Brett Shumate has become the fourth Department of Justice official to join the post-election exodus from the agency following Republicans’ crushing midterm defeat—marking the end of the tenure of a man who helped grease the wheels of the anti-trans machine.
“The rats are fleeing the sinking ship,” Alejandra Caraballo, a lawyer and trans rights scholar, posted on Bluesky, alongside news that Shumate, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, was resigning.
Under Shumate’s leadership, the DOJ aggressively targeted providers of gender-affirming care, subpoenaing patient records and waging False Claims Act investigations to intimidate hospitals. This caused some major hospitals to end care for trans minors and pay millions in settlements to the government. He was also instrumental in defending these actions in court against claims they were unlawful government overreach.
No hospital or clinic has been successfully sued because it provides evidence-based medicine, but some of them signed agreements with the DOJ to stave off the worst of federal threats: the demand that providers hand over identifiable patient data about thousands of transgender children and their families. Not all of these investigations or deals have been public.
Still, hospitals shut down their gender-affirming care programs for trans youth, leaving care deserts across the country. Lower courts condemned the government’s ploy, with one Boston judge calling it “a fishing expedition.” In a similar Rhode Island case, another judge said the DOJ—under Shumate’s leadership at the time—“has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case.”
In June 2025, Shumate issued a memo directing Civil Division employees to prioritize attacks on gender-affirming care, courtesy of the whims of President Donald Trump and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was ousted in April.
Shumate’s memo announced the Civil Division will “prioritize investigations of doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and other appropriate entities” that ostensibly violate Trump’s declarations about transgender youth care. “In addition, the Civil Division will aggressively pursue claims under the False Claims Act against health care providers that bill the federal government for impermissible services.”
This largely included providers of wholly legal gender-affirming care, even in blue states—such as Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in California and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. There is no federal ban on gender-affirming care.
Attorney General Todd Blanche, in announcing Shumate’s departure on X, praised him for “shutter[ing] dozens of clinics” for gender-affirming care.
The DOJ also saw the departure of Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division, and whose firm previously represented “ex-trans” activist Chloe Cole in her lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente for providing gender-affirming care.
Jason Reding Quiñones, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for the National Security Division, also resigned. The department is also reeling from general attrition of staff throughout.
The DOJ is not likely to stop pursuing political targets, including trans people and their caretakers and doctors, but if nothing else, the turmoil at the DOJ is liable to make it less effective. Under Trump, “a drastically diminished Justice Department workforce is struggling to keep up with its civil side caseloads,” The Hill found.
“A series of charts, apparently inadvertently shared and then recalled, show how the number of attorneys within the civil division has plummeted under the Trump administration.”
This may slow down some of the destructive efforts by the DOJ—going after lawful gender-affirming care providers, defending the government from lawsuits over human rights violations. But others question how this might shape the department politically as new hires grow increasingly conservative and less qualified or willing to defy unlawful orders. Other important targets of the DOJ, such as those guilty of terrorism or white-collar crime, may also benefit from less competence in oversight.
A replacement for Shumate has not yet been announced.
They are fleeing but the records of their work and names remains. It will be important when accountability comes into play.
So, the rats are getting while the getting is good.
Is it?
What political capital will the Democrats spend ferreting out actual criminals and fitting them for a orange jumpsuit? Will they further poison wells by criminalizing policy they need only reverse?
Tune in next week to find out, via the excellent reporting of S. Baum.
Whom we thank!