When Trump became the Republican party’s nominee for President earlier this year, there was plenty of renewed chatter about how, if he won the election, it’d created unprecedented strain on the rule of law: a term that went mainstream after the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021.

Then, on Nov. 5, Trump won. Then the Republicans won the Senate, and later secured the House, conferring on the President-Elect a broad mandate to strip away at the establishment and, some fear, exact retribution against those who sought to bring him down.