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Bondi's portrait discovered in DOJ trash can hours after Trump dumped her: MS NOW

The speed at which the Department of Justice employees literally threw away Pam Bondi tells you everything you need to know about how despised she was by career officials.

According to reporting from Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig obtained by MS NOW, "Within hours of the news that President Donald Trump had fired Pam Bondi as attorney general, images began circulating of her framed portrait, unceremoniously removed from its place of honor near the president and vice president on the walls of Justice Department offices."

One photo showed Bondi's portrait directly in a trash bin.

The swift disposal isn't coincidental. Current and former DOJ officials confirmed it reflects how deeply unpopular Bondi had become — so much so that thousands of career employees left the department rather than follow her orders, with dozens more forced out.

The animosity stems from an incident early in her tenure that crystallized her contempt for DOJ's professional workforce. Bondi entered a secure area of the national security division and discovered that portraits of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Attorney General Merrick Garland were still hanging on the walls after Trump's inauguration.

She demoted a respected career veteran over the pictures.

Bondi later recounted the episode on Fox News, painting it as evidence of Democratic disloyalty among DOJ employees.

"I went up on the seventh floor, which is the national security division. The entire floor is a SCIF, so no one can get in there. So I was able to get the code, open the door, and I look on the wall and see President Biden, Kamala Harris, and Merrick Garland's paintings still hanging."

"I personally took all three photos down," she boasted. "I put them in front of someone who said to me, 'Oh well, maintenance is really slow here.' I said, 'Well it took me about 30 seconds to get them off the wall.'"

The irony is searing: nearly all of the senior career officials Bondi suspected of disloyalty had served loyally and ably throughout Trump's first term without incident. They viewed her power play over portraits as petty vindictiveness masquerading as loyalty testing.

Now that Bondi has been shown the door, many DOJ veterans are quietly celebrating — and literally throwing away the evidence of her tenure.


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Possible Supreme Court shuffle has Trump critics on red alert

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Trump has already installed three justices — Neil Gorsuch (2017), Brett Kavanaugh (2018) and Amy Coney Barrett (2020). Now, progressive groups are preparing for the distinct possibility that Justices Clarence Thomas, 77, and Samuel Alito, 76, could step down during Trump's term, giving him the opportunity to reshape the court to a radical degree.

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Josh Orton, president of Demand Justice, invoked the cautionary tale of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to explain the stakes to the New York Times.

"If you think that Trump is willing to leave two of the three justices he thinks are most loyal on the court in their 80s past when he leaves office, you are not paying attention," Orton said. "There is no way that Donald Trump and Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would ever commit the fundamental miscalculation about power that we saw from Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Barack Obama and we as a movement."

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Orton's research identifies three categories of potential Trump Supreme Court nominees: conservative judges from lower courts, political allies and elected officials, and what he described as committed Trump loyalists with a "vulgar equivalent for 's---- you'" — essentially ideological warriors willing to do Trump's bidding.

Blocking a Trump Supreme Court nominee would require extraordinary political conditions. If all Senate Democrats opposed a nominee, four Republican senators would need to defect to block confirmation. Orton believes as many as six Republican senators could vote against Trump under the right political conditions, though such unanimity is unlikely.

The political landscape could shift dramatically if Democrats flip at least four Republican-held Senate seats in November, gaining control of the chamber. That outcome would make confirming Trump nominees substantially more difficult — though Trump could still push nominations through before any Democratic administration takes over.

Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, a liberal partner organization in the Demand Justice effort, framed the challenge starkly.

"If Trump is handed another Supreme Court vacancy, we must be clear-eyed and ready to make it an uphill battle. This will be a defining political battle, and we intend to make sure the stakes are clear to everyone."

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