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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, which is so grateful to have you as adoring readers but will sue you in North Carolina if you alienate your affection for us.

We’ve got a lot of foreign policy this week, a telltale sign that the foreign policy ain’t going great. Domestically, control of the Senate could come down to Alaska, or at least that’s what reporters are telling their editors as they try to secure summer trips. And a Ford factory worker became the new face of the resistance.

First, we begin with the slew of scandals and drama at the Justice Department this week and attempt to discern the root of it all.

1. Pam Bondi

So long as she’s in hot water, we all are.

Even by the Trump Justice Department’s standards over the last year, this was an eyebrow-raising week. We learned Sunday night, from the dawg Jay Powell himself, that the Federal Reserve chair was under DOJ investigation, ostensibly for his testimony related to Fed renovation costs, but really because he wasn’t lowering interest rates fast enough for Trump. The White House has tried to distance itself from the investigation—to portray it as D.C.’s U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro freelancing—but Trump has been pressuring Powell for a long, long time. We also learned this week that federal prosecutors are investigating five additional Democratic lawmakers who posted a video last year urging troops to ignore illegal orders. (The Pentagon has been harassing another Democrat, Sen. Mark Kelly, for months.) Trump had called their video “seditious.” Meanwhile, a wave of DOJ prosecutors resigned under pressure to investigate not the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, but Good’s widow instead.

Amid the backdrop of a lousier-than-usual week at the DOJ, the most revealing story of the week may have been one in the Wall Street Journal about Trump’s increasing frustration with Attorney General Pam Bondi. “The criticisms,” the Journal wrote, “appear to be part of an intense campaign by Trump to pressure the Justice Department to more aggressively pursue his priorities”—specifically, pursuing his enemies. Consider, too, a separate Journal story about a White House photo op with U.S. attorneys last week during which Trump berated them for being “weak” and complained that they weren’t “moving fast enough to prosecute his favored targets.” Trump has a poor history with attorneys general who, at one point or another, can’t find within the law the answers to his questions. So long as Bondi wants to keep her job, there are many more bad weeks ahead.

2. Thom Tillis

You’re so close.

The retiring North Carolina Republican senator deserves credit this week for offering meaningful pushback to the administration’s threats against Powell. Shortly after Powell’s SOS message went up Sunday night, Tillis announced that he would oppose any of the president’s Fed nominees until the Powell matter was resolved. Given Tillis’ seat on the Banking Committee, that pledge would........

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