The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:13 – 15:50)‘I Think It’s Time’: The End of Pam Bondi’s Tenure as Attorney GeneralPart II (15:50 – 20:52)A Brewing War Over Supreme Court Appointees: Liberals are Watching the Aging Conservative Justices —And They Intend to Be Ready to FightPart III (20:52 – 26:52)What is Man That You are Mindful of Him? The Glory of God and the Dark Side of the MoonSign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Tuesday, April 7, 2006. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. History will record that Pam Bondi served as the 87th Attorney General of the United States of America. But her term came to an end last week, and it did so rather unceremoniously. The President of the United States simply said to her, I think it's time. Those four words basically meant that her tenure was over. It was a rocky road from the beginning, and a part of it has to do with this particular president, Donald J. Trump, and the Office of Attorney General. And it's a larger issue when you consider his cabinet. And of course, we also had a firing last month. Homeland Security Secretary Christine Nome was terminated. But now we're talking about the Attorney General of the United States.

This is one of the big four. So just looking at our constitutional system, here are a couple of things a lot of Americans don't often think about. The Attorney General of the United States is part of the President's Cabinet, but the Attorney General is not the Attorney General of the Administration. The Constitutional Office is Attorney General of the United States. Now, there are four. When you think of the cabinet positions, there are four that are particularly important. The big four are the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and now under this administration, under the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Attorney of the Treasury, and the Attorney General. of the United States. Those are the big four. There are other members, of course, of the President's Cabinet, and presidents have some discretion beyond the constitutional seats at the table, so to speak. Presidents can actually raise some other positions into Cabinet rank, which means that

they can meet with the Cabinet in terms of those sessions with the President. But there's some really interesting things here, because when you look at those big four, you are looking at a very select number of Americans who have ever served in those capacities. Now, in one sense, The prime of place, above all, goes to the Secretary of State of the United States. A little interesting footnote here. If you go back to 1974, when President Richard Nixon became the first president of the United States to resign that office, and at this point, the only president to do so, of course, that came in the wake of the Watergate scandal, there was a very interesting constitutional

question that was raised. No president had ever resigned before. So the constitutional question was this, to who? whom does the President of the United States address a letter of resignation? The nation had never faced the question. President Nixon raised the question, and the White House basically determined that the person to whom President Nixon should write his resignation letter was the Secretary of State. At that point, it was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. So President Nixon's resignation letter was written to the nation, but addressed to the Secretary of State of the United States.

the roles of the Secretary of State is the maintenance of the authoritative records of the United States of America. He is the Secretary of State, and that is a particular designation that has a long history in British history as well. Okay, the other three positions, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Defense also just extremely important. Sometimes this is reflected in the seating chart. So looking at many administrations, you have the president seated in the middle of that long table, and the four seats closest to him are generally these four positions. Not always, that's the president's discretion, but it is often the case. Okay, there are complications given the massive responsibilities in every cabinet position, but in

particular the big four. And the Attorney General of the United States is often the member of the cabinet most on the hot seat. So there's nothing new here. This was true going back even to very early presidential administrations. And that's because the Attorney General of the United States is in an interesting spot. And over time, there have been efforts legislatively and by means of executive orders and by all kinds of mechanisms to try to define the office in a way that makes clear, is the Attorney General of the United States answerable in some sense to the nation or directly to the president? Of course, the bottom line is that in our constitutional order, every member of the executive branch answers to the president of the United States.

The president has the authority to make those nominations. They must be confirmed by the Senate. But at that point, they serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States. Now, behind that is something called the theory of the unitary executive. And this is of controversy lately. And it is basically now being held by those who are more conservative in terms of constitutional interpretation. And the reason that this is a controversial question is because over the course of the 20th century, we saw the rise of what is often referred to, quite rightly, as the administrative state.

This is an unconstitutional fourth branch of government made up of all of these, well, alphabet soup agencies. And there is the determination on the part of many, particularly progressivists on the left, to treat them as if they are autonomous, basically outside the reach of the executive branch. Some of these are really convoluted in terms of how they were set up in the beginning. But the theory of the unitary executive, and I think it's absolutely right, is that if it is not under Congress and it is not part of the judiciary, then ultimately the constitutional responsibility falls to the executive branch, and the chief executive is the president of the United States of America.

Now, when it comes to, say, putting someone on the cabinet, the president makes a nomination, the Senate has to approve, and that's, of course, sometimes a convoluted process, and we're going to be right back to that issue. But here's another question. Early in our American experiment, the question came, who can fire a member of the cabinet? And that was quickly determined to be the president of the United States. So the president nominates, the Senate confirms, but the president can fire. All right, very interesting.

President Trump has done that twice in this second term, firing, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and now firing, terminating the Attorney General of the United States. Again, his words to the Attorney General, now former Attorney General were, I think it's time. So in a Christian perspective, we need to understand the separation of powers is based on a very Christian understanding of the necessity of avoiding concentrating too much power in one position, given the biblical understanding of human sinfulness, human depravity, You don't want an autocrat. You don't want a totalitarian leader. You don't want one branch of government. Now, by the way, when you look at the founding of the American experiment, you look at the American

constitutional order, at least part of that has to be deeply rooted in the experience of England and in the understanding that they didn't want a despotic dictatorial monarch. And so that's why you have the Magna Carta. That's why you have the rise of parliament. That is why why, well, that is why when the Americans came to the formation of our own constitutional order, they basically were just coming up with a different system that would also separate powers. They wanted to separate powers even further than had been the situation in England or Britain. They wanted to separate the powers such that Parliament doesn't, in any sense, answer to the monarch in the United States. Congress doesn't answer to the President of the United States.

but there is no doubt that the chief executive in the American Constitution holds an extremely powerful office. President Trump was on very firm ground when he simply said to now former Attorney General Pam Bondi, I think it's time. If the president thinks it's time, well, here's an announcement. It's time. Let's just remind ourselves when it comes to the 87th Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi, she was previously the Attorney General of Florida. She was not the president's first choice. The president had announced he was going to appoint then former U.S. Congressman Matt Gates. That led to all kinds of controversy, and we won't take time to go into that. Let's just say all kinds of controversy. And the president, then the president-elect, shifted quickly to the

appointment of Pam Bonding. All right, very interesting questions. Why did the president say it's about time? Why did the attorney general's term come to an end? Very interesting political considerations here. Also, lots of worldview dimensions to this. So, number one, why would the president fire any member of the cabinet? Well, there are numerous reasons. It could be just a failure to accomplish what the president wants, the failure to uphold the president's priorities, any kind of insubordination. But you could also have all kinds of political issues.

You could have controversy. You could have just the fact that the president decides he needs a new face. All these things can be a part, and often multiple factors are apart. The big issue of Pam Bondi comes down to something very interesting to watch. Christine Ome, who was relieved to her responsibilities as the Homeland Security Secretary just about a month before. It is a similar case, but really classically defined when it comes to the case of Attorney General Pam Bondi. And that is the fact that members of the cabinet are expected to fulfill many functions. Now, constitutionally, the Attorney General of the United States holds an extremely powerful position.

the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America. That's a very important role. And so you're talking about, well, of all the law enforcement officials, of all the prosecutorial officials, of all the legal officials in terms of our system of justice, when it comes to the prosecutorial role and the law enforcement role, the chief constitutional officer is the Attorney General of the United States. Now, there are mediating authorities here. There are United States attorneys.

there are an incredible number of lawyers who work on the staff of the Justice Department, but the Attorney General is at the head of that. Now, during the course of the 20th century, that position became very complex, simply because in an age of all kinds of press scrutiny and partisan politics, all kinds of people wanted to launch investigations, often investigations of the President of the United States or another member of the administration. So the Attorney General is always, always, every single day, every hour of the day, a political hot seat. No question about it. All right. How did Attorney General Bondi become

former Attorney General? Well, it has a lot to do with several controversies and with her relationship with the president. When you're looking at members of the cabinet, they have to have a good, very positive, very constructive relationship with their supervisor, who is the president of the United States. It is the president to whom they answer. But it's more than that, of course. in modern politics, even going back to the founding era, but particularly in modern politics, and even more excruciatingly so in the age of social media and instant politics, members of the cabinet are expected to fulfill the administration's priorities, to fulfill the president's priorities, that is, and they are also to bear political heat for the White House, for the president. So let me just put the matter

bluntly. Success in a cabinet office in the United States of America is largely defined by taking the heat from the White House, not putting heat on the White House. So let's just get that matter. It's just real simple. Your responsibility is to take heat away from the White House, never to direct heat or political trouble or controversy to the White House. Okay, on that score, Attorney General Bondi failed and failed rather significantly on an issue of deep personal concern to this administration. Just take the Jeffrey Epstein controversy. We're talking about a massive problem in the society and one that has been routinely fumbled as a matter of fact. But the fact is that the Attorney General said at one point she had a list of those who had been involved along with

Jeffrey Epstein in a pattern of sexual abuse. She said she said she had the list on her desk and then, well, she never produced the list. And it appeared she didn't. never actually had such a list. Then again, if there were such a list, it's hard to know who might have been on that list. In other words, when you claim to have a list and then you don't produce the list, well, that's a situation worse than never having said anything in the first place. But to make matters worse, again, her job was to deflect pressure away from the White House. Instead, the way she fumbled it, not only in terms of that comment, but also in terms of the release. And remember those massive binders that she gave people that turned out not to have much

in them? You know, all that. just turns into a political embarrassment. Okay, cabinet members are expected to bear personal embarrassment, personal controversy and all the rest, in the support of the president and the president's policies and priorities. That's expected. But at some point, there's simply a cost-benefit analysis when it comes to the president of the United States looking at members of the cabinet. At some point, it's just more expensive to keep them than to replace them. And so that's exactly what's happened now with two cabinet positions without going into any further political detail. The bottom line is the members of the cabinet serve at the will of the president,

and when they no longer serve the president's purposes, when they become more expensive rather than less expensive, when they're adding problems to the White House rather than shielding the White House and the president from problems, guess what? Your tenure in office is going to be short. That's just the way it works. Democratic administration, Republican administration, that's just the way it works. But okay, all kinds of other considerations come in, but there's one big one we've just got to talk about, and that is, let's go back. How does a person, how does an individual come to hold one of these positions on the cabinet? And in particular, just think about the big four. That's where most of the controversy usually is addressed. You think about Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense or War, and the Attorney General, all four of them are going to be controversial all the time. All right. They hold the position by the nomination of the President of the United States. They serve it as will. But as they are,

are nominated, they have to be confirmed by the Senate. Okay, big alarm bells. This is April of 2006. A midterm election comes up in November of this very year. The president knows if he's going to have his candidates confirmed by the Senate, he better go with the Republican majority in the Senate he has right now and not wait to see what happens after November. Furthermore, the closer you get to November, the hotter the issues, the higher the stakes. So in that sense, I think you can understand that the president simply decided. When he said to Pam Bondi, the attorney general, I think it's time, at least a part of why it was time, has to do with the fact that she was costing the administration more than she was adding to it.

She was making more problems than solving. And if the president wants to have her successor confirmed, he really needs to get at it right now. And so that explains the issue. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, has been named acting attorney general. He's one of the person's former personal attorney to the president of the United States. He could well be someone who will be eventually nominated to be attorney general. There are others who have been mentioned. At this point, we'll just wait and see what happens in terms of the announcement.

But that announcement is going to have to come relatively quickly because the president needs the Republican majority in the Senate to get on this as quickly as possible. Okay. So then we get to another related issue. This one's huge. and a lot of people are not paying attention to it. We need to be paying attention to the Supreme Court of the United States.

And we need to understand that liberals are lining up, assuming that there could well be a confirmation battle or two or more when it comes to sitting justices of the Supreme Court. Okay, who are they talking about? They're talking about justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both of whom have now reached an age, in which retirement would make sense, both of whom who have now reached an age,

age, where if they stay on the court, there is the additional risk that they could end their term with a Democratic president in office who would name liberal replacements to their seats. And neither Justice Alito nor Justice Thomas is going to want that to happen. Justice Alito is 76 years old. Justice Thomas is 77 years old. You just look at this and realize there's a danger here. They both have to take that into consideration. Neither of them is. is in a position right now where he needs to retire. And this has to be quite a frustrating calculus

for a sitting associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. They have to be very frustrated by the calculus. Do they stay on and do the good job they've been doing for years? A very important role in the Supreme Court. Do they stay on until they can't do it any longer and run the risk of a Democrat replacing them? Well, let's just remember that the Democrats know exactly how this works because of what they see is the absolute disaster,

of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg staying on the court, not resigning. She could have retired from the court. And given President Obama the opportunity to replace her, she didn't do that. She stayed on the court. And it was under the administration of President Donald Trump that her replacement was named. By the way, very, very quickly, Justice Amy Coney-Barritt. And so it's just a warning. And you can say it was a warning to Democrats. Yeah, but it's a warning to Republicans. I would not know how to advise in a personal sense, either Justice Alito or Justice Thomas, both of whom I respect so very much. But I know this has to be a part of the calculation.

And the Democrats do too, who want a very liberal redirection of the court. And that's why the New York Times ran a very interesting article with the headline, liberal group to fight Trump court nominees. And you say, well, wait just a minute. The president in his second term hasn't made any yet. He made three in his first term, historic number in his first term.

And of course, by the way, if he has more opportunities than his second term, he could end up with basically more nominations to the court than any president in recent constitutional history, period. But nonetheless, all right, will they retire? Well, there are liberals who assume they're probably at least considering it. So they want to get ready for war. They want to get ready to go to battle. Reid Epstein is the reporter on the story.

He tells us, quote, demand justice, a liberal organization, has mounted robust efforts to block President Trump's appointees to the Supreme Court in the past, but never before a vacancy existed. For now, none of the nine Supreme Court justices have announced plans to retire, and Mr. Trump has no looming opportunities to keep stocking the court with younger conservative justices. The next paragraph, quote, that isn't stopping demand justice

from preparing a multimillion dollar effort to oppose potential Trump Supreme Court appointees before they happen, with a warning that President Trump could be replacing two justices this year, end quote. So again, isn't this interesting? Both sides recognize, look, we have learned, we've got to watch the calendar, we've got to watch the age. And at a certain point, whether appointed by a Democrat or appointed by a Republican president,

those on the court are going to have to ask the question, if I want to be replaced by someone like me, then do I need to retire now or do I hold on longer? And by the way, longer is a problem in this, especially at older ages, because longer almost always means at least four years, if not eight years. The risk is eight years. And, you know, eight years is one thing if you're 54. It's another thing if you're 78. That's a very different calculus. So it's going to be very interesting to see. And this is where conservatives just need to watch this very, very closely. We know the liberals are, this New York Times article tells us they're getting ready for a multimillion dollar fight. But as we look at this, conservatives need to

recognize that justices Alito and Thomas have made an unusual, historic, unquestionable contribution to American constitutional law. Both of them have made a huge difference. Both of them deserve to be seen in heroic status by conservatives in the United States. But both of them are also having to watch the clock. It's just a part of being human. And in this case, that humanity is underlined by the fact that you look in an example like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and you can see how this can go very badly, very quickly, depending upon, of course, which way you want the court to go. All right, sometimes with a story like this, I say let's shift to a different geographic context,

in this case, let's shift to a different cosmic context. Let's go to the Artemis II mission. I'll just admit again, I find this stuff so exciting and fascinating. Just think about this. Human beings have now traveled further from the United States than ever before in history, period. Further, further by thousands of miles. The Artemis 2 crew yesterday achieved being distant from planet Earth by 252,760 miles. So again, basically a quarter of a million miles from the Earth. Now, just over 50 years ago, the Apollo 13 crew went just short of that, 248,655 miles. But you know what?

Those few thousand miles really do make a difference when you put it in the context of all of human history and recognize that we're talking a greater distance than human beings have ever traveled from Earth before. And that just means that, you know, we can envision when it would be even more distant, even more distant, even more distant. The very interesting thing about this, of course, is that one of the goals of the Artemis mission taken as a whole is the possibility of creating an ongoing base on the lunar surface. And so, again, just absolutely fascinating. But there's something else here. I just have to tell you, this is, this is, this is, so incredible. Yesterday, the four-member crew of Artemis II became the first human beings with their own eyes to look upon the dark side of the moon. All right, I think a lot of people think,

well, that's kind of cool, sort of cool. We've already had images from satellites and other spacecraft, but no human eyes have ever seen the dark side of the moon before. And by the way, the astronaut spoke of just how amazing that experience was. They spoke of it in terms of being more brown and green than they had expected, and that's because most of us have a very monochrome black and white imagination when it comes to the Earth's surface that is on the Earth-facing side or on the dark side. But here's what's really, really interesting. A lot of people don't think about this, and I don't think enough commentators speaking about the Artemis II mission, have underlined this and pointed to this, what makes the dark side of the moon so interesting? Well, remember, the moon keeps its face continuously in its orbit around

Earth, which is to say the dark side of the moon is and has always been the dark side of the moon. Okay, so dark because it's facing away from Earth, it's not reflecting the sun. It's relatively dark, but what makes it even more interesting? It is the outward facing surface of the moon, the outward facing towards the cosmos, towards our own galaxy, and that means that what you're going to see on the surface of the far side of the moon, the dark side of the moon, is going to be massive contact and impact with objects through space that wouldn't hit the front side by definition. They're going to hit that backside most significantly. Now, there's more to it in terms of how these bodies move, but just in terms of what we are likely to learn, the dark side of the moon is

likely to show us a fascinating, fascinating story. And for Christians, this is just really interesting. It is interesting, isn't it, to note that a lot of the language coming from the astronauts on the Artemis 2 mission sounds as if it's filled with wonder that at least implies a creator. And you look at the photograph again, that pale blue dot. That reference was to an earlier photograph of planet Earth just suspended, it appeared, in space from a mission again about a half century ago. But now we've seen an image coming. It's contemporaneous.

It's at our own time. we can look at that pale blue dot. And of course, I don't know what they were thinking, but I'll tell you what I'm thinking. What is man that thou art mindful of him? My goodness, a pale blue dot, and you know what? All the billions of people on planet Earth, absolutely invisible from that distance, just one pale blue dot. And here's the astounding biblical claim. And that is that right here on this pale blue dot, it will have the very purpose of the very purple. of God in creating the entire cosmos came down to creating life on earth, and most importantly, the one creature made in his image. And of course, that pale blue dot is played out all of biblical history, and that includes the drama of redemption and the story of the gospel and the promise of things yet to come to the glory of God, the Creator. You know, I don't know how you can look at that picture and think, you know, what an interesting thing that this just happened. What an interesting cosmic accident. You know, I know, and you know that we all know, that there are scientists who are

absolutely determined to believe it so. There are secularists who hold to an absolutely naturalistic understanding of the entire universe, but here's the interesting thing, and I think this comes back to the image of God. It is very, very difficult when looking at an image like that to say, or to say especially out loud, you know, what a beautiful accident. The Artemis II crew still has more to do, we'll be following this with great interest in praying that that entire crew gets home safely and right on time. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter. I'm going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,

go to SBTS.org. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. Today I'm in Jefferson City, Tennessee, speaking in chapel at Carson Newman University. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.