What happened this week in Trump's authoritarianism speed-run
Aggressive and often unconstitutional immigration policies are testing the law and the courts. At the same time, the Trump administration is testing — and breaking — the government.
The Trump administration’s speed-run into authoritarianism was on full display this week across the government — with incompetence nearly as prevalent as malevolence as political appointees work to implement Trump’s often-illegal policy goals. As a result, and at the same time, career government employees are facing increasing difficulties trying to operate in such an environment.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, unanimously confirmed to the role on President Donald Trump’s first day in office, is revoking students’ visas — at least sometimes apparently based on speech he dislikes — and those of all South Sudanese people based on that country’s unwillingness to go along with the Trump administration deportation policies.
Immigration, unsurprisingly, is a key part of Trump’s authoritarian progression. His unprecedented Alien Enemies Act proclamation and the plainly unconstitutional implementation of it have led to questions pending before Chief Judge James Boasberg in federal district court in D.C. about whether members of the administration should be held in contempt of court for their actions on March 15 and at the U.S. Supreme Court about Boasberg’s temporary restraining order blocking AEA proclamation-based deportations.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case
The administration’s aggressive effort to deport as many people as it could on March 15 led to the creation of an “alternate[s]” list — apparently to ensure that as many seats were filled on each plane that went to El Salvador as possible. This led to the deportation — called an “administrative error,” by the administration — of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was under protection from removal. The lawsuit filed over that action led to Friday’s order that Abrego Garcia be brought back to America. Specifically, the government was ordered by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis “to facilitate and effectuate the return of Plaintiff Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States by no later than 11:59 PM on Monday, April 7, 2025.”
The Justice Department is appealing the order, and asked both Xinis and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to stay the order. On Sunday morning, Xinis denied the stay request before her. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed their opposition on Sunday afternoon.
[UPDATE, 11:45 a.m. April 7: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied the government’s request for a stay on Monday morning. The three-judge panel — which included Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee — was unanimous.
Moments earlier, however, the Justice Department had filed a request for a stay from the Supreme Court. (More here.)]
At the same time, it was reported over the weekend that the lawyer who argued for DOJ on Friday was placed on “indefinite administrative leave,” per an internal auto-reply message viewed by Law Dork. According to The New York Times, the lawyer, Erez Reuveni, was told by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that he was being placed on leave “for failing to ‘follow a directive from your superiors.’” August Flentje, Reuveni’s supervisor, also was reported by ABC News and CNN to have been placed on leave.
Flentje and Reuveni are two of the few remaining career attorneys in leadership in DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation (OIL) — Flentje has more than 25 years at DOJ and Reuveni has nearly 15 years — so their removal from active duty is significant just in terms of institutional knowledge potentially lost.
More than that is the fact that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s response to the Times was pure authoritarianism: “At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States. Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences.”
This fits with Bondi’s day-one directives, is a disturbing development, and is in notable disconnect with the lawyers doing the actual work.
This issue has been percolating internally.
At this week’s OIL senior staff meeting on Thursday morning, April 3, Law Dork has learned that Flentje and Reuveni — along with others — were already extremely concerned with the internal process and communications (or lack thereof) at DOJ. Also important to understand: It was clear from information obtained by Law Dork that this was more about process and communication than exhibiting some antagonism to policies.
Both Flentje and Reuveni noted the disconnect between what lawyers were told by DOJ leadership and what DOJ leadership told agencies. In a sign of how dysfunctional things are right now, they stressed the fact that lawyers should make clear that any advice to agencies is tentative if it has not yet been vetted by leadership.1
In the midst of all this, people are leaving government because they just can’t bring themselves to do it any more. In advance of and in the aftermath of Harmeet Dhillon’s confirmation to head the Civil Rights Division, that key division is losing significant institutional knowledge.
As I previously reported on April 3, Shaheena Simons announced her resignation this week as the the chief of DOJ's Civil Rights Division Educational Opportunities Section. Responsible for enforcing Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and playing a role in enforcing Title VI as well, Simons has been the chief of the section since 2016 and has been with the Justice Department since 2007.
One source told Law Dork that Simons told her staff she was committed to staying at DOJ until she could no longer protect them, their work, or the kids — and that time had come.
Friday was her last day.
Simons is not alone in leaving leadership positions in the Civil Rights Division — and leaving DOJ altogether. The acting head of the Civil Rights Division’s Appellate Section, Sydney Foster, is leaving DOJ, as is Beth Hecker, her deputy.2 Foster and Hecker, per an email reviewed by Law Dork, are both leaving on Friday, April 11.
As career employees are leaving, political appointees are being brought in. The same Civil Rights Division “personnel updates” email noted that Andrew Darlington and Gregory Brown are joining DOJ as a senior counsels to Dhillon. Darlington — the memo excitedly noted — “joins the Division following his service as Director of the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security — the nation's first state-level office focused solely on investigating and prosecuting election fraud.“ Brown, per the memo, “represented individuals and families who had been profoundly harmed as a result of egregious wrongdoing, primarily involving the manifest deprivation of fundamental civil rights by major public universities.“
As we know, this attack on career employees and the bringing in of a handful of ideologues is happening across the government.
Alison Cernich, the deputy director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) since September 2019, sent an email Friday morning that was viewed by Law Dork about the week’s devastating cuts to public health across government — and into the states. The dramatic cuts were spearheaded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (with “help” (?) from Elon Musk’s non-department DOGE).
“This week was a difficult one for all of us,” Cernich opened to all of NICHD, noting that virtually every support office for the institute — from acquisitions and contracts management to communications to science policy — “w[as] eliminated in full or in part.“
After noting that “the NICHD mission remains“ — for now — she turned to a personal element, a sign of just how upended everything truly is.
“I want to remind all of you to pay attention to your health and well-being. Make sure you are eating well, practicing good sleep habits, exercising, and attending to your mental health. Be kind to your colleagues and collaborators and give each other grace,” Cernich wrote. “Please exercise patience with each other and with leadership; we are all adjusting to our current circumstances.”
This is a lot to take in, and there could be — and will be — more.
I just want to take a moment before I close, though, to note what this means. Among other things, it means that every actor and every action matters.
It matters that political appointees have limits. It matters that career employees speak up — internally and, if and when needed, publicly. It matters that schools like Tufts University speak up and stand up for their students. It matters when outside lawyers speak up and stand up for the rule of law — like hundreds of law firms led by Munger Tolles & Olson did in backing Perkins Coie on Friday. It matters that tens of thousands of people were in the streets in more than 1,000 cities across the country in “Hands Off” protests on Saturday.
Those aren’t solutions — but they are part of how we get to a solution.
The conservative ideologues on the Supreme Court are going to side with Trump at times, as happened Friday in a case over education funding, but that is why litigation matters.
As Trump’s authoritarian efforts proceed, every lever of accountability must be pulled. Those who fail to hold Trump accountable must be forced to do so, whether that person is a Supreme Court justice, the attorney general or other cabinet members, lower level government employees, state officials, law firm or university leaders, journalists, or anyone else who has the opportunity — and responsibility — to stand in the way of Trump’s authoritarianism.
A section on a “directive sent to U.S. Attorney’s Offices (USAO)” was deleted as I address questions over whether this directive was an April Fools’ Day “joke,” as one person has reported to me. I’m cutting it while I figure out what actually happened because it is not essential to the rest of this report.
This sentence was corrected to state that Hecker is deputy in the Appellate Section, not the Education Section.
One quibble . . . it wasn't "tens of thousands" in the streets, it was 5-million
Speak up, follow the law, get fired...the New Order under Gauleiter Bondi.