In this NPR All Things Considered segment, host Sacha Pfeiffer interviews ProPublica reporter Aaron Davis about newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche’s appearance on Meet the Press, where Blanche declined to pledge that the Justice Department would operate independently of the White House and said no attorney general should make such a promise. Davis, coauthor of a book on the department’s politicization, argues this marks a genuine break from post-Watergate norms, contrasting it with Biden’s public assurance that Merrick Garland answered to the Constitution rather than to him — a framing Davis says every president had echoed since Nixon. The conversation also covers the fate of a proposed $1.8 billion “antiweaponization” fund, which Blanche called dead but which Davis suggests could be functionally replaced by settling claims brought by Trump allies. Davis closes by noting how much of the system rests on public trust that prosecution decisions are made apolitically.

Read it here.