As mass layoffs hit other government agencies, the Justice Department is recruiting new attorneys to help defend President Donald Trump’s policies in court, according to public job postings, department officials and legal experts.

President Donald Trump is targeting Covington & Burling, which is representing former special counsel Jack Smith, issuing a directive that would strip some of its lawyers of their security clearances and examine the firm’s government contracts.

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to pay hundreds of millions in foreign assistance funds that have been in limbo despite his previous directive that such aid resume.

A divided Supreme Court on Monday turned away a pair of free speech challenges by abortion opponents to city laws in New Jersey and Illinois that restrict protests directly outside clinics and hospitals where abortions are performed.

Hagan Scotten, the lead prosecutor in Mayor Eric Adams’s federal corruption case, has quit over the Justice Department’s demand that the case be dismissed, calling any lawyer who would move in court to toss the matter a “fool” or “coward,” according to a copy of a letter obtained Friday.

Long before she made headlines by defying a Trump administration order to drop criminal charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, prosecutor Danielle Sassoon clerked for two very conservative judges. She cited those clerkships in her resignation letter Thursday to AG Pam Bondi, explaining that her fealty to the law would not allow her to seek dismissal of the Adams case.

Gary Guymon, a high-profile lawyer based in Las Vegas, used his position as a defense attorney to sexually exploit clients, police allege.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she will not comply with a request to extradite to Louisiana a New York doctor who faces a criminal charge there for allegedly prescribing abortion-inducing drugs. Hochul told reporters she had received the extradition order on Thursday and would not sign it. “Doctors take an oath to protect their patients,” she said on social media. “I took an oath to protect all New Yorkers.”

A federal judge on Thursday blocked executive orders signed by President Donald Trump that target transgender people and their health care, giving temporary relief to LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, who braced for legal battles to continue.

The top federal prosecutor in New York and a team of Justice Department officials in Washington resigned Thursday after a demand by the Trump administration to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.