The federal agencies that protect the American public from crime, terrorism, cyberattacks and natural disasters have lost career senior leadership at unprecedented rates—while political appointments in these agencies have surged to levels with no modern parallel. The result is a national security and law enforcement apparatus with fewer experienced leaders, expanded political staffing, and growing questions about operational capacity and independence.
The hollowing out of career leadership and surge in political appointments is altering how agencies that keep us safe allocate resources and set priorities, jeopardizing the government’s ability to effectively address critical threats.
This analysis is the second installment in our series examining agency-level trends in federal leadership, building on our recent report on the politicization of federal leadership government-wide.
The erosion of career leadership
Since December 2024, career Senior Executive Service losses across national security and law enforcement agencies have been severe—in several cases far exceeding the already alarming government-wide average of nearly 30%.
At the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the total number of career SES has fallen by over 50%. CISA is the nation’s primary civilian cyber defense agency, created in 2018 in response to several high-profile cyber breaches to public- and private-sector systems.
CISA’s effectiveness depends on technical expertise and institutional knowledge that takes years to build—an understanding of how threats develop, how vulnerabilities are assessed, and how partners across government and the private sector coordinate in response.
At a moment when threats are growing more frequent and sophisticated, losing over half of CISA career leaders leaves the nation’s cyber defenses weakened—and individuals, businesses and institutions like hospitals and schools more exposed.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has lost 34.1% of its career SES—officials who provide continuity across administrations and disaster cycles. Their departure from FEMA, with its future federal role in question even as natural disaster season begins, has left states and U.S. territories uncertain about what federal support they can count on when the next major disaster strikes.
The Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s largest bureau, is responsible for more than 155,000 inmates across 122 facilities, entered the current administration already under severe strain—more than 4,000 staff vacancies and a $3 billion repair backlog across the agency’s facilities.
Career SES losses of 37.5% since December 2024 have deepened this crisis, stripping an already overstretched agency of the experienced leadership it needs to manage one of the federal government’s most demanding operational environments.
Political staffing and operational redirection
As career leadership has contracted, non-Senate-confirmed appointments have surged across national security and law enforcement agencies to levels far outside modern norms—in some cases in agencies that historically had none.
Presidents are entitled to set priorities, and political appointees are the mechanism through which they do so. But the scale of political staffing now in place, combined with the collapse of career leadership, risks weakening the buffers of professional continuity and operational independence that have historically kept national security and law enforcement agencies functioning effectively across administrations.
The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration, both of which lacked a non-Senate-confirmed appointee between 2009 and 2024, now have one and four, respectively. That either agency has a non-Senate-confirmed appointee at all marks a break from a long-standing norm that the investigative and enforcement functions of federal law enforcement operate free from political staffing beyond a Senate-confirmed leader.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement—responsible for the administration’s most high-profile priority—has seen one of the sharpest increases, adding nearly 20 non-Senate-confirmed appointees above its historical average, a 413% surge that reflects where the administration has concentrated both its political attention and its political appointments.
With this political focus has come a corresponding reallocation of staff and resources across law enforcement. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives sits at 800% above its historical average for non-Senate-confirmed appointments. As previously noted, the DEA had none as recently as last year but now has four.
Congress created and mandated these agencies to investigate drug trafficking, dismantle criminal networks and get illegal guns off the street.
But at both the ATF and DEA, increased political staffing has coincided with a significant shift in priorities and reduced effectiveness in areas critical to our national safety. As large shares of these agencies’ workforces have been pulled into immigration enforcement, federal drug prosecutions and money-laundering investigations have fallen to their lowest levels in decades.
By September 2025, 80% of ATF’s roughly 2,500 agents had been assigned to immigration task force work at some point during the year, and gun prosecutions fell more than 10%.
The Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, which oversees federal prosecutions across the country, has gone from an average of roughly two non-Senate confirmed appointees to seven—a 311% increase. This shift raises serious concerns about whether charging decisions are being made on the merits or due to heightened political influence.
The administration has compounded these concerns by installing non-Senate-confirmed appointees as U.S. attorneys through “acting” and “interim” designations designed to avoid Senate confirmation—an approach that violates statutory appointment requirements, according to several federal courts.
When federal courts find the administration’s own prosecutors to be serving unlawfully, public confidence in the independence of federal prosecution is threatened.
Capacity, independence and public trust
Taken together, the trends across these agencies reveal a federal law enforcement and national security apparatus under significant strain.
Career leaders with the expertise and institutional knowledge to make sound operational judgments are leaving. Political appointees are exerting unprecedented control over agencies whose effectiveness has historically depended on independence from political influence. And in some cases, the missions these agencies were built to perform are being subordinated to other priorities.
The agencies examined here were built on a simple premise: that decisions about where to direct law enforcement resources, which threats to prioritize and which cases to prosecute should be made on the merits—by experienced professionals operating free from political direction.
When that premise erodes, the damage is not only operational. Fundamental questions arise about whether the public can trust that the enforcement of federal law is apolitical—and whether the agencies built to keep Americans safe are still focused on and capable of doing so.
This piece is the second in a series examining agency-level trends in federal leadership, building on our recent report on the politicization of federal leadership government-wide.
Author: Chris Piper