Monday Night Massacre

On January 30, 2017, U.S President Donald Trump dismissed Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and demoted and replaced Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Daniel Ragsdale. This was called the Monday Night Massacre by some political commentators and media outlets, while others did not use the term or disputed it. The name alludes to the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre, during the Watergate scandal, when Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus both resigned after refusing to carry out President Richard Nixon's order to dismiss special prosecutor Archibald Cox. This came after several federal courts issued stays on various parts of Trump's executive order to stop them from being put into effect and many U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents did not follow the stays. Trump replaced Yates with Dana Boente, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. After taking office, Boente ordered the Justice Department to enforce the executive order.
Shortly thereafter, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Daniel Ragsdale was demoted and replaced by Thomas Homan with Ragsdale remaining as deputy director. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor that evening, and called her firing a "Monday night massacre".
Public opinion in the aftermath of Yates' dismissal appeared to be split on partisan lines on news outlets and social media. Left-wing commentators and supporters praised Yates as martyr for standing up against what they perceived as an unconstitutional executive order, while commentators on the right such as Jack Goldsmith, former counsel to George W. Bush, criticized Yates for not providing a persuasive legal argument to justify her order to not defend the executive order. Some critics also believed the rhetoric of "betrayal" Trump used in his letter to the former attorney general was unnecessarily incendiary.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu