President Trump has purged several career officials from key positions at the Justice Department, a move critics say will pave the way to weaponize the agency against Trump’s enemies. The Washington Post reports at least 15 experienced career staffers across the Justice Department’s national security and criminal divisions were removed from their positions and reassigned — among them a senior counterintelligence attorney who played a key role in deciding to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence to retrieve classified documents. He’s reportedly been transferred to a newly created Office of Sanctuary Cities Enforcement.

The purges came as Trump asserted broad presidential authority in his first full day in office, firing the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan, who in 2022 became the first woman to lead a branch of the U.S. armed forces. She was fired as the White House ordered employees in any federal diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility — or DEI — offices to be placed on paid administrative leave “effective immediately.”