The Justice Department’s recently fired pardon attorney accused the leadership of the law enforcement agency of “ongoing corruption,” testifying Monday at a congressional hearing meant to showcase concerns that the Trump administration is assaulting the rule of law, abusing its power and forcing out career civil servants.

“It should alarm all Americans that the leadership of the Department of Justice appears to value political loyalty above the fair and responsible administration of justice,” said Liz Oyer, who has said she was fired last month after refusing to recommend that the gun rights of actor Mel Gibson, a supporter of President Donald Trump’s, be restored.

“It should offend all Americans that our leaders are treating public servants with a lack of basic decency and humanity,” she added.

The hearing represented the first time in the new Trump administration that Justice Department lawyers who were either recently fired or quit have spoken before Congress about the circumstances of their departures and their concerns about the agency’s direction. It unfolded as a wave of resignations and firings have hollowed out the ranks of experienced career lawyers at the department and as Attorney General Pam Bondi and her leadership team team have signaled little patience for dissent within the workforce, including by suspending a government attorney who admitted in court that the deportation of a Maryland man to a notorious El Salvador prison was a mistake.

“The Trump administration has unleashed an all-out assault on these public servants, who are now facing attacks on their employment, their integrity, their well-being, and even their safety,” Stacey Young, a lawyer who left the Justice Department in January and is now leading a group that advocates for department employees, told lawmakers at a hearing convened by members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees.

The warnings were stark, with lawyers who spent years at the Justice Department recounting their experiences with unprecedented political pressure that they said made them deeply uneasy and obliterated the institution’s norms.

Oyer decried what she described as the “callous cruelty with which DOJ leadership is treating dedicated public servants.” She testified about being abruptly fired without explanation last month, one day after refusing to endorse the restoration of Gibson’s gun rights following a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction, and being told security officers were waiting in her office to escort her out of the building.

Pentagon fires another female military leader

The Trump administration fired Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, U.S. officials said Monday, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continued his purge of military leaders who have been targeted by conservatives.

Chatfield, who served in the Navy as the U.S. representative to NATO’s military committee, has joined a list of female leaders and people of color who have been fired. It includes the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown Jr.; the Navy’s former chief, Adm. Lisa Franchetti; and the former Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Linda Lee Fagan.

Also fired recently were Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, who was commander of the U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, and Gen. James Slife, the former vice chief of staff of the Air Force.

It was unclear whether President Donald Trump or Hegseth gave the order to fire Chatfield. Last week Trump removed several national security officials, including Haugh, after meeting with Laura Loomer, the far-right activist and conspiracy theorist.

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment on Chatfield’s firing, which was first reported by Reuters.

Army reenlists soldiers who refused vaccine

The Army has reenlisted more than 23 soldiers who were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, officials said Monday, rushing to implement President Donald Trump’s order that troops be rehired and given back pay.

Three people rejoined active duty Army service, and more than 20 came back either to the National Guard or the Reserve, the Army said. The soldiers have signed their contracts and were sworn in, and the active duty troops were reporting to their units, the Army said.

None of the other services has completed reenlistments yet, but all are reaching out to former troops. The Marine Corps, Air Force, Army and Navy set up new websites on Monday to provide information for service members looking to reenlist. And they are sending letters and emails and making calls to those who were discharged.

Trump has argued that the vaccine mandate wrongly pushed troops out and suggested that many would return. In an executive order signed a week after he took office, Trump said the vaccine mandate cost the military “some of our best people” and he vowed to “rehire every patriot who was fired from the military with … backpay.”

Trump seeking $45B for immigrant detention

The Trump administration is seeking to spend tens of billions of dollars to set up the machinery to expand immigrant detention on a scale never before seen in the United States, according to a request for proposals posted online by the administration last week.

The request, which comes from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, calls for contractors to submit proposals to provide new detention facilities, transportation, security guards, medical support and other administrative services worth as much as $45 billion over the next two years.

ICE does not yet have that much money. If funded, the maximum value would represent more than a sixfold increase in spending to detain immigrants.

“This is DHS envisioning and getting ready to unroll — if it gets the money — an entirely new way of imprisoning immigrants in the U.S.,” said Heidi Altman, vice president for policy at the National Immigration Law Center.

Court: Fired officials can return to posts

Two board members fired by President Donald Trump can go back to their jobs for now, a split appeals court ruled Monday ahead of a likely Supreme Court showdown on the president’s power over independent agencies.

An appeals court in the nation’s capital handed down the 7-4 decision in lawsuits brought by two women separately fired from agencies that both deal with labor issues, including one with a key role for a federal workforce Trump is aiming to drastically downsize.

The order relies largely on a 90-year-old Supreme Court decision known as Humphrey’s Executor, which found that presidents can’t fire independent board members without cause.

But that ruling has long rankled conservative legal theorists who argue it wrongly curtails the president’s power, and experts say the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court may be poised to overturn it.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly told the courts of appeals to follow extant Supreme Court precedent unless and until that Court itself changes it or overturns it,” the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion. All seven members of the majority were appointed by Democratic presidents. The four dissenters are Republican appointees, including three named by Trump in his first term.

NWS suspending language translations

The National Weather Service is no longer providing language translations of its products, a change that experts say could put non-English speakers at risk of missing potentially life-saving warnings about extreme weather.

The weather service has “paused” the translations because its contract with Lilt, an artificial intelligence company, has lapsed, NWS spokesman Michael Musher said. He declined further comment.

Lilt, an artificial intelligence company, began providing translations in late 2023, replacing manual translations that the weather service had said were labor-intensive and not sustainable. It eventually provided them in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Samoan. The contract lapse comes as President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to slash spending in federal agencies, including cuts within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that have led to high employee vacancy rates at NWS offices.

NOAA referred questions about the contract to a message on its website announcing the contract had lapsed. Lilt did not respond to requests for comment.

Nearly 68 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home, including 42 million Spanish speakers, according to 2019 Census data.

Maine sues Trump over frozen federal funding

Maine officials sued the administration of President Donald Trump on Monday to try to stop the government from freezing federal money in the wake of a dispute over transgender athletes in sports.

Trump and Maine, which is controlled by Democrats, are in the midst of a weeks long dispute about the Title IX anti-discrimination law and the participation of transgender students in high school sports. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said earlier this month that the U.S. Department of Agriculture was pausing some funds for Maine educational programs because of what she described as Maine’s failure to comply with the Title IX law.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey filed a complaint in federal court on Monday that described the pause as “illegally withholding grant funds that go to keeping children fed.” The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order preventing the USDA from withholding money until a court is able to hear the case.

In a statement, Frey said, the president and his Cabinet “secretaries do not make the law and they are not above the law, and this action is necessary to remind the president that Maine will not be bullied into violating the law.”

Airline says it will make deportation flights

Budget carrier Avelo Airlines signed an agreement to fly federal deportation flights from Arizona starting in May, according to the company, whose founder acknowledged the decision may be controversial.

Andrew Levy, also CEO of the Houston-based airline, said Avelo is flying for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration Control and Enforcement agency as part of a “long-term charter program” to support the agency’s deportation efforts. The company decided the move would help with expansion and protect jobs, he said.

“We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic,” Levy said in a statement.

The domestic and international flights will be supported by three Boeing 737-800 planes and based at Mesa Gateway Airport Flights, Avelo said in a statement.

— News service reports