When President Donald Trump nominated William Barr as attorney general a year ago, establishment Republicans who had chafed at Trump’s takeover of their party were relieved. They believed he could be a bridge to the Republican Party they knew and preferred, but they were wrong, the New York Times reports. Barr has eagerly embraced the most divisive aspects of the Trump agenda, much to the delight of the party’s hard-line conservatives who see him as an ally in their fight to push the U.S. further to the right on issues like religious liberty, immigration and policing. As Barr attacks the Democratic Party, assails liberal culture and defends the president against accusations of abusing his office, he wields a maximalist view of executive power and a “blithely antagonistic, no-apologies style that set him apart from his predecessors,” the Times says.
This worries critics who fear Barr is eroding the Justice Department’s traditional independence in law enforcement. Barr is unafraid to use his platform as the nation’s top law enforcement officer to fight the cultural changes he believes are making the U.S. more inhospitable and unrecognizable, like rising immigration and secularism or new legal protections for LGBT people. A series of speeches in recent weeks, laced with biting sarcasm aimed at adversaries on the left, have brought a sharper focus on Barr’s style and worldview. He paints a picture of a nation divided into camps of “secularists” — those who “seem to take a delight in compelling people to violate their conscience” — and people of faith. His politicization of the office is unorthodox and a departure from previous attorneys general in a way that feels uncomfortably close to authoritarianism, critics said.