If you thought that Attorney General Pam Bondi's role as Trump's personal heatsink in the now-mushrooming Jeff Epstein pedophile sex ring scandal the President is embroiled in would spare us her presence on the news, I regret to inform you that you were wrong. Everyone's favorite underqualified, over-caffeinated lawyer-like-substance has again turned up in the news cycle as part of the latest escalation in the Trumpenreich's open war on the American judiciary. This time, Bondi has retaliated to a US court's refusal to permanently install equally-sycophantic (towards Trump) minion Alina Habba as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, by immediately dismissing the court's replacement choice, career prosecutor Desiree Leigh Grace: Abba's second in command at the time.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/22/alina-habba-new-jersey-prosecutor

Judges end Trump pick Alina Habba’s tenure as New Jersey’s top prosecutor

"According to an order from New Jersey’s district court, a panel of judges declined to permanently appoint Habba to be the state’s US attorney, signaling a rebuke against the Trump administration.

Habba inflamed Democratic hostilities when she brought charges, later dropped, against the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, and the state representative LaMonica McIver after they visited a privately operated immigration detention center in Newark.

The federal judges did not offer any explanation for their decision. But the order, signed by Renée Marie Bumb, the chief federal judge for the district of New Jersey, appointed Desiree Leigh Grace, a career prosecutor whom Habba had named as her first assistant US attorney, as her replacement.

The justice department accused the panel of judges of political motives for declining Habba’s nomination, and, hours later, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, said Grace also had been removed.

“This Department of Justice does not tolerate rogue judges – especially when they threaten the President’s core Article II powers,” Bondi wrote in a post on X, referring to Trump’s authority under the US constitution."

The political angle to this story is pretty straightforward, but it does a lot to illuminate the way Trump and his fascist minions operate to consolidate power in the executive branch. Trump used his power as President to temporarily appoint the woefully underqualified Habba, a personal ally and former lawyer of his, to be the US Attorney for New Jersey. In return she politicized the office towards fascist objectives, including ideological policing, targeting opposition party officials for harassment and prosecution, and working to "turn the state red" from inside a supposedly non-partisan institution that is instead behaving as Trump's legal goon squad. When Der Leader tried to make the situation permanent, the court rightfully declined and tried to appoint a real lawyer; which enraged Downmarket Mussolini enough that he just sent Pam Bondi out to fire that replacement.

To tell you the truth, I'm not really sure what happens next; as far as I can tell, the Court isn't required to accept Trump's attempt to subvert the nomination process and, Bondi can fire whoever she wants to on behalf of Trump. I can only assume the regime intends to argue that means they can appoint anyone they want for 120 days again, and then re-appoint Habba. Will that fly in court? Your guess is as good as mine, particularly given the open level of motivated reasoning a 6-3 fascist Roberts Court is now engaging in.

Perhaps the more important question here is, why is Trump so desperate to keep Habba in the New Jersey US Attorney's chair? I suspect the answer to that question can be found in one of the reasons a court just rejected her permanent installment - specifically Habba's establishment of an “Election Integrity Task Force." What the fuck does being a US Attorney have to do with mucking around in New Jersey's elections? Absolutely nothing, and that's why Trump needs a sycophantic nazi muppet like Habba to keep the job and make rigging elections on his behalf one of her day to day problems. Grace might (or might not) hate migrants and liberals as much as Bondi does, but she's far too familiar with what a prosecutor actually does for a living to be Trump's fixer for New Jersey in the upcoming election cycle.

I think if you take a step back and look at the entirety of the Trump regime's recent activities in and around elections, an obvious picture of how the GOP intends to rig the upcoming election cycle becomes clear. This effort involves using loyalists in the Justice Department to prosecute officials who won't let Trump rig the vote and generate the appearance of a crisis level threat to democracy, while simultaneously purging voter rolls of people unlikely to keep supporting Trump's fascist agenda, by any and all means possible. This isn't the kind of thing you do with lawyers, but rather ideologues like Habba and Bondi.