Tuesday, June 02, 2026
Hegseth Strikes Female and Black Navy Officers From Promotion List
Hegseth Strikes Female and Black Navy Officers From Promotion List
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed nine Navy officers from the promotion list for one-star admiral, disproportionately targeting women and minority officers. This move, which appears to violate Pentagon rules, raises concerns about Hegseth’s anti-diversity stance and its impact on the military’s top ranks. Critics argue that Hegseth’s actions undermine the merit-based promotion system and create an atmosphere of anxiety among senior military officers.
The defense secretary’s decision to block the officers’ promotions appears driven by his anti-diversity stance rather than based on merit.
In a move that disproportionately targets women and minority officers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior Navy admirals.
The net result of Mr. Hegseth’s intervention is a slate of 22 nominees to be one-star admirals that bears little resemblance to the broader force these officers will help lead.
Three of the officers removed by Mr. Hegseth from the promotion list are women and two are Black men. An additional four are white men.
Mr. Hegseth’s actions, which appear to violate the rules governing a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based, were described by five current and former defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.
No female officers were included on the new one-star list, which was released publicly in late May, despite the fact that women make up about 21 percent of the active-duty Navy. The list appears to include only two nonwhite officers, even though sailors who identify as racial minorities make up about 38 percentof the active-duty Navy.
Mr. Hegseth’s removal of the officers from the one-star list is highly unusual, said the current and former defense officials. According to Pentagon rules, the defense secretary is supposed to pull officers from the list only for moral, mental, physical or professional failings that raise questions about the officers’ fitness to lead.
Mr. Hegseth’s actions are the latest in a series of firings and personnel interventions that appear to be driven by his anti-diversity politics rather than the officers’ performance. Taken together, they could reshape the military’s top ranks for years to come.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, declined to say why Mr. Hegseth pulled the officers off the Navy one-star list. “Military promotions are given to those who have earned them,” Mr. Parnell said. “The department will never consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions.” The Navy declined to comment.
Since taking office, Mr. Hegseth has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen senior military officers as part of a broader campaign designed to purge the Pentagon of leaders he has disparaged as “foolish,” “reckless” and “woke.” He has consistently refused to explain why he has chosen to fire officers or pull them from promotion lists.
His scrutiny has fallen heavily on female and minority officers, who have borne the brunt of the dismissals. Nearly 60 percent of the senior officers Mr. Hegseth has fired are female or Black, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in recent Senate testimony. Women and minorities currently account for fewer than 20 percent of all generals and admirals.
“You are hollowing out the military’s bench of experience and highest-performing senior officers, while making young officers wonder if they should continue to serve,” Mr. Reed told Mr. Hegseth at another recent hearing.
Among those dismissed were Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy.
Earlier this year, Mr. Hegseth also removed four colonels — two Black men and two women — from the Army’s list of nominees for one-star general over the objections of Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll. Mr. Driscoll insisted that the officers had a long history of exemplary service and had done nothing wrong.
Officers selected for one-star rank are chosen by a board of admirals or generals who review hundreds of personnel files over the course of meetings that can span two weeks. Only about 5 percent of those eligible for promotion to one-star are chosen, making it the most competitive board in the U.S. military.
The lists are then reviewed by the service secretaries and the defense secretary, who under Pentagon rules may strike names in limited circumstances, like the emergence of new information that raises questions about the officers’ qualifications for service.
The unpredictability of Mr. Hegseth’s interventions has created an atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust among the military’s top ranks, military officials said.
The lack of information has exasperated Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike. In April, Representative Austin Scott, Republican of Georgia, pressed Gen. Christopher C. LaNeve, the acting Army chief of staff, on whether Mr. Hegseth had pulled the names of officers from that service’s one-star list as first reported in The New York Times.
“I’m less worried about the race and the gender than if he did or he didn’t do it,” Mr. Scott said. “Did he pull four names from the list, as has been reported?”
General LaNeve, who had taken over after Mr. Hegseth fired his predecessor, Gen. Randy George, said that the congressman would have to ask Mr. Hegseth.
“Well, if I could get anybody over there to respond, I would,” Mr. Scott replied.
Two weeks later, when Mr. Hegseth appeared before the House Armed Services Committee, he acknowledged that he had pulled names from the Army one-star list, but declined to explain the specific grounds for their removal.
“We don’t talk about that out of respect for those officers,” he said. Instead, he spoke broadly of the need to correct for years of “gender and demographic engineering” that he asserted had blunted the effectiveness of U.S. troops on the battlefield.
In a break with protocol, Mr. Hegseth also urged senior Navy officials to include Capt. William Francis Jr., a Navy SEAL who serves as Mr. Hegseth’s special assistant, on the one-star list, current and former Navy officials said. Captain Francis’ lack of command experience made him ineligible for promotion under the board’s rules and he was not selected, officials said.
At a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing, Representative Chrissy Houlahan, Democrat of Pennsylvania and an Air Force veteran, asked Mr. Hegseth whether he had ordered the Navy to add a special operations officer who lacked the necessary command time to the Navy’s promotion list for admiral.
“I’m not aware of what you’re referring to,” Mr. Hegseth replied. His response was, at best, misleading.
The officers struck from the Navy one-star list seem to have been targeted because they took part in some diversity-related event years or even decades earlier, current and former Navy officials said.
One highly respected officer whose promotion was pulled had served as a surface warfare officer, completed the Navy’s advanced nuclear power school and was selected to be a top aide to a four-star admiral in the Pentagon.
She was singled out by Mr. Hegseth shortly after her name appeared on a website that said it was working to purge “woke” military officers. The site noted that the officer had worked as a “diversity liaison officer” two decades ago, responsible for helping the Navy recruit and retain women and minorities.
Another female officer targeted by Mr. Hegseth served as a Navy pilot and foreign area officer, interacting with militaries around the world. The third female officer is a physician who leads a major Navy medical command.
Before he was selected by President Trump to serve in the Pentagon, Mr. Hegseth had opposed the inclusion of women in combat jobs. Since then he has moderated his position, saying that women should be able to serve in combat roles, as they have since 2013, if they can meet the same physical standards as men.
Still, his actions have raised questions about whether he believes that female officers are fit to serve at the most senior levels of the U.S. military, his critics said.
In late May, Jessica Ruttenber, who retired as a lieutenant colonel and flew Air Force refueling tankers in Iraq and Afghanistan, noticed the striking absence of any women on the Navy’s one-star list.
She did not know that Mr. Hegseth had pulled female officers off the list.
“The military I left in 2021 feels very different from the one we are watching today,” she wrote in an online essay. “In some ways, it feels like we are watching hard-won progress move backward in real time. That is the part I cannot shake. Because if I am honest, I now find myself wondering: Would I want my own children to enter a system like this?”
Greg Jaffe covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The Times.
Kate Kelly is an investigative reporter covering government accountability for The Times.“
Monday, June 01, 2026
Trump Administration Live Updates: President Said to Be Backing Off Plans for $1.8 Billion Fund After Backlash
Trump Administration Live Updates: President Said to Be Backing Off Plans for $1.8 Billion Fund After Backlash
“President Trump is reportedly backing off his plan for a $1.8 billion fund to compensate individuals claiming unfair prosecution by the government. The plan faced backlash from both Democrats and Republicans, with concerns it would reward Trump’s political allies. The Justice Department stated it would abide by a court order halting the fund’s disbursement, which some senators interpreted as a clear acknowledgment of the fund’s unworkability.
What We’re Covering Today
Payout Fund: President Trump is backing off his plan for a $1.8 billion fund to pay people he says have been victimized by the federal government, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mr. Trump has not abandoned his immunity from audits, which also emerged as part of a deal with the I.R.S. to drop his lawsuit against the agency. It was not clear whether word that he planned to drop the plan would satisfy skeptical lawmakers, including many Republicans, who had revolted over the fund, imperiling the passage of a bill to fund the president’s immigration crackdown. Read more ›
U.S. Military: Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, recently blocked the promotions of at least seven Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior admirals to rise to one-star admiral rank. His actions appeared to violate promotion system rules and disproportionally affected women and minority officers. Read more ›
President Trump is backing off his plan to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of unfair prosecution by the government, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s thinking, said he had been leaning for days toward scrapping the fund, which critics have characterized as a scheme to reward Mr. Trump’s political allies with public benefits.
June 1, 2026, 6:22 p.m. ET1 hour ago
Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, said that “it is not enough for me to have the courts pushback” on the weaponization fund and echoed what many of his colleagues have said, that the statement from the Department of Justice did not satisfy all of his concerns. “I have a lot of unanswered questions,” he said adding that he would support “pretty robust” guardrails on any future effort to move ahead with the fund.
June 1, 2026, 6:04 p.m. ET1 hour ago
Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, told reporters on Monday that the Trump administration should clearly state that it is giving up on the $1.8 billion fund that stands to benefit President Trump’s allies if it had changed its position. Earlier today, the Justice Department said in a statement that it was abiding by the court order stopping disbursement of funds for now, but said it disagreed with the court’s decision. “I appreciate them saying that, but they don’t have a choice,” Kennedy told reporters. “They have to abide by “the federal district court order.”
June 1, 2026, 5:19 p.m. ET2 hours ago
On Capitol Hill, a Republican leadership aide said Republican senators interpreted the Justice Department’s statement, which said that it would abide by a federal judge’s temporary order not to proceed with any steps to activate the fund until at least June 12, as a clear walk back and a clear acknowledgement that the fund was unworkable. The aide said that this move was what members have been asking for, although it was not clear whether the statement alone would unlock the votes needed to move ahead with a narrow reconciliation bill.
June 1, 2026, 5:12 p.m. ET2 hours ago
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas who just lost his primary to a Trump-backed candidate last week, said that he was satisfied with the Justice Department statement on the fund, which threatened to hold up passage of a reconciliation bill. “It makes it moot,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get the reconciliation bill done. They said they’ll accept the ruling of the judge, that makes it moot.”
June 1, 2026, 4:40 p.m. ET3 hours ago
Trump is backing off of his plan to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of government “weaponization” by Democrats, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
His move, which he not commented on publicly, came as the fund drew widespread backlash from Democrats and Republican senators.
The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate.
The National Science Foundation said it would send ships in June to begin removing more than 900 deep-sea instruments anchored off Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.
A federal judge in Washington ruled on Monday that protesters criticizing President Trump near the Capitol could not be forced to take down a flag reading “8647,” finding no indication that the message could be taken as a true threat against the president’s life.
Judge Randolph D. Moss wrote that despite efforts by police to compel the group, an advocacy organization called Accountability Now USA, to remove the flag and other signage over the course of several months, he concluded it was clear that the flag and its message were protected speech. The dispute in some ways mirrored the criminal case against James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, who was indicted on a charge of making a threat against the president over a photograph posted to Instagram that depicted seashells on a beach arranged into the same numbers.
The Defense Department has designated its press office as a classified space, off limits to journalists, further restricting interactions between its public-facing representatives and the reporters assigned to cover the military.
The move, confirmed by the department’s acting press secretary, follows a change in policy from earlier this year that required journalists to have an official escort at all times when visiting the Pentagon.
A divided federal appeals court on Monday blocked the Trump administration from removing more than two dozen transgender service members from the military while a lawsuit fighting their dismissal is decided.
The 2-to-1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the latest legal salvo over a divisive policy that has forced out thousands of troops and left thousands of others in limbo for more than a year.
June 1, 2026, 4:56 p.m. ET2 hours ago
A federal judge on Monday blocked Trump administration efforts to strip the the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a Colorado-based climate research laboratory, of its oversight of a key computing center in Wyoming. The administration’s plan to transfer stewardship of the facility, announced in February, has already caused a “flood of resignations” by scientists and threatens the future of the lab, wrote R. Brooke Jackson, a senior U.S. district judge in Colorado, in a preliminary injunction against the National Science Foundation.
There is evidence the decision may have been driven by political retribution against Colorado leaders, and it may have violated federal law on administrative procedures, Judge Jackson said. N.S.F. officials declined to comment.
The center, known as NCAR, has managed the supercomputing center — used by more than 4,000 climate and weather scientists to model atmospheric conditions and study air pollution, wildfires, hurricanes and solar storms — since the facility opened in 2012. The Trump administration said it was transferring oversight of the facility to an unspecified third party.
The Energy Department has issued new guidance that could prevent people from receiving rebates for replacing gas appliances with electric ones.
The guidance, which took effect on Friday, would prevent states from offering rebates to people who buy an electric stove to replace a gas range. It would also end rebates for similar swaps of ovens, dryers, heat pumps and water heaters.
In a move that disproportionately targets women and minority officers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior Navy admirals.
The net result of Mr. Hegseth’s intervention is a slate of 22 nominees to be one-star admirals that bears little resemblance to the broader force these officers will help lead.
In late April, a lawyer for the Justice Department told a federal judge that her colleagues had been in the midst of negotiations with a Rhode Island hospital about turning over gender-transition treatment health records, only for the hospital’s lawyers to stop responding.
But Judge Mary S. McElroy of Federal District Court in Rhode Island concluded that was not true. While the government claimed it had not heard from the hospital since February, emails showed the hospital’s lawyers had stayed in close touch.
Former F.B.I. officials are starting a group to help embattled bureau employees grapple with the Trump administration’s rapid efforts to reshape its agency, saying that the work force is under incredible strain under its director, Kash Patel.
The group, called the F.B.I. Support Network, is an offshoot of the Justice Connection organization, made up of former Justice Department employees who offer legal, mental health or job search services to current agency employees.
More than 200 people have now been killed in a bombing campaign by the U.S. military against people it has accused of smuggling drugs in the waters off South America, after a string of deadly attacks over the last week.
The military said on Saturday that three men had been killed in the eastern Pacific during a strike ordered by Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the head of the Southern Command, against a boat that was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” Their deaths bring the total killed to at least 202, in more than 60 strikes“
Sunday, May 31, 2026
Kimberlé Crenshaw: The Woman Who Invented Intersectionality | With Ash Sarkar
Professor Crenshaw discusses the racism she faced in Italy, a country known for racism, a place that I would never visit due to it’s evil behavior even though my father spent years fighting to liberate it during WWII.
Georgia town’s novel strategy to fight ICE jail plan impresses legal experts | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) | The Guardian
Georgia town’s novel strategy to fight ICE jail plan impresses legal experts
"Town of Social Circle’s complaint invokes ‘public nuisance’ law that scholars say could have impact for other localities
A small Georgia town’s federal lawsuit opposing the Trump administration’s plans to turn a warehouse into one of the largest immigration detention centers in the US has the potential to create a wide impact as it uses novel legal arguments, experts said.
The town of Social Circle’s complaint goes further than other recently filed lawsuits around the same issues, which assert that the US federal government has not carried out environmental impact assessments for proposed detention centers, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa).
The town’s lawsuit goes on to allege that the homeland security department and ICE have also violated the federal Administrative Procedures Act (APA) – which “requires reasoned decision-making by federal agencies, including consideration of adversely affected interests and any reasonable alternatives”, according to the complaint.
Additionally, the complaint asserts that locating what ICE has called “megacenters” in the small town of about 5,000 residents would violate Georgia’s “public nuisance” law – meaning it would “harm their health, safety, and wellbeing”.
The approach shows that Social Circle “is willing to pursue a new legal theory to defend their rights, to defend their town”, said Adam Lauridsen, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys.
The innovation may prove important. “It’s significant that this is not just an environmental claim, but also raises the two other types of claims,” said Timothy D Lytton, law professor at Georgia State University. “This can frame placing these facilities in these towns in a different way.”
Samantha Hamilton, senior staff attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta, an organization that opposes ICE’s plans, agrees. “Other claims are focusing on Nepa – ‘They skipped a step and need to do an environmental review,’” she said. But the town’s decision to invoke state public nuisance law “reminds the court that communities are part of this discussion. It reminds of the humanity of the people behind this, and is more in step with what the public is saying.”
The complaint, filed in mid-May, is also the first to come from a local jurisdiction and not a state attorney general. Additionally, the small town sits in a county where nearly 75% voted for Trump. States that have sued over the issue in recent months – New Jersey, Michigan, Maryland and Arizona – are all led by Democrats.
Eric Taylor, city manager for Social Circle, told the Guardian “we went the route we had to go”, given that the proposed plans for his town would triple the local population, putting strains on drinking water and sewage, as well as on local police and ambulances.
“It’s pretty rare for a 5,000-person town to go up against the federal government in such a high-profile matter,” Lauridsen said.
“It shows that towns have the power to resist ICE and DHS coming in and building detention centers that will hurt the town and its people,” he added.
Lauridsen pointed to the town’s interactions with the agencies after it became clear that the federal government had purchased a warehouse for $128m in early February – nearly five times its assessed value of $29m last year, Taylor told the Guardian shortly after the sale went through.
The Guardian’s earlier reporting, which is cited in the lawsuit, went on to detail the frustrations of Taylor, the city manager, with obtaining answers from the federal government about his concerns over the proposed project’s impacts on the town.
Taylor said he has only spoken with federal officials once, by phone, for less than an hour – and the concerns remain.
A DHS spokesperson wrote in response to a query: “As with any transition, we are reviewing agency policies and proposals. As Secretary Mullin said in his confirmation hearing: ‘I will work with the community leaders and make sure that we are delivering for the American people what the president set out … We want to work with community leaders. We want to be good partners.’”
ICE did not reply.
“The federal government needs to plan things out and explain what its doing – it can’t just shoot first, explain later,” said Lauridsen, referring to the lawsuit’s APA claim.
Lauridsen said the APA’s “protections are now even more significant and relevant”, and that other local jurisdictions “can invoke their rights under the APA to force the government to follow the law – even in other areas outside immigration”.
Allison Gill, a former high-level official at the Department of Veterans Affairs who became known for her podcast Mueller, She Wrote, invoked the APA in a lawsuit she filed against the Department of Justice, over the Trump administration’s $1.776bn “anti-weaponization fund”.
As for public nuisance claims, Lauridsen noted that they are more commonly filed against corporations, and that he expects the federal government to assert it has immunity against such a claim.
Still, he said, the law exists for “people to protect themselves from someone coming in and hurting their environment and way of life”.
Lytton of Georgia State noted that while the case may take a while to be resolved in the courts, its overall approach may have a more immediate impact. “People file lawsuits to change government policy or decisions,” he said. “So it’s not just a matter of winning – if it attracts public interest, that can help [plaintiffs] meet their goals in other ways.”
Taylor pointed to localities around the nation where similar plans for detention centers are afoot.
“We’re all in the same boat … and we need to be learning from each other. If we’re successful, I hope it helps other communities down the line,” he said."
Trump Administration Sees Striking Exodus of Legal Talent
Trump Administration Sees Striking Exodus of Legal Talent
"The departure of more than 10,000 federal lawyers has left some agencies without sufficient staff and has boosted the ranks of state attorneys general offices and advocacy groups.
By Eileen Sullivan and Andrea Fuller
Eileen Sullivan covers the federal government. Andrea Fuller analyzes data sets of public interest, including federal employment records.
President Trump’s upheaval of the federal government has led to an exodus of more than 10,000 lawyers since the beginning of 2025, a striking loss of legal talent that has left some agencies pushing to find attorneys to carry out his agenda.
Roughly one in five lawyers who worked in the government at the end of 2024 had left by March of this year, according to a New York Times analysis of federal employment data.
Along with the usual retirements and turnover in the federal work force, the last year saw deep staffing cuts and the resignations of some staff members who objected to Mr. Trump’s policies. Their departures show how rapidly the president has eroded the image of the federal government as the gold standard for lawyers seeking public service roles.
Instead, many of those looking for such work are flocking to the offices of Democratic state attorneys general and nonprofits that are challenging administration policies in the courts, boosting Mr. Trump’s opponents with seasoned lawyers.
“There’s all this awareness that people in the federal government are dissatisfied, are angry, are frustrated, and want no part of it,” said Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, who has hired 22 lawyers from across the federal government in the last year. “That’s translating directly to people saying, ‘I want to be part of organizations that actually operate with integrity, that people want to be a part of, that people feel good about doing the right thing.’”
Wariness of the Trump administration is also palpable inside law schools, where many aspiring lawyers who would have once jumped at the chance to hold a federal government job are seeking alternative paths, according to faculty members and students.
“A lot of people my age are asking, ‘Is it worth getting a job, and will that help career wise — having one year of Trump administration experience on your résumé?’” said Matthew Duray, who described himself as a conservative Republican and just finished his first year at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. “Or will that hurt? And that’s the question I guess everyone’s asking, and that’s the bet you have to make ahead of time. But it’s hard to know long term.”
Departures Outpace Hires
While federal agencies brought on about 3,200 lawyers since the beginning of 2025, departures still outpaced hiring, data shows. Lawyers also exited the government at a faster rate than turnover in the overall work force. All told, the federal government employed about 37,000 civilian lawyers at the end of March, 17 percent fewer than it did at the end of 2024.
The Justice Department, which employs more than a quarter of all government lawyers, saw the largest decline in raw numbers. But other agencies — including the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development — lost an even greater share of attorneys.
The only major agency to gain lawyers was the Department of Homeland Security, which saw its legal ranks grow by 21 percent as it drove Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.
These cabinet agencies lost a greater share of lawyers than overall staff
| Agency | Number of lawyers | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec. 2024 | March 2026 | Change | |
Education | 645 | 303 | –53% |
Housing | 448 | 271 | –40 |
Interior | 542 | 394 | –27 |
Labor | 609 | 446 | –27 |
Energy | 721 | 530 | –26 |
Agriculture | 231 | 170 | –26 |
Health | 1,147 | 866 | –24 |
Transportation | 622 | 477 | –23 |
Justice | 12,975 | 10,310 | –21 |
Veterans Affairs | 1,935 | 1,640 | –15 |
Defense | 4,576 | 3,880 | –15 |
It is difficult to assess the scope of the impact the legal departures have had on government functions. In some ways, it has meant fewer internal obstacles for a president who saw career lawyers as an impediment to much of his first-term agenda.
But the deficit of lawyers has also meant that there are fewer of them available to defend the administration’s policies in court, and to enforce laws across the government.
“There are a lot of things that just can’t get done without lawyers — appearances in court, reviewing of regulations,” said Erik Heins, a former lawyer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development who was fired last year after raising concerns internally about fair housing lawyers being reassigned to other offices. As of March, the agency employed 40 percent fewer lawyers than it did at the end of 2024.
The Education Department, which shed more than half of its lawyers since the end of 2024, now needs more attorneys for its civil rights division to clear a backlog of discrimination cases, Linda McMahon, the education secretary, recently told Congress.
The Justice Department, which saw its attorney ranks shrink by a fifth, has relaxed its hiring requirements for some positions.
“We are fast-tracking applications to bring talented professionals on board,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, declared in a recruiting ad posted on social media this spring.
But the overt political pressure inside the Justice Department to carry out Mr. Trump’s retribution agenda has turned off some potential candidates.
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Scott Bourque, who just finished his first year at Georgetown University Law Center, said he declined a Justice Department internship this summer.
“A lot of people I’ve spoken to just in the last few months have said that they would look down on a person if they had a federal job on their résumé that they started during this administration,” he said. “And some people have explicitly said they would see a person willing to go to work at this D.O.J. as somebody they couldn’t trust.”
To bring in more lawyers for the entire government, the Office of Personnel Management recently launched a legal talent recruiting network for people to learn about openings, and to put them on the radar of hiring managers. So far, that outreach has drawn the interest of just 300 people, the agency’s spokeswoman said.
The White House did not respond directly to questions about the climate that has led so many lawyers to leave, or about whether the administration is struggling to hire new ones.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that the administration “remains totally dedicated to empowering and hiring hard-working Americans who are committed to public service and delivering on the president’s many promises to the American people.”
“The individuals who are hired are extremely qualified and talented,” she added.
‘Not a Sustainable Situation’
Mr. Trump’s willingness to blow through traditional guardrails and upend the mission of federal agencies has created a volatile environment far different than what many career lawyers said they experienced in his first administration.
“I was pretty blindsided by Trump 2.0,” said Brandon Jones-Cobb, a former Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Act lawyer.
“All of the enforcement cases I’ve been developing for years were just on permanent pause,” Mr. Jones-Cobb said. He left the agency during the summer of 2025 to go work for a nonprofit organization, the Center for Biological Diversity. He recently sued the E.P.A. over not enforcing air pollution controls.
The E.P.A.’s legal ranks shrank by about a quarter between the end of 2024 and this March.
Some young lawyers looking to launch their careers are acutely aware of the federal government's shift in enforcement priorities, particularly on the environment.
“It didn’t seem to be the right mesh of what I, and perhaps others, ideologically believed in doing,” said Stanley Shaw, a recent graduate of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. He said he was also worried that if he took a job as an environmental lawyer at the Justice Department, he could be reassigned to conduct civil immigration enforcement. He, too, has turned his focus to looking for work with state and local governments and nonprofits.
For lawyers committed to a particular enforcement mission, the federal government may not be the right place for them to work, said Cara Petersen, a former lawyer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“At least not right now,” said Ms. Petersen, who works at Protect Borrowers, an advocacy group focused on student debt and predatory lending.
The agency had fewer than 200 lawyers in March, a loss of more than 50 percent from the Biden administration. It currently has just two openings posted on its website.
Some prospective applicants have also been rattled by the departures of high-profile attorneys inside the administration.
Earlier this month, the general counsel of the Treasury Department, Brian Morrissey, resigned hours after the government announced it was creating a $1.8 billion fund expected to benefit Mr. Trump’s allies, a maneuver the administration said resolved the president’s pending lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leaking of his tax records. (On Friday, a federal judge reopened the case, saying she wanted to examine allegations that the deal was based on “deception.”)
“We’re seeing a lot of alarm about the recent damage to the tax system and the rule of law,” said Chye-Ching Huang, the executive director of the Tax Law Center at New York University. “And people who want to be part of making things right, but they’re looking for guidance on whether there’s even a viable path to doing that.”
George Washington University’s law school, which is about a 15-minute walk from the White House, is now helping students who want to go into public service find opportunities with state legislatures or city councils.
“What we have done, in response, and we have to move nimbly because of our focus on public service, is we broaden the net of the kinds of public service jobs we can prepare and place our students in,” said Dayna Bowen Matthew, the dean of the law school.
Andrew Mergen, the director of the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, said that he recognizes more people from his government career when he is doing video calls with nonprofit organizations and environmental advocates.
“I know two-thirds of the people, because they were my colleagues at D.O.J.,” said Mr. Mergen, who spent more than 30 years at the Justice Department. “This is a remarkable shift in talent out of the federal government to other places.”
Mr. Weiser, the Colorado attorney general and another Justice Department veteran, said the changes were both an opportunity for attorneys general like him and a painful reality.
“We’re getting talent we wouldn’t have gotten, and we’re getting expertise that’s valuable,” Mr. Weiser said. He noted that Colorado and other states successfully obtained a verdict against the concert giant Live Nation after the federal government backed out of the case mid-trial and settled.
“The states are able to pick up some of the slack, but this is not a sustainable situation,” he added. “We need a Justice Department with high-quality legal talent that operates with integrity.”
Michael C. Bender and Andrew Duehren contributed reporting.
Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.
Andrea Fuller is a data journalist at The Times, using data analysis to make sense of complex topics."
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