Pam Bondi saw writing on the wall but hoped for a 'graceful exit': NYT

Source: Raw Story · Bias: Far Left

April 3, 2026

Summary

Newly fired Attorney General Pam Bondi lavished excessive, cartoonish praise on Donald Trump. It didn't matter. He fired her via social media post anyway, blindsiding the attorney general who had bent over backward to prove her loyalty.According to the New York Times, Bondi saw the writing on the wall last month when Trump abruptly fired Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary. She confided to friends that she might be next. But she never expected Trump to act quite so quickly or ruthlessly.On Wednesday, Trump told Bondi during a car ride to the Supreme Court — while they watched arguments in the birthright citizenship case — that "it was time for a change at the top of the Justice Department."Bondi desperately hoped to negotiate a graceful exit, buying time until summer to leave on her own terms. Instead, she got neither mercy nor time. She grew emotional after realizing she was finished. The next morning, Trump made it official — firing her through a social media post.The reason was clear: Trump was furious. The Justice Department had failed to win high-profile cases against his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.Multiple Trump advisers had been working behind the scenes to orchestrate her ouster. Federal housing official Bill Pulte, operating outside Bondi's authority, had long pushed for her firing, blaming her for "slow-walking and bungling" the Comey and James cases. Boris Epshteyn, Trump's longtime legal adviser, was also a key detractor who significantly influenced the president's decision.Even Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff and Bondi's most important ally — the woman Bondi called her "sister" — found it increasingly impossible to defend her. Wiles made a passionate argument for keeping Bondi until the end of the term, but it wasn't enough to overcome Trump's fury.Desperate to save her job, Bondi moved more aggressively in recent weeks against targets Trump had singled out, including former Obama official John Brennan and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson — the latter accused by Trump of lying about his actions on January 6.It backfired. Her aggressive compliance signaled weakness, not loyalty.Trump's personnel calculus is now shifting dangerously. His quick confirmation of Markwayne Mullin as Noem's replacement has emboldened him. Cabinet secretaries are no longer safe, even those who have demonstrated unwavering devotion.Trump's allies now have embattled Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer in their sights as the next potential cabinet casualty.

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Pam Bondi saw writing on the wall but hoped for a 'graceful exit': NYT

Apr 3, 2026Far Left

What in the World Did Brett Kavanaugh Write on Birthright Citizenship?

The New Republic

Yesterday

What in the World Did Brett Kavanaugh Write on Birthright Citizenship?

The Supreme Court’s ruling this week on birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara totaled approximately 194 pages. I wrote earlier this week about the various positions that each of the justices took. But it is worth dwelling for an extra moment on the unusual position taken by Justice Brett Kavanaugh in just 10 strange pages.Unlike the rest of his colleagues, Kavanaugh took the position that Trump’s executive order was constitutionally permissible but statutorily illegal. In other words, the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause did not block Trump’s effort to curtail birthright citizenship, but an act of Congress that used identical language did.At a very superficial level, this might sound sensible and moderate by implicitly inviting Congress to address the situation. Kavanaugh certainly positions the opinion—and himself—as such. On closer inspection, it might be the most dangerous and extreme view of U.S. citizenship to be articulated by the justices this week.To understand Kavanaugh’s position, a brief sketch of the other justices’ views is necessary. Last January, Trump issued an executive order that instructed federal agencies to not recognize the U.S. citizenship of children whose parents were undocumented immigrants or living in the United States on temporary visas. A group of plaintiffs sued, arguing that this violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause.That clause reads as follows: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” In the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court ruled that the son of two Chinese immigrants in San Francisco had acquired U.S. citizenship at birth solely by virtue of being born on American soil. The “subject to the jurisdiction” exception was narrowed to a handful of situations that rarely apply today.In Tuesday’s ruling in Barbara, the justices essentially took four separate positions. Five of them took what can be described as the consensus view. Americans had inherited the rule of birthright citizenship from the English common law, Chief Justice John Roberts explained in his majority opinion. Dred Scott v. Sandford’s holding that people of African descent were ineligible for U.S. citizenship was a violation of that rule, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause restored and entrenched the original understanding.Two of Roberts’s fellow conservatives, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, took a different view. Thomas affirmed Wong Kim Ark as correct but argued a person’s domicile status—or, more specifically, that of their parents—also determined whether that person had U.S. citizenship at birth. Since Trump’s executive order was lawful in at least some circumstances, like birth tourism, the two justices rejected the facial challenge to its constitutionality.At the same time, both justices signaled that even if their domicile-focused view had prevailed, it would not grant total victory to the Trump administration. Thomas and Gorsuch concluded that children of temporary visa holders would not be eligible, and their respective dissents largely focused on that aspect of the order. But both justices wrote that they would not necessarily reach the same conclusion for children of undocumented immigrants, especially if they had lived long-term in the U.S.The third position was adopted solely by Justice Samuel Alito, who argued that the clause “confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country.” He argued that Wong Kim Ark should be read much more narrowly by the court since, in his view, it showed “little respect for precedent.” Instead, Alito leaned heavily on phrasing in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which only extended U.S. citizenship to those “not subject to any foreign power,” a narrower phrasing than the clause that was ratified three years later.Even then, Alito ultimately concluded that Wong Kim Ark was correctly decided. The Chinese Exclusion Acts had made it impossible for Chinese immigrants to be naturalized, so Wong’s parents faced a different threshold under the clause. “By establishing domicile, they had done everything within their power to express their desire and intent to become Americans,” Alito explained.“Wong Kim Ark is therefore best understood as holding that people who are lawfully present here, establish the United States as their intended permanent home, and do everything within their power to become United States citizens can be seen as no longer subject to any foreign power,” Alito argued.That brings us, at last, to Kavanaugh. He voted with the majority to strike down the order on different grounds from those of Roberts and the other four justices in the majority. Kavanaugh said that he found the constitutional issue to be “far more complicated” than the statutory one.

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Pam Bondi saw writing on the wall but hoped for a 'graceful exit': NYT

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