The Trump administration’s Department of Justice has instructed the Manhattan District prosecutors to drop their case against New York City’s Progressive-Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. Whether that instruction is good or bad is for another discussion. The decision to do so itself, though, has sent seismic waves—The Wall Street Journal‘s term—through that Manhattan district.

That approach [the dismissal of the Adams case], former officials say, is a seismic departure from the way the Justice Department traditionally handles cases, and it risks turning the institution that typically celebrates its independence from political influence into an operation where law enforcement is open to negotiation.

And

The US attorney’s office in Manhattan hasn’t publicly responded to a Justice Department memo ordering the dismissal, which sent shock waves through an institution dubbed by many as the “Sovereign District” for its independence from the Justice Department in Washington. Danielle Sassoon…whom Trump elevated to be the Manhattan US attorney, is left with few options: … To obey the order would be an unprecedented blow to the Manhattan office’s prized independence from Washington.

That’s one spin.

Another interpretation, the legitimate one IMNSHO, is that the Attorney General, newly installed Pam Bondi, is reigning in a Federal prosecutorial district and bringing it back under control the DoJ, where it belongs, along with all the other prosecutorial districts. There is no reason, and there never has been reason, to leave Manhattan as an independent operation. It’s an arm of the DoJ and nothing else.