Obsessed Trump left his own DOJ scrambling with war on college: analysis

The Department of Justice and Attorney General Pam Bondi have struggled to replace attorneys after a mass exodus of recent resignations, retirements and buyouts, an analyst said on Thursday. And as President Donald Trump escalated his attacks on universities, it also backfired on the vital federal agency.

MS NOW's Hayes Brown wrote in an opinion piece that the DOJ has now opted to bring on new hires fresh out of law school, a reflection of how rough the hiring process has become and how the Trump administration has appeared to lower its standards.

Bloomberg Law cited a memo last week showing the requirements for new candidates: "typical one-year minimum experience requirement can be waived when posting job openings."

"There’s no indication of how this new initiative fits with the Trump administration’s ongoing war on elite universities," Hayes wrote. "The Ivy League’s law schools used to be a pipeline for the Justice Department’s ranks, albeit not as immediately as the current policy allows. But last year, the Trump administration revoked offers to students from top schools under the previous exception to the rule, the Attorney General’s Honors Program, which allowed for entry-level hires. The spigot has dried up since then, as The Washington Post noted last year, with many graduates turning to state government work instead."

The DOJ's "exigent need" for new hires has revealed more about what qualifications candidates need to be considered for the jobs.

"There’s a world where this shift toward hiring newly graduated lawyers could be a good thing," Hayes added. "If this project were truly about meritocracy, seeing more slots available for lawyers who didn’t all go to the same handful of schools could be admirable. But the administration’s screenings for ideological purity and loyalty to the MAGA agenda would undercut any claim that the department is truly trying to hire the best attorneys possible."