Attorney General Pam Bondi has been pushed out of her role, the second high-level departure from President Donald Trump’s Cabinet in recent weeks.
Mr. Trump made the announcement on Thursday afternoon. “We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future,” he wrote in a Truth Social post. He also said that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche would assume the position on an interim basis. The announcement came one day after Ms. Bondi traveled to the Supreme Court with Mr. Trump, where the two listened to arguments in the president’s case challenging birthright citizenship.
Multiple news outlets reported that Mr. Trump met with Ms. Bondi on Wednesday and told her her firing was imminent, with some reporting suggesting that Ms. Bondi pushed back and tried to convince the president to keep her on. The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump has floated the idea of tapping Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, as the next attorney general.
Why We Wrote This
The attorney general’s dismissal comes on the heels of Kristi Noem’s firing from the Department of Homeland Security. President Donald Trump has now pushed out two Cabinet members – both women – as he faces growing challenges over the Iran war and the economy.
Ms. Bondi’s dismissal comes on the heels of Kristi Noem’s firing from the Department of Homeland Security in early March. That Mr. Trump has now pushed out two of his most visible Cabinet members – both women – in such a short span underscores the increasingly dire political straits in which the president finds himself.
Mr. Trump’s war with Iran has sharply divided his MAGA base and has created new economic pressures at home. In a prime-time address to the nation on Wednesday night, the president provided no new information on how his administration plans to wind down the conflict. Gas prices have been climbing, and Mr. Trump’s approval rating on the economy has hit a new low. His tariff policy was struck down by the Supreme Court, and his solicitor general faced tough questioning during oral arguments this week for the president’s birthright citizenship case.
“There are very few, if any people, who have served the president and come out on the side of the rainbow,” says Matthew Bartlett, a Trump appointee to the State Department during his first administration. Mr. Bartlett notes that both attorneys general appointed by Mr. Trump during his first term – Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr – eventually found themselves at odds with the president, who came to see them as insufficiently loyal. “This second time around, people knew what they were signing up for: extreme and absolute loyalty to the president. But it seems like that is not enough.”
Mr. Trump had reportedly been frustrated with Ms. Bondi for months over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, told Vanity Fair in December that Ms. Bondi “completely whiffed” on it, by not understanding how important the issue was to some Trump supporters. The bipartisan frustration had been building since February 2025, when Ms. Bondi told reporters that an Epstein “client list” was “sitting on my desk right now,” and subsequently gave out thick white binders that actually contained no new information, disappointing the MAGA-influencer recipients.
She later tried to dismiss the matter, but was eventually forced by lawmakers to release millions of documents related to the late financier, leading to embarrassing new revelations for the president and other figures in his orbit. The House Oversight Committee voted in March to subpoena Ms. Bondi to testify this month regarding the Justice Department’s Epstein investigation. The committee’s Democratic ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, posted online that, despite Ms. Bondi’s firing, the committee still expects her to testify.
Mr. Trump had also expressed frustration over the Justice Department’s failure under Ms. Bondi to effectively prosecute figures he believed had targeted him. In a Truth Social post this past September (which appears to have been intended as a personal message for Ms. Bondi), the president questioned why she hadn’t gone after perceived enemies, including Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, former FBI Director James Comey, and Letitia James, the attorney general of New York. Shortly after the president’s Truth Social post, Mr. Comey was indicted on charges of making false statements and obstruction of justice, and Ms. James was indicted for mortgage fraud. Both indictments were later dismissed.
Mr. Trump’s second administration had until recently avoided the inter-Cabinet drama and firings of his first administration. Personnel turnover was a common theme during his first term, during which Mr. Trump had a higher turnover than his five predecessors, swapping out 11 Cabinet positions – some of them more than once. Now, there have been two firings in less than a month, and other top officials are also reportedly at odds with the president, suggesting there might be more drama to come.