The Department of Justice is in turmoil.

The previous controversial Attorney General, Pam Bondi, is out,

and thousands of employees have either been fired, put on leave, or quit.

So what's on the DOJ's agenda and what can it hope to accomplish in the back half of President Donald Trump's turn.

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excer. I'm Cody Godwin, filling in for Dana Taylor.

Today is Monday, April 13, 2026.

Joining me now to talk about the DOJ's transformation and what it means for accountability is

USA Today Justice correspondent, Aisha Bogchi.

Aisha, thanks for joining us today.

I'm glad to be here, Cody.

Talk us through leadership now at the Department of Justice.

Who's in charge and what is their agenda?

The new acting attorney general is Todd Blanche. He was the deputy under Pam Bondi before she left.

So in a certain sense, there's kind of a continuity going on here. And according to Todd Blanche,

his agenda isn't really all that different from what we saw before. He did very quickly after starting announce a new fraud

division, basically a comprehensive effort at the Justice Department to tackle fraud, pulling in

attorneys from different parts of the DOJ, pulling in attorneys from U.S. Attorney's offices around

the country, but that it has already been a priority in the Trump

administration. And he was asked about whether the president had different priorities for him

compared to his predecessor. And he basically said he doesn't know why the president fired Pam Bondi,

only the president knows, and didn't indicate that there's been a change in directive based on him

assuming the new role. So we're going to have to wait and see if he changes the agenda at all.

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