Kirstjen Nielsen Shows Why It’s Impossible to Restrain Trump

Since November 2016, there’s been a running argument among those who are skeptical of Donald Trump but not implacably opposed to his presidency: Should they go into the system and try to restrain the president’s worst impulses, for the good of the nation? Or should they remain on the outside, and avoid the scarlet C of collaboration?

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen’s firing on Sunday should slam the door on that debate. Her tenure is the plainest example yet of the futility of trying to restrain Trump from inside—and the personal cost to those who try.

Over Nielsen’s 16 months in the job,. There was a lengthy, pointless government shutdown over funding for a border wall. Border crossings, the metric the administration has chosen to emphasize as an indicator of an immigration crisis, are . Looming over all of this is the separation of thousands of families at the border last summer. And that list doesn’t even touch the chaos in other parts of DHS, such as , whose administrator resigned in February amid criticism of his spending and his handling of disasters.