Historically, the Justice Department has been understood by both Democrat and Republican administrations as serving the people—not the president. As Ted Olson, Ronald Reagan’s chief legal counsel, wrote in a memo to the attorney general in 1982,

Pam Bondi is officially in control of the Justice Department — and she’s gone right to work.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, in some of her first moves on the job, is shifting the Justice Department’s national security priorities away from initiatives that have been a source of irritation for President Donald Trump and his allies.