In December, a judge ruled against the Department of Justice’s attempts to quickly deport immigrants seeking asylum from domestic violence, writing that “it is the will of Congress — not the whims of the executive — that determines the standard for expedited removal.” It was a blow to racist misogynists everywhere. However, as the Trump administration has taught us, if you have terrible ideas that no one likes and are against the law, continue to try and try again to push them secretly. Slate first reported that Trump’s DOJ has quietly edited the definition of domestic violence on the its official website.
Specifically, the DOJ did away with descriptors of domestic violence that included the sadly common patterns “of deliberate behavior, the dynamics of power and control, and behaviors that encompass physical or sexual violence as well as forms of emotional, economic, or psychological abuse.” It now defines domestic violence as only harms that would constitute a felony or misdemeanor. This excludes previous definitions that articulated well-known controlling abusive behaviors.
In the America of acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and Donald Trump, the defense against being accused of domestic violence is simply, “Hey, I didn’t touch her.”