Reuters - The U.S. Justice Department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature Trump administration policies - such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University - has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters.
Sixty-nine
of the roughly 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs Branch have
voluntarily left the unit since President Donald Trump's election in
November or have announced plans to leave, according to the list
compiled by former Justice Department lawyers and reviewed by Reuters.
Reuters
spoke to four former lawyers in the unit and three other people
familiar with the departures who said some staffers had grown
demoralized and exhausted defending an onslaught of lawsuits against
Trump's administration.
"Many
of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of
our constitutional system," said one lawyer who left the unit during
Trump's second term. "How could they participate in the project of
tearing it down?"
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