Overview

• Sixty-nine of roughly 110 attorneys in the Federal Programs Branch have quit or announced plans to leave since Donald Trump’s election.
• At least 10 of the section’s 23 supervisors have resigned, a scale of turnover unprecedented in recent administrations.
• Departing lawyers cite a punishing workload and concerns about being forced to defend policies they consider legally indefensible.
• The department has reassigned more than a dozen career lawyers from other divisions and secured an exemption from the federal hiring freeze to backfill the branch.
• About 15 political appointees have been brought in to sustain litigation of Trump administration policies, raising questions about politicization within the DOJ.