Reporters’ pre-drafted stories about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ potential departure have been sitting on ice for over a year, ever since the president first began blaming Sessions for recusing himself from the Trump-Russia investigation ― one of the string of steps that led to special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment. But amid the extraordinary ongoing showdown between the president and the nation’s top law enforcement official, the 84th attorney general has actually been implementing the Trump agenda.

Critics and supporters alike agree that Sessions, in just 18 months in office, has transformed the Department of Justice to reflect the Trump administration’s priorities. A draft version of his master plan for DOJ emphasized cracking down on national security leaks, targeting the MS-13 gang and restoring the “rule of law” throughout the country. On immigration, he’s stepped up prosecutions for illegal border crossing, implemented the “zero tolerance” policy that led to family separations, put pressure on immigration judges to speed up cases with new precedents and a quota system, and restricted asylum for victims of domestic violence. He’s renewed a “tough on crime” approach, rolling back Obama-era sentencing changes, opposing broader sentencing reforms that had bipartisan support, and reversing course on an effort to reduce DOJ’s use of private prisons. He’s had DOJ back away from investigations of policing practices. He’s constantly praising Trump’s agenda and he hasn’t gotten swept up in any big ethics probes.