Danielle Sassoon, a lawyer with impeccable academic and professional credentials and unquestionable conservative bona fides, represents a true profile in courage in her refusal as acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York to file for dismissal of federal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Sassoon’s Feb. 12 letter to newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi explaining her reasons will in our opinion be included in the long list of historically important documents that demonstrate what America is supposed to represent.

Sassoon resigned rather than participate in the obvious ploy by the administration of President Donald Trump to put Adams’ criminal prosecution on (perhaps indefinite) hold in return for his cooperation in helping U.S. immigration agents find undocumented migrants in New York. Emil Bove, Trump’s former personal attorney and now acting deputy attorney general, accepted Sassoon’s resignation with a responding letter that was threatening in tone, saying her “conduct” would be “evaluated.”

What ramifications such a threat means for Sassoon are unclear, since she’s left the Justice Department’s employ. But at just age 38 with a long career ahead of her, such words no doubt are chilling. Five other Justice Department lawyers also have refused to file for dismissal of Adams’ case, leaving Bove to hunt for someone in the department to do the job.

These are difficult days to be a federal lawyer.

Before we go on, let’s briefly outline Sassoon’s career to date. A graduate of Yale Law School, she clerked for two staunchly conservative judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia and the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She is a registered Republican and member of the conservative and influential Federalist Society, to which all six Supreme Court justices nominated by Republican presidents have ties, including Chief Justice John Roberts. She joined the U.S. attorney’s office in New York in 2016 and has helped prosecute high-profile murder cases, as well as the 2024 fraud conviction of crypto magnate Sam Bankman-Fried.

Her conservative credentials, in other words, shouldn’t be questioned.

In her lengthy and persuasively argued letter, Sassoon established that no one, including Bove, had questioned the strength of the case against Adams. She also wrote that Bove in a meeting with her and other lawyers involved in Adams’ prosecution explicitly compared dismissing the charges to the 2022 agreement between Russia and the U.S. in which American professional basketball player Brittney Griner was freed. In exchange, the administration of President Joe Biden released Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, accused of supplying weapons to al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other unsavory parties.

“It is difficult to imagine that the Department wishes to emulate that episode by granting Adams leverage over it akin to Russia’s influence in international affairs,” she wrote.

At least as troubling is that Bove ordered the dismissal of charges against Adams without prejudice, meaning they could be refiled at a later date. So if Adams doesn’t help the Trump administration to its satisfaction on immigration enforcement, he risks being taken back to court.

Bove denied any quid pro quo in his scathing acceptance of Sassoon’s resignation, but the reasoning was made perfectly clear in the recent joint appearance of Adams and Tom Homan, Trump’s immigration-enforcement czar, on the “Fox and Friends” morning show. “If he doesn’t come through,” Homan said of Adams with the mayor sitting right next to him, “I’ll be back in New York City and we won’t be sitting on the couch. I’ll be in his office … saying, ‘Where the hell is this agreement we came to?’”

Given the way that courts work, the Trump team’s side of the bargain with Adams relies on government lawyers willing to lay aside their professional principles to execute this highly questionable deal. Two attorneys have agreed to do so, according to the New York Times.

But it won’t be Sassoon, who gave the country a refresher course on principled bravery during a time when intimidation and threats are the order of the day in the nation’s capital.

“I have always considered it my obligation to pursue justice impartially, without favor to the wealthy or those who occupy important public office, or harsher treatment for the less powerful,” she wrote. She added, “I cannot fulfill my obligations, effectively lead my office in carrying out the Department’s priorities, or credibly represent the Government before the courts, if I seek to dismiss the Adams case on this record.”

We predict Sassoon’s letter will be taught in law schools for years to come. The words are powerful. Sassoon’s action was yet more so.

— The Chicago Tribune

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By MATT BROWN and MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration will celebrate Black History Month at the White House on Thursday, preserving a tradition at the same time that President Donald Trump’s executive order ending the federal government’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs has disrupted its observance elsewhere.

The ceremony comes as Trump has called DEI programs “discrimination” and pushed to eradicate diversity programs from the government, directed that DEI workers eventually be laid off and exerted similar pressure on the private sector to shift to an exclusive focus on merit.

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The sweeping effort has sown discord and confusion across federal agencies, which have variously interpreted the order to limit how they can acknowledge race in history and culture or report demographic data on race and gender.

Joining Trump at the East Room event will be Black political figures and activists who have been his vocal supporters. The guests, according to a White House official, include Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina; Republican Rep. John James of Michigan; prison reform advocate Alice Johnson, whom he pardoned in 2020; Alveda King, a niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.; and Herschel Walker, the football legend who is Trump’s choice as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas.

Other guests will include figures from sports and entertainment, including former ESPN host Sage Steele; former NFL player Jack Brewer; and rap stars Kodak Black, Lil Boosie and Rod Wave, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The event was originally scheduled to be held last week but was postponed due to inclement weather.

In the wake of his executive order, the Defense Department issued guidance declaring “identity months dead” and said that working hours would no longer be used to mark cultural awareness months such as Black History Month, Women’s History Month and National Disability Employment Awareness Month.

That seemed to clash with a National Black History Month proclamation signed the same day by Trump, which called for “public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.”

While the White House has issued its position, agencies of the government have discretion on whether to continue to recognize Black History Month, according to the official.

On Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that his department “will no longer participate in celebrations based on immutable traits or any other identity-based observances.” And in a diplomatic cable, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency’s removal of DEI policies would dovetail with “eliminating our focus on political and cultural causes that are divisive at home and deeply unpopular abroad.”

The administration has issued a deadline to schools and universities to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money. Major corporations have backtracked on DEI policies in hiring, promotion and workplace culture in recent months, with many citing potential legal challenges from the administration.

Black History Month has been recognized by every U.S. president since 1976, including Trump during his first term.

“Black History is American history. And similar to the story of our nation, it is a story of strength, resilience, and dogged perseverance,” said CJ Pearson, a national co-chair of the Republican National Committee’s youth advisory council. Pearson, who is Black, has been an outspoken defender of Trump against Black civic leaders, civil rights advocates and Democrats who lambast the president as racist.

“President Trump’s anti-DEI policies aren’t promoting racism but what they are doing is manifesting the dream of the great Martin Luther King, Jr.: a nation where one isn’t judged by the color of their skin but instead by the content of their character,” said Pearson, who will attend the White House event.

Other Black Republicans aren’t so sanguine about the administration’s current course or what it portends for the GOP’s nascent inroads with Black voters or other communities of color.

“Trump can build upon the coalition he pulled together in November with Blacks and Asians and Hispanics and young folks,” said Raynard Jackson, a Republican strategist. “But if they leave it the way it stands right now, Trump is going to destroy the very coalition he so marvelously brought to the table in November.”

To Jackson, DEI is a catch-all for liberal policies that are “unrecognizable” from the original intent of civil rights laws meant to promote the social and economic progress of Black Americans. But in removing and denigrating the policies, Jackson said, the White House risked being labeled as discriminatory by offering no alternative framework for how disadvantaged communities can get ahead.

“How do you have diversity without it being a mandated bean-counting situation?” Jackson asked. “They’ve done a masterful job at telling me what they’re against. I’m waiting to hear what they’re for.”

During the 2024 campaign, Trump tried to reach Black voters through in-person events in Atlanta, Chicago and New York. His campaign courted Black celebrities and media personalities to boost his message. Trump’s Black conservative allies, including Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., conducted roundtables at Black barbershops and bus tours through majority-Black cities.

But Trump also frequently denigrated Black communities in his pitch and made claims that pitted voters of color against immigrants, who he said were taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”

The efforts to boost support among Black voters seemed to have some success. He won a larger share of Black voters than he did in 2020, particularly among young Black men, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters in the 2024 election.

Overall, about 16% of Black voters supported Trump in November, while about 8 in 10 voted for Democrat Kamala Harris. But that represented an improvement for Trump from 2020, when only 8% of Black voters backed him and about 9 in 10 went for Democrat Joe Biden.

Price reported from New York.