As of Thursday, 565 migrant children — 24 of them under the age of five — remained separated from their parents after the Trump administration tore families apart at the United States-Mexico border. Though the administration backed away from its “zero tolerance” immigration enforcement policy after prolonged outcry, this level of casual cruelty is not so easily cleaned up: It lingers both in the children who have yet to see their parents again and in the lasting trauma done to even reunified families. Today, a federal judge will hold a hearing and listen to the American Civil Liberties Union’s concerns that the government is not allowing parents who were deported without their children to return to the United States to seek reunification and asylum.

Over the last week, I’ve stepped in for David Leonhardt in writing this newsletter; today is the last day you’ll hear from me. The pain and terror of the family separations story has ground on throughout the time I’ve been writing here. But instead I’ve focused on topics closer to the Russia investigation and President Trump’s authoritarian impulses.

I noted yesterday the tendency of journalists and commentators to decry certain behavior by the Trump administration as “distractions” from more important issues. My day-to-day work at Lawfare focuses on a topic that many do consider a distraction: the special counsel investigation and the president’s destruction of the democratic foundation of our society. Among some Democratic Party leaders and writers and activists on the left, it’s become common to situate airy concerns over “norms” as subservient to the work of opposing policies that take bread out of people’s mouths and children out of their parents’ arms.

I would argue that the erosion of American democracy at the hands of a would-be authoritarian — and the possibility that the president’s campaign collaborated knowingly with a hostile government in order to swing an election — should be of concern to everyone. But feverishly speculating on the special counsel’s next move when young children are separated from their parents has a ring of absurdity. And when someone is hungry or fearing deportation, demanding a focus on the Russia investigation shows a numbness to the urgency of human pain.