Sen. Jeff Sessions — whose confirmation hearing as attorney general is underway before the Senate Judiciary Committee — has made one thing clear: he doesn’t believe the Department of Justice should “intrude” on local authority and impose change through consent decrees, which in 2008 he called “an end run around the democratic process.”

But that’s exactly what the DOJ has been doing for the past eight years: pushing police reform by investigating police departments across the country, calling them out on their systemic bias and abuse, and forcing them to agree to change or face suit.

Under the Obama administration, the consent decree process, which as The Intercept reported before, has many limitations and has involved communities into police reform efforts more than ever before.

It has also angered “law and order” proponents like Sessions — leaving civil rights advocates fearing that the next attorney general will be unwilling to “police the police.”

Read The Intercept’s report on the DOJ’s police reform work over the last year, and on the investigations and consent decrees that remain pending, including in Chicago and Baltimore.