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The threat of violent right-wing extremism has been growing exponentially during the past four years under Donald Trump and his Republican enablers, and unfortunately last week’s attack on the Capitol isn’t even close to the last of it. The FBI is now warning of a “huge uprising” at state capitols in the coming days, along the potential for more attacks in Washington in the days surrounding the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

Directly responsible for this acute and ongoing threat are Donald Trump and all the Republican lawmakers who helped fan the flames of his fraudulent claims about the election. With the exception of a handful of GOP lawmakers who originally planned to oppose certification and then backed away following the siege, to date, not a single Republican has stepped forward to express regret for their role in inciting the violence. Instead, GOP lawmakers are spewing a gusher of disingenuous and plainly hypocritical calls for unity after four years of stoking Trump-style division.

But as truth teller and former Trump National Security Council member Fiona Hill notes in a Politico essay about Trump’s coup, all Trump’s supporters still believe the “Big Lie” that Trump won the election because neither Trump nor his GOP conspirators have told them otherwise.

“Unless the Big Lie is thoroughly refuted, we can expect more attempts to subvert the constitutional order from Trump’s supporters,” writes Hill, who has been studying authoritarian regimes for three decades. “If we are to restore democratic norms and make sure this does not happen again, these congressional Republicans will have to take personal responsibility for their actions in support of Trump’s coup attempt. They must tell the truth to their constituents about the election and what the president tried to do.”

Hill is exactly right. Only the people who perpetrated and precipitated this catastrophe can clean it up—Trump and his Republican conspirators. On Jan. 20, Trump will leave office but those GOP lawmakers will remain. So if they want the unity that so many of them are conveniently calling for now that they will be relegated to the minority, they can start by telling the truth: Joe Biden won the election and Trump bamboozled all his fanatics. 

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We begin today’s roundup with analysis by John Cassidy in The New Yorker on the need for accountability in the wake of the domestic terror attack on Capitol Hill:

Despite all the outrage sparked by last week’s riot, Trump still has grounds for believing that he won’t receive any immediate sanctions for openly inciting an insurrection. It’s conceivable that he could be punished further down the road, but even that is far from certain. Repeating a tragic pattern that has been evident since he launched his first Presidential bid, in 2015, the American political system is proving too weak and divided to deal with the threat he poses. […]

What’s required is a way to punish Trump for his sedition, make sure he can’t run for President again, and deprive him of the oxygen he so craves. The permanent ban by Twitter goes a long way toward meeting the third goal, but the first two are arguably even more important.

In other democracies, a leader who tried to overthrow an election result and incited a violent insurrection might well be cooling his heels in prison by now. In this country, the job of policing the President falls largely on the legislative branch. For four years, it has failed dismally to carry out this task. Even after the unprecedented events of last week, it’s far from clear that Congress will prove up to the task now. But this time, surely, and for the sake of American democracy, Trump must be held accountable.

Law professors Bruce Ackerman and Gerard Magliocca urge Congress to look at Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for accountability:

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, passed in the aftermath of the Civil War, bars Trump from holding another federal office if he is found to have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the Constitution of the United States. The finding could be accomplished by a simple majority vote of both houses, in contrast to the requirement in impeachment proceedings that the Senate vote to convict by a two-thirds majority. Congress would simply need to declare that Trump engaged in an act of “insurrection or rebellion” by encouraging the attack on the Capitol. Under the 14th Amendment, Trump could run for the White House again only if he were able to persuade a future Congress to, “by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

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The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

Leading Off

● OR-05: Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader prompted a massive outcry—and may have opened himself up to a primary challenge—when he opposed impeaching Donald Trump and compared the idea to a “lynching” on a call with fellow House Democrats on Friday. Just hours after his remarks were first reported, Schrader issued an apology, and the following day he came out in favor of impeachment, but the damage may have already been done.

In response to Schrader’s comments, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, who represents a neighboring district, took the unusual step of publicly upbraiding her colleague. “Comparing a lynching to holding the President accountable is hurtful and insensitive and ignores the overt white supremacy on display during the insurrection Wednesday,” she said. Of more immediate impact, Schrader’s longtime consultant, Mark Wiener, immediately dropped the congressman as a client, saying, “Comparing the impeachment of a treasonous President who encouraged white supremacists to violently storm the Capitol to a ‘lynching’ is shameful and indefensible.”

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Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in Polk County, which makes up about 10% of the 5th District, demanded that Schrader resign, citing not only his statements on impeachment but his vote last month against $2,000 COVID relief checks, which made him one of just two Democrats to oppose the measure (along with now-former Rep. Dan Lipinski). And Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba, who ran against Schrader from the left in last year’s primary, said he’d give it another go and started soliciting donations online.

Gamba, however, didn’t raise much money and lost by a wide 69-23 margin, which may explain why, in other comments, he indicated an openness to supporting an alternative option. One possibility would be state Rep. Paul Evans, who almost ran for this seat when it was last open in 2008 (a race ultimately won by Schrader) and whose legislative district is contained entirely in the 5th.

In fact, a great many Democratic legislators represent turf that overlaps with Schrader’s, with state Senate Majority Leader Rob Wagner and state Sen. Deb Patterson among the more prominent. In the House, aside from Evans, potential candidates could include Reps. Teresa Alonso Leon, Mark Meek, Karin Power, Rachel Prusak, and Andrea Salinas, among others.

One of Oregon’s most prominent politicians also hails from the area: newly elected Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, whose former district in the state Senate overlapped partly with Schrader’s House seat. With voting rights under siege, and as first in line to the governorship (Oregon has no lieutenant governor), Fagan likely has her sights elsewhere, but she’d be a formidable challenger.

Oregon’s 5th has long been swingy territory, but it shifted noticeably to the left last year, supporting Joe Biden 54-44, according to Daily Kos Elections’ calculations, after backing Hillary Clinton 48-44 in 2016. Schrader actually ran behind the top of the ticket, however, turning in a 52-45 win against an unheralded Republican foe. The district currently takes in Portland’s southern suburbs and the Salem area but will likely be reconfigured in redistricting, particularly since the state is on track to add a sixth House seat.

Senate

● AK-Sen: In response to last week’s terrorist attack on the Capitol and Donald Trump’s role in fomenting it, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski suggested she might leave the GOP, saying, “[I]f the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me.” Murkowski later clarified, though, that she would “[a]bsolutely, unequivocally not” join the Democratic caucus in the Senate.

If she did, however, become an independent, she’d still have a well-defined path to re-election in 2022 thanks to a new ballot measure Alaska voters passed in November that radically reforms how elections are conducted in the state. Under Measure 2, all candidates from all parties will now run together on a single primary ballot, with the top four vote-getters advancing to a November general election. Voters would then choose a winner from that quartet by means of an instant runoff, greatly reducing the chance of a spoiler effect and giving popular, relatively moderate politicians like Murkowski the chance to prevail even without a party banner.

● PA-Sen: The same day he told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he was taking a “serious look” at a Senate bid, Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman filed paperwork with the FEC—and he’s already put his nascent campaign committee to good use. In a press release, Fetterman says he’s raised $500,000 since his remarks first appeared in the Inquirer on Friday, via 15,000 contributions.

Meanwhile, former Republican Rep. Ryan Costello, who unsuccessfully tried to goad Fetterman with some feeble Twitter trash-talk about his own interest in a Senate bid, is reportedly “expected to form an exploratory committee” sometime “soon.” Costello has set himself up for a difficult GOP primary, though, since he said he’d campaign on an explicitly anti-Trump platform: In response to an RNC spokesperson slamming Republicans for having “abandoned” Trump, Costello recently tweeted, “If I run I will literally take this entire bullshit head on.”

Governors

● CT-Gov: Connecticut Post columnist Dan Haar describes New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart, who last year confirmed she was considering another bid for governor, as a “likely Republican entrant” for the race to take on Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont in 2022, though we haven’t heard directly from her since the election. Stewart briefly sought the GOP nod in 2018 but dropped out to run for lieutenant governor instead; however, she lost that primary 48-33 to state Sen. Joe Markley. Since her failed bids for higher office, she’s sought to push the Connecticut GOP in a moderate direction in a bid to regain relevance and offered some very indirect criticism of Trump in the wake of last week’s insurrection at the Capitol.

● MA-Gov: While Republican incumbent’s Charlie Baker’s meager fundraising in recent months has fueled speculation that he’ll retire in 2022, the Salem News reports the governor’s $165,000 haul for December was his largest monthly total in over two years. Baker himself has not publicly announced if he’ll seek a third term next year.

● NM-Gov: Republican state Rep. Rebecca Dow says she’s weighing a bid for governor but will not decide until after the conclusion of New Mexico’s legislative session, which is scheduled to start next week and end on March 20. This is a very common formulation you’ll hear from state lawmakers across the country as they contemplate running for higher office, so it’s helpful to keep Ballotpedia’s guide to session dates for all state legislatures bookmarked.

House

● AL-05: Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey all but called for a primary challenge to Rep. Mo Brooks, a fellow Republican, after Brooks helped foment last week’s violent assault on the Capitol, saying, “If the people of the 5th District believe their views are not being properly represented, then they need to express their disappointment directly to Congressman Brooks and, if necessary, hold him accountable at the ballot box.”

Just before the invasion of the Capitol complex, Brooks incited the pro-Trump brigades that had descended on Washington, D.C. to overturn the results of the November election, telling them, “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” Brooks refused to back down following the violence, saying “I make no apology” for instigating the attacks and adding, “I call again for kicking that ‘ass’ all the way back to the communist dictatorships that ‘ass’ now worships.”

In 2017, after Brooks launched an ultimately fruitless challenge to appointed GOP Sen. Luther Strange, some pissed-off establishment Republicans sought to primary Brooks in response and rallied around Army veteran Clayton Hinchman. Brooks wound up prevailing the following year, but by a relatively soft 61-39 margin. Hinchman hasn’t said anything about a possible rematch, but during his race, he chided Brooks for preferencing “ideology over pragmatism,” a criticism that suggests he might side with Ivey’s views of the congressman.

● NJ-02: A consultant for Democrat Amy Kennedy, who lost to Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew 52-46 in November, tells the New Jersey Globe that Kennedy hasn’t yet considered whether to run again but says she’s furious at the congressman for voting to overturn the results of the 2020 elections following Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol by pro-Trump mobs that left five people dead. Assemblyman Adam Taliaferro, who himself was a potential candidate against Van Drew last year, also encouraged Kennedy to seek a rematch, though he didn’t rule out a bid of his own should she decline.

The Globe mentions a bunch of other possible contenders, including Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo, Cape May County Democratic Party chair Brendan Sciarra, Cumberland County Commissioner Joe Derella, and former union leader Richard Tolson. Montclair State University professor Brigid Callahan Harrison, who lost the Democratic primary to Kennedy 62-22, is another option. None of these would-be candidates have spoken about their interest yet.

● NJ-05: Former Rep. Scott Garrett is all but guaranteed to lose his specially created job at the Securities and Exchange Commission when Joe Biden becomes president, and remarkably, the New Jersey Globe reports that some fellow Republicans think he could make a comeback bid for his old seat. Garrett himself didn’t rule out the possibility when contacted by the Globe, saying only, “I appreciate your phone call. I am no longer a public figure.”

But unless Republicans hit the redistricting jackpot, Garrett is unlikely to find himself at the top of the GOP’s wishlist. Garrett was ousted after seven terms in Congress by Democrat Josh Gottheimer after his Wall Street allies abandoned him thanks to his virulent anti-gay rhetoric, and he was so unpopular with his former colleagues that the Senate refused to advance his nomination when Donald Trump named him to run the Export-Import Bank—a federal agency that Garrett had long sought to abolish.

Garrett later wound up with an even better-paying position (at $215,000 a year) in the office of the general counsel at the SEC, which Politico reported had been set up for him alone. Garrett was hired without any sort of competitive process, or even having to submit a job application, even though the commission was in the midst of a hiring freeze. As the Globe notes, though, that plum gig is unlikely to survive the coming Biden housecleaning.

● NM-01: Former state Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn announced last week he would run for this Albuquerque-area seat if Rep. Deb Haaland is confirmed as Joe Biden’s secretary of the interior. While Albuquerque Journal notes Dunn plans to run as an independent, he has spent time as a member of both the Republican and Libertarian parties.

Dunn was the GOP nominee for state land commissioner in 2014, narrowly turning back Democratic incumbent Ray Powell 50.07-49.93. In 2018, Dunn became a Libertarian and sought the party’s nomination for Senate that year. After he won the nomination, however, he decided to drop out of the race (former Gov. Gary Johnson was named his replacement and took 15% of the vote).

The GOP is already a longshot in a seat that backed Biden by a 60-37 spread, but Dunn’s presence could make things even more difficult for Team Red. This would represent the inverse of the last special election this district hosted in 1998, when a Green Party candidate took 13% of the vote, allowing Republican Heather Wilson to narrowly win.

Legislatures

● AK State House: The Alaska Supreme Court has rejected a challenge by former state Rep. Lance Pruitt, who as minority leader had been the most senior Republican in the state House, to his 11-vote loss in the November elections, upholding Democrat Liz Snyder as the winner. The decision confirms that Democrats and their allies will have control over 20 seats in the 40-member chamber as the legislature gears up to start its new session on Jan. 19, though they’ll need at least one more Republican defection to take control.

Mayors

● Boston, MA Mayor: City Councilor Michelle Wu earned an endorsement on Saturday from Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Wu was one of Warren’s students at Harvard Law and later worked on Warren’s successful 2012 Senate campaign.

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Less than one week after a group of pro-Trump insurgents rioted and stormed the U.S. Capitol, former U.S. secretary of state and 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton published a smart, somber analysis in The Washington Post. Surprising few, Clinton calls for Donald Trump to be impeached. She discusses the grief, horror, and trauma that comes with an insurgency at the Capitol. But she also discusses the white supremacy that enabled Trump—who wasn’t surprised by the violent riot in Washington, D.C. last week—and, perhaps most importantly, what President-elect Joe Biden must prioritize as president. 

Let’s discuss her op-ed below.

Clinton (accurately) points out that Trump ran for office “on a vision of America where whiteness is valued at the expense of everything else.” During his time in the White House, he emboldened white supremacists and conspiracy theorists and sowed a deep mistrust in some of the nation’s fundamental values, like a free and fair election, for example. Most recently, Clinton argues, when it came to the riotous attack on the Capitol, “Trump left no doubt about his wishes, in the lead-up to Jan. 6 and with his incendiary words before his mob descended.”

The obvious answer most Democrats, progressives, moderates, and even some Republicans agree on? We need to prosecute the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol. But as Clinton points out, it’s not actually enough to merely “scrutinize — and prosecute“ them. According to Clinton, “We all need to do some soul-searching of our own.”

Clinton points out that many, many people in this nation were not in the least bit surprised by what happened last Wednesday. Who? Many people of color. Why? Because, as Clinton puts it, “a violent mob waving Confederate flags and hanging nooses is a familiar sight in American history.” In bringing us through recent horrors, Clinton references police violence during Black Lives Matter protests and stresses the fact that if we want unity and some degree of healing, that process “starts with recognizing that this is indeed part of who we are.”

In practical terms, Clinton outlines a few key starting points. She wants to see social media platforms held accountable in efforts to stop the spread of violent speech, new state and federal laws to hold white supremacists accountable, and tracking the insurgents who stormed the Capitol. 

In the biggest, most immediate picture, Clinton wants to see Trump impeached and believes the Congress members who enabled him should resign immediately. Unsurprisingly, she also argues that “those who conspired with the domestic terrorists should be expelled immediately.”

There are currently 159 House members and 24 senators who are on record supporting impeachment and removal. Regardless of where your members of Congress stand, please send them a letter.

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Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro said this week that undocumented immigrants who have served as essential workers amid the novel coronavirus pandemic should be put on an expedited path to citizenship. Currently, there’s no way for millions of undocumented families to “get in line” to even begin the naturalization process.

“I think that these undocumented immigrants who have been essential workers during this pandemic should be on a fast-track to citizenship, because I think that they have earned it,” Castro told MSNBC’s American Voices with Alicia Menendez.

“The government and the states asked them—in fact, in many ways, the Trump administration forced them to continue working in places like meatpacking plants, even though COVID was widespread in these things,” Castro, the former chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, continued to Menendez.

Prism’s Tina Vasquez reported last year that meatpacking plants became COVID-19 hotspots from the start of the pandemic, with hundreds upon hundreds of cases linked to individual facilities all across the nation. By September, more than 200 were dead and tens of thousands testing positive. But as Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson noted in May, the Trump administration fought to keep plants open and running, and blamed workers for getting sick.

Castro told Menendez that undocumented essential workers “helped continue to make sure that our food supply was there, that Americans could be fed, and could buy their groceries.”

Castro also noted the need to vaccinate undocumented essential workers, following Republican Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts saying that undocumented workers at plants will have to wait to get their shots until after workers with legal status are done. Because apparently the virus can tell the difference between who has papers and who doesn’t.

Facing continuing public outcry, KMTV 3 News Now reporter Jennifer Griswold tweeted that Ricketts said “they won’t be checking status when giving vaccinations at meat packing plants because that already should’ve been checked for employment.” Controversial idea: how about we quickly protect all essential workers no matter their legal status—and follow nations, like France, that have expedited citizenship for their immigrant essential workers.

Undocumented essential workers “have certainly earned the right to be vaccinated,” Castro continued. “So it’s a shame what Gov. Ricketts in Nebraska doing. But I believe beyond that, they have earned a fast-track to citizenship as well.”

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After years of targeted efforts to suppress the Black vote in Georgia, the state’s Republicans are looking to give new life to President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, this time by changing state law when the legislative session starts Monday. Republicans are suggesting legislation to eradicate “no excuse” absentee voting, ban mailers with unrequested absentee ballot applications, and banish drop boxes, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This move comes after 1.3 million Georgia voters opted to cast absentee ballots in the presidential election, helping to flip a state that hasn’t backed a Democrat for president since former President Bill Clinton in 1992.

GOP Georgia Sen. Burt Jones actually claimed that voting during a pandemic is safer in person than using drop boxes or voting by mail. “When you don’t have a secure chain of custody, particularly with drop boxes, there’s no reason for that to be in the process,” he told the newspaper. “You’ve got three weeks of early voting and Saturday voting. You’ve given ample time and opportunities for people to get the effort to go in to vote.”

Georgia House Minority Leader James Beverly translated for the wider public. “They lost, and now they want to change the rules to give themselves a competitive advantage,” the Democrat told the AJC. “The pendulum swings, and people can see through this foolishness in the truest sense of suppression and disenfranchisement.”

Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has repeatedly supported calls to end “no excuse” absentee voting despite a 2005 law that has legalized the practice for more than 15 years. “This cycle has shown, we need to move to an excuse-based system for absentee voting,” Raffensperger said last month at a virtual hearing on voting security. “The no-excuses system voted into law in 2005—long before most of you, if not all of you, long before I was in the General Assembly—it makes no sense when we have three weeks of in-person, early voting available. It opens the door to potential illegal voting.”

Somehow, he managed to make this claim while also assuring Georgia voters that the widespread election fraud Trump has repeatedly alluded to is all but nonexistent, with Raffensperger’s office only investigating isolated examples. “Everything we’ve done for the last 12 months follows the Constitution, the state of Georgia, follows the United States Constitution, follows state law,” he told ABC News after facing threats from the president to “find” his votes to win the election. “We were having to adapt to a pandemic, and that did propose challenges.”

Raffensperger pointed out that although he doesn’t support it, David Shafer, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, voted for “no excuse” absentee voting in 2005 when he was president pro tempore of the state Senate. Come December, however, he switched gears to pushing for restrictions on absentee voting. “Moving forward we should require photo identification for absentee balloting like we do for in-person voting. I think it’s pretty clear that the verification system has failed,” Shafer told NPR-affiliated WABE.

If by “failed,” he means failed to produce a GOP win, he would be correct. Not only did Trump lose his reelection bid to President-elect Joe Biden, but a majority of Georgia voters backed Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in their runoff Senate challenges of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, according to election results from the Raffensperger’s office. “Better days are coming,” Ossoff tweeted the same day terrorists attempted a coup in the nation’s Capitol on Wednesday. Warnock similarly tweeted that “joy comes in the morning.” “The four most powerful words in a Democracy: The People Have Spoken. Thank you, Georgia. Now it’s time to get to work,” he added in another tweet Thursday.

Loeffler and Perdue offered concession speeches highlighting what they perceive as achievements last week.  “Unfortunately, we came up slightly short in the runoff election, and earlier today I called Reverend Warnock to congratulate him and to wish him well in serving this great state,” Loeffler said in her videotaped concession speech Thursday.

Perdue conceded the next day. “Although we won the general election, we came up just short of Georgia’s 50% rule, and now I want to congratulate the Democratic Party and my opponent for this runoff win,” Perdue wrote in a statement CNN obtained. “(His wife) Bonnie and I will continue to pray for our wonderful state and our great country. May God continue to bless Georgia and the United States of America.”

Former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who helped deliver Democrats a triple-victory by registering voters in overlooked and underserved communities, celebrated with a Twitter thread naming all the grassroots, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations who helped secure the victory. “Nine weeks of hustle & outreach. Nine weeks of believing we are in this together. Decades of strategy, grit + building. Wednesday’s terrorism seeks to distract us from what has been & what will be. So let’s take today to celebrate the orgs that brought us Tuesday’s victory,” she tweeted Friday.

RELATED: Georgia leaders don’t blink at some 700K voter roll purges, but outdated mailers spark felony threat

RELATED: Want to flip a state blue? Stacey Abrams drops major key, and she would know

RELATED: ‘Easily, provably false’: Georgia elections official debunks Trump’s election theft claims

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A federal judge on Friday blocked the recently finalized Trump administration rules that advocates have previously said “all but gut” the U.S. asylum system, ruling that unlawfully appointed acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf lacked the authority to implement the anti-asylum changes that were set to go into effect just days before President-elect Biden’s inauguration.

Numerous courts have already invalidated several Trump administration policies due to the fact that Unlawful Chad is unlawfully occupying office at DHS. CBS News reports that in Friday’s ruling, Judge James Donato of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco “said Trump administration lawyers ‘recycled’ arguments to defend the legality of Wolf’s appointment, ‘as if they had not been soundly rejected in well-reasoned opinions by several courts.’”  

Policy experts had said that if the rules had gone into effect, “none but the lucky few will be able to win asylum. The regulation creates near-total bans on asylum for wide swathes of people and herculean procedural barriers.” Even though the nearly 90,000 comments made when the administration opened the rule to public comment were in opposition to the changes, the administration set them to go into effect nine days before Biden is to be sworn into office.

”Aaron Frankel, an attorney for plaintiffs, has called the rules ‘nothing less than an attempt to end the asylum system,’” NBC News reported.

However, Donato’s ruling will be limited by the fact that the Trump administration still has other policies in place blocking asylum-seekers, like the Remain in Mexico policy and the politically motivated public health order pushed by White House aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller. “Still, letting the rules take effect would have been felt by some who can still claim asylum and make it significantly more difficult for all asylum-seekers once pandemic-related measures are lifted,” NBC News continued.

“This is the most far-reaching of the midnight asylum regulations unveiled in the Trump administration’s final days,” Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program Director Sabrineh Ardalan told CBS News. “But try as it may, this administration cannot destroy our asylum system and rewrite our laws by executive fiat.”

Unlawful Chad was also at the center of one of the most far-reaching rulings of the entire administration, when a federal court last year similarly said he was unlawfully serving at DHS and forced officials to fully reopen the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to new applicants. “Today, after waiting nearly three years, I will finally be able to apply for DACA,” Batalla Vidal v. Wolf plaintiff Ximena Zamora said in a statement received by Daily Kos at the time.

The Trump administration last week withdrew Unlawful Chad’s nomination to officially lead the department after finally submitting it in a blatant attempt to save other anti-immigrant and anti-asylum policies he’s signed into place. Immigration policy experts say his continued unlawful status could help the incoming administration reverse other policies by the outgoing administration.

“With Wolf’s confirmation dead, Biden now has a powerful tool to get rid of Trump DHS policies; decline to appeal decisions striking them down on the grounds that Wolf lacked authority,” American Immigration Council policy counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted.