Trump’s hollowing out of the public service isn’t just about the massive illegal removals of workers – career officials are walking out of agencies of their own accord, as the Trump admin forces them to choose between following the law or following Trump’s illegal orders. A list of career resignations and/or walkouts since Trump took office:
This tracker will be updated continuously. Last updated March 10 2025.
March 10, 2025: “Dozens” of CFPB Career Civil Servants
- “Dozens of career civil servants have retired from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau amid the confusion of whether the agency will survive and be downsized under the Trump administration. Among them are Mark McArdle, an assistant CFPB director who led the mortgage markets team for seven years, and David Bleicken, the operations chief of supervision who spent nearly 14 years at the bureau primarily as deputy associate director for the former division of supervision, enforcement and fair lending. McArdle and Bleicken served as advisors, troubleshooters and mentors, managing staff and helping political appointees of both parties implement their agendas. The retirements come as the Trump administration appeared to be planning to gut the bureau. President Donald Trump and his advisor Elon Musk have said the agency should be eliminated.” [Bloomberg]
March 5, 2025: FEMA Acting Chief Counsel Joshua Stanton
- “FEMA Acting Chief Counsel Joshua Stanton has been put on administrative leave & walked out of the building after being given the role *just last week*, an agency source tells me.” [Marisa Kabas]
February 26, 2025: USAID Chief Economist Dean Karlan
- “In November 2022, Dean Karlan was hired to lead the first Office of the Chief Economist of USAID. His role and that of his 30-plus staff was to help design more cost-effective programs and to help the agency produce more evidence to guide future policies. As he puts it: ‘I came to help choose effective programs to get more bang for our buck.’ After more than two years on the job, Karlan resigned yesterday. ‘I literally just emailed USAID and told them, ‘I hereby cancel the contract,’’ he explained to NPR.” [NPR]
February 25, 2025: 21 US Digital Service Staffers
- “More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to ‘dismantle critical public services.’ ‘We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,’ the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. ‘However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.’ […] The staffers who resigned had worked for the United States Digital Service, but said their duties were being integrated into DOGE.” [Associated Press]
- “All previously held senior roles at such tech companies as Google and Amazon and wrote in their resignation letter that they joined the government out of a sense of duty to public service.” [Associated Press]
February 18, 2025: DOJ US Attorney’s Office Criminal Division head Denise Cheung
- “A top federal prosecutor in Washington resigned Tuesday after refusing an order from Justice Department leaders to direct a bank to freeze accounts holding $20 billion in climate change money allocated by former President Joe Biden’s climate spending law. Denise Cheung, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, said in a letter that Trump administration officials, seeking to prevent the money from being spent, had pressured her to launch a criminal investigation without sufficient evidence.” [Politico]
February 18, 2025: DOJ Senior Ethics Official Bradley Weinsheimer
- “The U.S. Justice Department’s senior ethics official resigned on Tuesday, after President Donald Trump’s administration pulled him off his duties and assigned him to a new sanctuary cities working group, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. The official, Bradley Weinsheimer, decided to accept the government’s deferred resignation offer rather than accept the reassignment, the latest in a string of nonpolitical career Justice Department officials who have resisted efforts that they say politicize investigations.” [Reuters]
February 18, 2025: GSA Technology Transformation Services Lead Engineer Steven Reilly
- “The lead engineer for a government text-messaging service resigned Tuesday over a U.S. DOGE Service ally’s request for access to sensitive data, including personal identifying information, according to two people familiar with the matter. Steven Reilly, the engineering lead for notify.gov, left the Technology Transformation Services arm of the General Services Administration after the branch’s new director, Thomas Shedd, sought administrative access to all components of the notify.gov site, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues.” [Washington Post]
February 17, 2025: FDA Food Division Director Jim Jones
- “Jim Jones, the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s food division, stepped down on Feb. 17, citing ‘indiscriminate’ cuts across the agency that he said would make it ‘fruitless for him to continue.’” [Time]
February 17, 2025: Social Security Administration Acting Commissioner Michelle King
- “The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner has stepped down from her role at the agency over Department of Government Efficiency requests to access Social Security recipient information, according to two people familiar with the official’s departure who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Acting Commissioner Michelle King’s departure from the agency over the weekend — after more than 30 years of service — was initiated after King refused to provide DOGE staffers at the SSA with access to sensitive information, the people said Monday.” [Associated Press]
February 2025: DOJ Public Integrity Section Acting head John Keller
- “John Keller, who served as the acting head of the Justice Department’s public corruption unit, a nonpartisan position, also informed the DOJ of his resignation following the controversy related to Adams’s deflated case. When the Southern District of New York refused to drop the case, it was reassigned to the DOJ Public Integrity Section, according to NBC 4 New York. Keller chose to resign after learning of the news. He spent more than a decade serving in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section in roles spanning from trial attorney and deputy chief to acting chief, according to his staff profile.” [The Hill]
February 2025: DOJ Criminal Division Acting Head Kevin Driscoll
- “Kevin Driscoll, the acting head of the department’s Criminal Division, which oversees federal criminal cases nationwide, also refused to drop the charges and resigned.” [NBC News]
February 14, 2025: DOJ Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Hagan Scotten
- “Hagan Scotten, the lead prosecutor on the federal corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, resigned after Justice Department officials ordered the dismissal of charges he had helped bring, suggesting that only a ‘fool’ or a ‘coward’ would obey. […] He graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, and for Brett M. Kavanaugh before he, too, became an Supreme Court justice. Mr. Scotten had led the investigation into Mr. Adams since it began in the summer of 2021.” [New York Times]
February 12, 2025: DOJ Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon
- “Danielle Sassoon had served just three weeks as interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York when she penned a letter to recently confirmed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi saying she could not follow a directive to drop the office’s corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. […] But in her letter, she alluded to some details of her 10 years of public service that shed light on how she came to the decision to resign and who the now-former federal prosecutor who made headlines for defying the new DOJ is.” [Associated Press]
- “Sassoon also clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III in the Fourth Circuit in Charlottesville, Virginia, and for late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In a 2016 tribute to the late justice, who was an outspoken stalwart for the court’s conservative wing, Sassoon, a Republican, called Scalia ‘the real deal.’” [Associated Press]
January 31, 2025: Treasury Acting Secretary David A. Lebryk“David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues that was obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said.” [Washington Post]
Photo: “President Trump meets with cabinet in the Cabinet Room” White House via Flickr, March 6, 2025.