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 September 15, 2025.
September 15, 2025: FEMA Acting Chief Counsel Colt Hagmaier
- “FEMA Acting Chief Counsel Colt Hagmaier just resigned in an email to staff. He’s worked at the agency for more than a decade. Hagmaier’s resignation comes immediately after two FEMA employees were placed on leave for comments about Charlie Kirk.” [Marisa Kabas via Bluesky, 9/15/25]
- Read Colt Hagmaier’s Resignation Letter.
August 29, 2025: Chief Data Officer of the Social Security Administration, Charles Borges
- “A Social Security official who has filed a whistleblower complaint alleging the Department of Government Efficiency officials mishandled Americans’ sensitive information says he’s resigning his post because of actions taken against him since making his complaint. Charles Borges, the agency’s chief data officer, alleged that more than 300 million Americans’ Social Security data was put at risk by DOGE officials who uploaded sensitive information to a cloud account not subject to oversight. His whistleblower disclosure was submitted to the special counsel’s office on Tuesday.” [ABC News, 8/29/25]
- Charles Borges’s Resignation Letter.
August 27, 2025: Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Debra Houry
- “Debra Houry, chief medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and deputy director for program and science, abruptly quit last Wednesday along with three other top CDC officials. That followed the firing of their boss, CDC director Susan Monarez, but the officials also complained about the health secretary’s refusal to engage on science and policy issues with experts from the public health agency. In an interview with the Daily Beast following her resignation, Houry revealed her belief that RFK Jr. was taking his lead on immunization matters from the discredited anti-vax group he himself used to lead, Children’s Health Defense, rather than from experienced CDC physicians like herself.” [The Daily Beast, 9/1/25]
- Debra Houry’s Resignation Letter on Linkedin.
August 27, 2025: Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, Demetre Daskalakis
- “‘I only see harm coming,’ said Demetre Daskalakis in an interview that aired Sunday about his departure from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Speaking to host Martha Raddatz on ABC’s’This Week,’ Daskalakis discussed his resignation as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which came after the ouster last week of CDC Director Susan Monarez, a Trump appointee who came in to conflict with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccinations. […] At the heart of the issue, Daskalakis said, is the breakdown of the wall between science and ideology. ‘I have been ready to do this when I felt that I hit the line,’ he said of his resignation. ‘And I hit the line when both I didn’t think that we were going to be able to present science in a way free of ideology, that the firewall between science and ideology is completely broken down.’” [Politico, 8/31/25]
- Demetre Daskalakis’s Resignation Letter.
August 27, 2025: Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases of the CDC, Daniel Jernigan
- “Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases […] have all submitted their resignations, according to emails shared with The Hill. […] Jernigan stated, “I believe strongly in the mission of public health and the leadership that CDC has given for almost 80 years; however, given the current context in the Department, I feel it is best for me to offer my resignation.” [The Hill, 8/27/25]
- Daniel Jernigan’s Resignation Letter.
- Former CDC official explains his decision to leave the agency [NPR, 8/29/25]
August 27, 2025: Director of the Office of Public Health Data of the CDC, Jen Layden
- “Dr. Jennifer Layden was the Director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for five years until this week, when she became one of four senior CDC officials to resign amid budget cuts and increased political pressure from President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘Public health should be bipartisan,’ Layden tells Ali Velshi, explaining that budget cuts made it ‘challenging to do my work.’ Many don’t realize how dangerous this undermining of our public health agencies could be since Layden notes that ‘the work of public health often goes unnoticed until there is a major outbreak.’” [MSNBC, 8/30/25]
July 22, 2025: Chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Erica Y. Williams
- “PCAOB Chair Erica Y. Williams announced today that she will leave the PCAOB Tuesday, July 22, ending a tenure marked by record accomplishments. ‘The dedicated staff of the PCAOB are among the most talented and hardworking professionals with whom I have had the opportunity to work, and it has been my honor to serve alongside them,’ said Williams. ‘The PCAOB plays an essential role in protecting the investments and retirement savings of workers and families across the country while helping to ensure our capital markets remain the envy of the world. With high economic uncertainty increasing the risk of fraud, the PCAOB’s mission is as important as ever. It’s critical the expert PCAOB staff continue to be empowered to carry out their work of ensuring American investors are protected.’” [PCAOB, 7/15/25]
July 21, 2025: FEMA head of Urban Search and Rescue branch, Ken Pagurek
- “Ken Pagurek, who worked with FEMA’s search and rescue branch for more than a decade and served as chief for the past year, told associates that his concerns had been mounting since the start of hurricane season and that the administration’s changes to the agency were causing ‘chaos.’ He said he worried that a new policy that requires purchases of more than $100,000 be personally approved by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, could hurt disaster response efforts that require speed and agility.” [New York Times, see also CNN]
June 11, 2025: FEMA National Response Coordination Center head Jeremy Greenberg
- “The head of FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center — a position responsible for the government’s response to storms — submitted his resignation letter Wednesday and will formally depart the agency in two weeks. Jeremy Greenberg’s planned departure comes less than two weeks into hurricane season and amid a major leadership exodus at the nation’s disaster response and recovery agency. Greenberg confirmed his departure to CBS News but deferred all comment to FEMA.” [CBS]
June 11, 2025: Members of the Congressionally mandated Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board
- “Nearly all the members of a board overseeing the prestigious Fulbright scholarships resigned Wednesday in protest of what they call the Trump administration’s meddling with the selection of award recipients for the international exchange program. A statement published online by board members said the administration usurped the board’s authority by denying awards to “a substantial number of people” who already had been chosen to study and teach in the U.S. and abroad. Another 1,200 foreign award recipients who were already approved to come to the U.S. are undergoing an unauthorized review process that could lead to their rejection, the board members said.” [AP News]
- Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board Resignation Statement.
June 6, 2025: DOJ U.S. Attorney’s Office official, Ben Schrader
- “Mistakenly deported Salvadoran native Kilmar Abrego Garcia appeared in a Tennessee courtroom Friday, hours after he was brought back to the United States to face criminal charges for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the U.S. […] The decision to pursue the indictment against Abrego Garcia led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, sources briefed on Schrader’s decision told ABC News. Schrader’s resignation was prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons, the sources said. Schrader, who spent 15 years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and was most recently the chief of the criminal division, declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.” [ABC News]
June 3, 2025: DOJ Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Rosen (Chief of the Justice Department’s Capitol Siege Section)
- “The federal prosecutor who helped lead the largest federal criminal case in American history has resigned his position in the Justice Department. Longtime Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Rosen, the chief of the Justice Department’s Capitol Siege Section, has departed for a post with a private law firm. In an interview with CBS News, Rosen said President Trump’s pardons of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rioters continue to shock and alarm the federal investigators who handled the cases. ‘The message that [the pardons] send is that political violence towards a political goal is acceptable in a modern democratic society,’ Rosen said. ‘That, from my perspective, is anathema to a constitutional republic.’” [CBS News]
May 2025: Federal Emergency Management Agency acting deputy administrator, MaryAnn Tierney
- “Late last month, FEMA’s acting deputy administrator, MaryAnn Tierney – a widely respected veteran leader serving as the agency’s second-in-command – resigned, telling her staff that actions by the Trump administration had prompted her departure. ‘Everyone has a line, and I have reached mine,’ Tierney told her team in an email. ‘I will not be complicit in the dismantling of this Agency and while I would readily implement change, even radical change, the current approach lacks a clear end state or plan and has been done recklessly without regard to our current statutory or moral obligations to the American people. I also will not be a part of the intentional traumatization of our workforce. Based on my role, seniority, and place in the Agency my presence enables this.’” [CNN]
May 30, 2025: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official, Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos
- “An official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who oversaw the agency’s recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines has resigned, following a week of mixed messaging from federal health officials over who would be eligible for the shots. ‘My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,’ Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos wrote in her resignation letter obtained by ABC News.” [ABC News]
May 2025: DOJ Immigration Lawyer, Joseph A. Darrow
- “In April, she told Mr. Bove to dismiss Erez Reuveni, a career immigration lawyer who had acknowledged that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an immigrant living in Maryland, had been wrongfully deported to El Salvador. The move further stressed an already understaffed and demoralized immigration unit sagging under the weight of litigation and retirements. Joseph A. Darrow, a 10-year veteran of the unit, said he could not “with clean conscience” defend the department’s actions under Ms. Bondi, claiming they ran counter to the law, Constitution and “basic principles of fairness and humanity,” he wrote in a resignation email obtained by The New York Times.” [New York Times]
April 22, 2025: DOJ Assistant US Attorneys, Celia V. Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom
- “Three federal prosecutors who were involved in Eric Adams’s public corruption case, and who were suspended after they refused to support dropping the charges against the New York mayor, have resigned. Here is their resignation letter, which accuses the Justice Department of demanding they admit wrongdoing before they could return to work.” [Washington Post, 4/23/25]
- Read their resignation letter.
Aprils 16, 2025: Nutrition and Metabolism Scientist at National Institutes of Health Kevin Hall
- “For the past two decades, Kevin Hall, a nutrition and metabolism scientist at the National Institutes of Health, has devoted his career to studying how people’s diets affect their health. […] Dr. Hall had planned to keep doing this work for many years — and hoped it might accelerate under the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has said that fixing the nation’s food supply is a priority. But now, at 54, he is retiring early. In an interview with The New York Times, Dr. Hall said his decision was driven in part by several instances in which federal officials censored his work.” [New York Times]
- Kevin Hall’s statement on his early retirement.
April 2025: Acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause
- “The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is resigning over a deal to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S., according to two people familiar with the decision. Melanie Krause, who had served as acting head since February, will step down over the new data-sharing document signed Monday by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The agreement will allow ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.” [AP via NBC News]
March 14, 2025: DOJ Assistant U.S. Attorney of Puerto Rico Sean Murphy
- “A prosecutor with years of experience at the U.S. Department of Justice has resigned amid major changes from the Trump administration, telling NPR, ‘It just was not a Department of Justice that I any longer wanted to associate with.’ In a sharp resignation letter shared with NPR, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Murphy warned of the erosion of the Justice Department’s independence from the president, writing to his coworkers, ‘you serve no man.'” [NPR]
- Sean Murphy Resignation Letter
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.” [American Banker]
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: Acting Internal Revenue Service Commissioner, Doug O’Donnell
- “The acting head of the Internal Revenue Service plans to retire Friday, the agency announced Tuesday, after weathering weeks of chaos and cutbacks at the agency since President Donald Trump took office. Acting IRS Commissioner Doug O’Donnell’s departure comes abruptly as the agency heads into the crunch time of tax filing season. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced in a news release that the IRS will be led by Melanie Krause, the agency’s chief operating officer who has been sympathetic to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency efforts within the agency. […] DOGE’s attempts to gain access to software systems and data at the IRS and within the Treasury Department have spurred significant pushback both within the department and in court, where privacy cases have limited some access to private information and code.” [CNN, 2/25/25]
- “O’Donnell spent more than 38 years at the IRS in a variety of roles. In addition to his current duties as Acting Commissioner, he also served in the role from November 2022 through March 2023.” [IRS, 2/25/25]
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]
- USDS Resignation Letter
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]
- Denise Cheung Resignation Letter
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]
- Jim Jones Resignation Letter
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 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]
- Hagen Scotten Resignation Letter
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: 3 additional members of the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section
- “In December, Donald J. Trump, then the president-elect, said he would consider pardoning Mr. Adams, who was facing federal corruption charges. […] A week later, Emil Bove III, Mr. Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer who is now the Justice Department’s acting No. 2 official, called Mr. Adams’s lawyer. He said he wanted to talk about the possibility of dismissing the case. Mr. Bove then sent a memo to the Southern District of New York, ordering prosecutors to dismiss charges against Mr. Adams. Mr. Bove referred the case to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in Washington. And the two men in charge of that unit, Kevin O. Driscoll and John Keller, resigned. Hours later, three more lawyers in the public integrity section resigned. The next morning, the lead prosecutor on the case, Hagan Scotten, announced his resignation from the Southern District.” [New York Times, 2/14/25]
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]
- Danielle Sassoon Resignation Letter
January 31, 2025: Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Senior Trial Attorney Stacey Young
- “My name is Stacey Young, and I left the Department of Justice last Friday. Before that I served for 18 years as a career litigator in the Civil Division and later in the Civil Rights Division, working under four administrations and seven Attorneys General. […] Over the past two weeks, career DOJ employees have been fired, demoted, and reassigned. […] It’s not hyperbole to characterize this as a deliberate campaign to traumatize the Department’s workforce and prevent them from doing their jobs.” [Statement of Stacey Young]
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.