What Happens When No One Enforces the Law

The collapse of voting rights enforcement at DOJ is not policy drift. It’s sabotage.

Photo by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the removal of entire leadership team from the DOJ’s voting rights section—alongside orders to dismiss all active cases—leaves little room for interpretation.

What we're witnessing isn't bureaucratic reshuffling. It is the methodical dismantling of voting rights enforcement from within, a strategic effort to neutralize one of democracy's most critical safeguards. This is not governance. This is sabotage.

According to The Guardian's reporting, Trump appointees led by Harmeet Dhillon have removed all seven managers who oversee the voting section's 30 attorneys, reassigned these career civil servants to a little-known office handling employee complaints, ordered career attorneys to dismiss every active case without discussion, abandoned ongoing Voting Rights Act litigation in Pennsylvania and Georgia, and issued new “mission statements” that pivot away from protecting marginalized groups toward advancing Trump-aligned priorities.

These actions reveal the execution of a constitutional demolition project—not through dramatic proclamations or public seizures of power, but through the quiet, systematic elimination of institutional checks one office at a time.

The administration's approach follows an authoritarian playbook with chilling precision. First, attack external constraints (defying court orders in the Abrego García case). Then, hollow out internal constraints (purging career experts). Finally, replace institutional knowledge with loyalty tests (what Cleta Mitchell explicitly called for when she demanded terminating voting section lawyers who “are not supportive of Pres Trump or MAGA”).

Career managers in the voting section aren't mere bureaucrats. They are the institutional memory and expertise that ensure consistency, independence, and proper procedure in enforcing laws designed to protect the most fundamental right in our democracy. As one former Justice Department employee put it: “The career managers established norms and standards and made sure that the section spoke consistently, over time, with one voice. That is destroyed by gutting all the career managers.”

What makes this particularly alarming is the refusal to even maintain the pretense of legal rationale. Political appointees haven't bothered to read case materials. They've ordered dismissals without explanation. They've denied meetings to discuss legal merits. This isn't a shift in enforcement priorities—it's the abandonment of enforcement itself.

In the words of Justin Levitt, a former top official in the civil rights division: “An instruction to drop a case without an explanation of why is just a decision to refuse to enforce the law.”

We need not speculate about intentions. Trump ally Cleta Mitchell—who participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 election—made them explicit when she wrote: “Every lawyer in the Voting Section and likely in the Civil Rights Division needs to be terminated. They are not supportive of Pres Trump or MAGA. There has to be a reckoning.”

This statement reveals the fundamental inversion of public service taking place—from constitutional duty to personal loyalty, from enforcing laws to enforcing fealty. It transforms the Department of Justice from an institution bound by law to one bound only by allegiance to an individual.

When combined with the American Accountability Foundation's “DEI watch list” targeting specific voting rights attorneys, we see the machinery of intimidation and purge operating in plain sight. This isn't governance. It's retribution masquerading as reform.

This goes far beyond ordinary policy disagreements or shifting enforcement priorities. Previous administrations—including Trump's first term—maintained basic respect for career staff even while changing direction. What's happening now represents something qualitatively different: the deliberate destruction of institutional capacity itself.

By removing all management simultaneously, ordering blanket dismissal of all cases without review, and refusing even perfunctory meetings with career attorneys, the administration signals that the problem isn't specific cases or approaches—it's the very existence of independent voting rights enforcement.

This matters profoundly because the Justice Department's voting section has resources and credibility that private plaintiffs can't match. When states enact discriminatory voting practices—practices that disproportionately affect minority communities—DOJ enforcement is often the only meaningful recourse. Eliminating this enforcement doesn't just change policy; it removes a fundamental constitutional safeguard.

This gutting of voting rights enforcement doesn't exist in isolation. It forms part of a coherent strategy of constitutional dismantling: The administration defies a unanimous Supreme Court order in the Abrego García case, signaling that judicial authority is optional. It purges career voting rights attorneys, signaling that professional expertise is subordinate to political loyalty. It orders blanket dismissal of all cases without review, signaling that law enforcement is now selective based on political preference. It removes institutional buffers between political appointees and career staff, paving the way for direct political control of what should be apolitical functions.

The pattern is unmistakable: systematically disabling the constraints that prevent the executive branch from exercising unchecked power—particularly over the electoral process itself.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And a government that systematically dismantles voting rights enforcement while demanding loyalty to a single individual rather than to the Constitution is engaged in the deliberate subversion of democratic governance.

The center must be held—not because it is easy, but because it is ours to hold. And holding it requires recognizing that what's happening at the Department of Justice isn't normal, isn't acceptable, and isn't within the bounds of legitimate governance.

There is no plausible explanation for these actions other than to suppress voting rights enforcement, undermine democratic accountability, and pave the way for disenfranchisement. Not just probable. Not even merely plausible. It is the intended outcome.

In a constitutional democracy, voting rights enforcement isn't optional. It isn't partisan. It is the foundation upon which democratic legitimacy itself rests. And right now, that foundation is being systematically dismantled, brick by brick, behind closed doors.

The ground approaches. And what happens next depends on whether enough of us still remember what's real.