The American justice system has long been less a pillar of democracy and more a greasy, over-leveraged vending machine that occasionally spits out a lawsuit instead of a bag of stale Cheetos. The latest piece of scrap metal to be cleared from the gears is Lindsey Halligan, a Trump-appointed federal attorney whose tenure at the Department of Justice was as brief, loud, and ultimately useless as a firework launched into a septic tank. Attorney General Pam Bondi—another figure whose primary qualification for high office seems to be a high-definition resonance with the Mar-a-Lago frequency—announced Tuesday that Halligan is finally shuffling off the federal coil. It is a departure that surprises no one who hasn't already had their brain smoothed over by partisan cable news.

Halligan’s resume was always a fascinating document of our post-meritocratic age. She was a personal attorney for the former president, a role that in any functioning society would suggest a conflict of interest so massive it could be seen from low earth orbit. Instead, in the fun-house mirror of modern American governance, it was treated as a gold-star credential. To the Right, she was a loyalist ready to smite the wicked ‘Deep State’ with the righteous sword of the law. To the Left, she was a terrifying harbringer of authoritarianism. In reality, she was simply the legal equivalent of a toddler trying to perform open-heart surgery with a plastic spork. Her lack of prosecutorial experience wasn’t a secret; it was her brand. We have entered an era where being good at a job is seen as a sign of being part of the ‘establishment,’ and therefore, being utterly clueless is the only way to prove you’re ‘authentic.’

Her departure follows a series of courtroom performances that can only be described as judicial slapstick. Halligan was tasked with leading the prosecutions of two of the president’s political opponents, a project she executed with all the grace of a bowling ball dropped into a china shop. Multiple judges—people who usually prefer their legal corruption served with a side of Latin and leather-bound decorum—found themselves forced to break character and offer ‘sharp criticism.’ They didn’t just disagree with her; they questioned her very right to be in the room. When a federal judge starts casting doubt on your legal standing to even hold your job, you haven't just lost the case; you’ve lost the plot of reality itself.

But let’s not pretend the judges are the heroes here. The judiciary has spent decades masquerading as a neutral arbiter while slowly being packed with ideological drones from both sides. Their sudden ‘concern’ for Halligan’s lack of experience is less about a love for the law and more about a desire to keep the charade looking professional. Halligan’s crime wasn’t that she was biased; it was that she was visibly, embarrassingly bad at hiding it. She made the mistake of bringing the crude, transactional nature of the political swamp into the air-conditioned dignity of the courtroom, and the system reacted like a body rejecting a particularly clumsy organ transplant.

The targets of her failed prosecutions are no doubt celebrating, though their joy is equally hollow. In the American political landscape, being prosecuted by an incompetent loyalist is the greatest gift a grifter can receive. It allows them to play the martyr, rake in campaign donations, and pretend that their own brand of corruption is somehow ‘cleaner’ than the other guy's. The Left will point to Halligan’s exit as a win for the ‘rule of law,’ a phrase they use whenever they want to sound like they haven't spent the last decade treating the Constitution like a suggestion box. Meanwhile, the Right will scream about ‘persecution’ and ‘judiciary overreach,’ ignoring the fact that their champion was objectively incapable of filing a motion without tripping over her own shoes.

Ultimately, Halligan’s exit is a microcosm of the entire American project: a spectacular failure of a poorly qualified individual who was elevated for all the wrong reasons, only to be discarded when the incompetence became too loud to ignore. It doesn’t matter who replaces her. The DOJ is now just a rotating theater of sycophants, and Pam Bondi is merely the latest stage manager. We are stuck in a cycle where one side appoints hitmen who can’t aim, and the other side appoints bureaucrats who drown you in red tape, and we’re all expected to cheer for the winner while the building burns down. Lindsey Halligan is leaving, but the spirit of amateur-hour authoritarianism is here to stay. It’s the only thing we actually produce anymore.