In a partisan age, every congressional hearing contains an air of spectacle: both parties are complicit in creating moments they hope will go viral. Lawmakers from the other party may seize the moment to pummel the unlucky Cabinet secretary appearing before them. But a hearing with Bondi is a gloves-off event, in which she seems determined to deliver the verbal equivalent of the near-fatal caning of Senator Charles Sumner, the abolitionist Republican, by a pro-slavery House member in 1856. With Bondi, there is none of the ordinary veneer of respect for the opposition, no feint at finding common ground, no pretense that the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer is anything but the most fervent disciple of President Trump.