When a new administration moves to Washington, DC, there are always changes in policy priorities and personnel. Alex, a lawyer in the Department of Justice’s Voting Section, had survived Donald Trump’s first term, and thought he could make it through the second. Within hours of the president’s inauguration, he knew he had misjudged the situation. “I was just wrong,” he says. “It was wildly different than the first Trump administration. There was just a sense that this was not going to be the same. And then in the Voting Section, what happened is they just started dismissing cases.” The Voting Section was established in the agency’s Civil Rights Division following the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 to ensure every American had an equal right to vote. Alex, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, is one of dozens of lawyers who has been ousted from it since Trump’s return to the White House. There were around 30 attorneys in the Voting Section when Trump was inaugurated in January 2025. Three months later, only two remained. The departing lawyers have since been replaced by half a dozen new hires with little federal court experience who have made a litany of basic errors in court filings. They have also appeared more than willing to comply with Trump’s anti-voting directives, filing dozens of lawsuits in a bid to force states to hand over unredacted voter rolls. WIRED spoke to a dozen experts and former Voting Section lawyers about the wholesale destruction of the Justice Department’s Voting Section under Trump. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation from the Trump administration