The department has hemorrhaged thousands of veteran attorneys since Trump returned to office thanks to the president’s revenge campaigns, violent immigration crackdown, and increasingly overwhelming workloads.
The government has lowered hiring standards and resorted to offering $25,000 signing bonuses, despite historically being deluged with applications from lawyers who were happy to take a pay cut in exchange for the prestige and satisfaction of federal service.
Over the past few weeks, the deputy attorney general’s office told all 93 U.S. attorney’s offices that every prosecutor must maintain at least “25 open matters” at all times, four people told Bloomberg Law.
Most of the fascist coup is voluntary.
All of the checks and balances depended on people in positions of authority and power putting up a meaningful resistance; not just the virtue signal of an oath.
Exactly none of the US system of checks and balances includes expecting an employee of the executive branch to defy the head of the executive branch.
It works by the courts invalidating executive orders as illegal or unconstitutional, and the Congress refusing to fund or legislate at the executive’s whims.
Our checks and balances are working fairly well, especially considering that the GOP hold majorities in every part of the federal government. The problem is just that Congress let the other two branches assume too much of its own authority.
There’s a lot of pressure to avoid telling your boss “No.” It even begins in compulsory education. Do what you’re told or suffer the consequences.