitical and impartial — and career DOJ professionals, who worked there for years across administrations, are the ones who can speak most credibly to what an apolitical and impartial Justice Department should look like.”
“They understand DOJ’s structural weaknesses that led to where we are,” she added, “and they know best how to repair these structural weaknesses so they can never again be exploited by a president who believes he is the law.”…
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