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Lindsey Halligan, a Trump administration lawyer who was named head of a key U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia last year with instructions to seek criminal charges against President Donald Trump’s perceived political adversaries, left her post at the Justice Department on Tuesday.

Halligan’s departure followed a pair of extraordinary moves by two federal judges who issued court orders hours earlier saying they intended to replace Halligan at the helm of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia and threatening disciplinary sanctions for any government lawyer who continued to refer to her as U.S. attorney in legal filings.

The separate actions by Chief Judge M. Hannah Lauck and Judge David J. Novak, who were nominated by President Barack Obama and Trump, respectively, signaled a breaking point for the federal bench in the Eastern District of Virginia months after Halligan was disqualified from serving as U.S. attorney in the high-profile office.

The orders intensified a battle playing out nationwide between the executive and judicial branches over how the nation’s 93 U.S. attorneys can be appointed for temporary terms without Senate confirmation. And they had posed obstacles for Halligan — who had no prosecutorial experience before she was installed in the job — as she attempted to carry out Trump’s directions to levy criminal charges against two of his perceived political foes: former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Halligan, in a statement, accused the district’s federal judges of a campaign to pressure her to leave after the court ruling declaring her appointment was invalid. She said that effort had diverted “time and resources from public safety responsibilities.”

It was unclear Tuesday night who would be in charge of the U.S. attorney’s office. The Justice Department this month dismissed the first assistant U.S. attorney, Robert K. McBride, who would have automatically assumed the top job under federal law. A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Halligan is the third Trump-appointed U.S. attorney pick to leave their post in the face of a growing body of court rulings that have deemed their appointments illegal.

Alina Habba, a former Trump lawyer he picked to lead the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey, resigned last month after a monthslong legal battle over whether she was lawfully serving in that role.

While the Justice Department continues to appeal the decision, Habba stepped down and moved to another role in the Justice Department.

Julianne Murray, another contested pick, resigned her post as U.S. attorney in Delaware days afterward. Before her appointment, she had served as the state’s Republican Party chairwoman.

Attorney General Pam Bondi praised Halligan for her service in a statement Tuesday.

“While we will feel her absence keenly, we are confident that she will continue to serve her country in other ways,” Bondi said. “The circumstances that led to this outcome are deeply misguided. We are living in a time when a democratically elected President’s ability to staff key law enforcement positions faces serious obstacles.”

Several judges had suggested for weeks that Halligan should resign and sharply questioned her continued use of the U.S. attorney title after an out-of-district judge, Cameron McGowan Currie, ruled in late November that the Trump administration had used an unlawful maneuver to install Halligan.

On Tuesday, Lauck directed the court’s clerk to publish the U.S. attorney job posting in local newspapers, asking anyone interested to apply by Feb. 10. “The position of United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is vacant,” reads a public notice posted on the court’s website Tuesday.

Lauck’s order marked an escalation, signaling active efforts by the judges to appoint the district’s top federal prosecutor under a federal law that gives them the power to do so after an interim U.S. attorney has been in office for 120 days. It was followed hours later with another order from Novak, who raised the threat of disciplinary action for anyone who described Halligan as the U.S. attorney in legal filings.

“No matter all of her machinations, Ms. Halligan has no legal basis to represent to this Court that she holds the position. And any such representation going forward can only be described as a false statement made in direct defiance of valid court orders,” Novak wrote. “In short, this charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading as the United States Attorney for this District in direct defiance of binding court orders must come to an end.”

The Trump administration has appealed Currie’s ruling, but it never requested a stay, so the ruling disqualifying Halligan remained in effect. Nonetheless, she continued to represent herself as the U.S. attorney in court filings.

This month, Novak ordered Halligan to explain why she continued to use the title, suggesting she may be making false or misleading statements. The Justice Department responded defiantly to that order last week, arguing that Currie’s ruling was not binding and that Novak had no authority to strike Halligan’s name from the signature block of Justice Department court filings.

The response, which accused Novak of making “rudimentary” legal errors and missing “elementary” legal principles, was written in a derisive tone unusual for a government lawyer addressing a federal judge.

Novak said in response that Halligan’s rhetoric was beneath the court’s dignity and more suitable for cable news. He said Halligan’s continued use of the U.S. attorney title after Currie’s ruling was an affront to the legal system.

“The Court cannot tolerate such obstinance, because doing so would undermine the very essence of the Rule of Law,” he wrote in Tuesday’s order. “If the Court were to allow Ms. Halligan and the Department of Justice to pick and choose which orders that they will follow, the same would have to be true for other litigants and our system of justice would crumble.”

Halligan’s nomination for a full term as U.S. attorney is pending in the Senate, and it was unclear Tuesday whether the White House also intended to withdraw it. Even if they don’t, the nomination is unlikely to move forward because it lacks support from Virginia’s two senators — Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, both Democrats — who have emphasized that the Eastern District of Virginia handles a complex portfolio of cases dealing with national security, leaks of classified information, and international terrorism.

In disqualifying Halligan last fall, Currie ruled that Halligan was never legally appointed to the position of interim U.S. attorney because the Trump administration had already named someone to that role — Halligan’s predecessor, Erik S. Siebert, who served a full 120-day term, from January to May 2025. The district judges then unanimously extended Siebert in the role at the Justice Department’s request, Novak wrote in his order.

But Siebert was forced out in September after declining to seek charges against Comey and James. Career prosecutors had recommended against pursuing the two cases because of insufficient evidence of wrongdoing. Trump then named Halligan, who promptly secured indictments against Comey, on allegations that he made false statements to Congress, and James, who was accused of mortgage fraud. Currie tossed both indictments after finding that Halligan was unlawfully appointed.

Halligan’s 120-day appointment concluded Tuesday.

Justice Department lawyers maintain that the statute allows for back-to-back interim appointments. But in addition to Currie, at least five other federal judges have rejected that argument while ruling on challenges to other Trump U.S. attorney appointees. In each case, the judges have said that if the attorney general could legally name a string of interim appointees, there would be no need for an administration to put a nominee up for a Senate vote.

Judges across the country have been cautious in exercising their authority to name replacements for the president’s picks. When New Jersey’s federal judges named a veteran federal prosecutor to replace Habba last summer, the Justice Department fired their pick within hours and undertook a series of legal maneuvers aimed at keeping Habba in the role.

Delaware’s chief federal judge began soliciting applications this fall to replace Murray in Delaware. But Murray resigned her post in December before a potential standoff with the administration could come to a head.

Judges in other districts have refused to reappoint Trump’s interim U.S. attorney picks but declined to choose replacements. The chief federal judge in Seattle issued an order last week soliciting applications to potentially appoint a new acting U.S. attorney there, when the interim appointment of Trump’s current pick expires next month.

The Pentagon plans to cut its participation in a range of NATO advisory groups, the latest sign of the Trump administration’s drive to scale back the U.S. military presence in Europe, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter.

The impending move affects about 200 military personnel and will mostly diminish U.S. involvement in the alliance’s 30 Centers of Excellence, which seek to train NATO forces on key elements of warfare such as naval combat, these people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the U.S. administration’s plans.

Rather than withdraw all at once, the Pentagon intends not to replace personnel as their postings end, a process that could take years, according to one U.S. official familiar with the matter. U.S. participation in the centers isn’t ending altogether, two officials noted.

The move has been under consideration for months, according to two U.S. officials, one of whom said it is unrelated to President Donald Trump’s escalating threats to seize the Danish territory of Greenland. Trump’s provocations have drawn widespread condemnation from European leaders and many lawmakers in Congress, who fear the president risks causing irreparable and unnecessary damage to the NATO alliance.

Spokespeople for the Pentagon and nor NATO did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Under Trump, the U.S. military has pulled back from Europe as the administration presses allies there to take greater control of the continent’s collective defense. Last year, for instance, the Pentagon abruptly announced it would withdraw a brigade of troops from Romania and cut security aid programs to the three Baltic nations that border Russia, whose yearslong invasion of Ukraine has spurred fears of a direct conflict between NATO and the Kremlin.

Under pressure from the Trump administration, the alliance agreed last summer to surge defense spending to 5% of GDP over the next 10 years, including 1.5% dedicated to infrastructure and other civilian projects.

Lawmakers — including some key Republicans — objected to the administration’s moves in Europe and are working to fund the impacted security assistance programs despite the Pentagon’s directives.

Members of Congress also have passed legislation that requires the Pentagon to consult with them before making any major reductions to U.S. military posture in Europe. The law specifies that requirement would apply only if the overall U.S. force posture in Europe were to fall below 76,000. It stands at roughly 80,000 now.

While the personnel eventually being withdrawn amount to a small share of troops the United States stations in Europe, some current and former officials said the U.S. pullout could have an outsize impact on the alliance by reducing valuable American military expertise.

“We have a lot of operational experience that some of our personnel contribute to these centers,” said Lauren Speranza, a senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration. “There would be a bit of a brain drain that would come with pulling U.S. personnel out.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared skeptical of the constitutionality of a Hawaii law that sharply restricts where people can carry firearms — a case that may offer a strong indication of how far the justices will go in their push to loosen restrictions on guns.

Hawaii’s law bans people from carrying firearms on private property open to the public unless they have the owner’s consent. The court’s conservatives sharply questioned an attorney defending Hawaii’s law, suggesting it unduly burdened a constitutional right to bear arms.

The decision will reverberate beyond Hawaii because four other states, including California and New York, have enacted similar laws in response to a landmark 2022 ruling by the high court that made it easier to challenge gun limits.

The default rule in most states is that gun owners can carry firearms onto private property open to the public until they have been told otherwise. The Hawaii law flipped the rule. Property owners generally have the right to restrict guns on land closed to the public.

“You are relegating the Second Amendment to second-class status,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told Neal Katyal, an attorney for Hawaii.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the First Amendment permitted a political candidate to walk up to someone’s door to campaign, and he questioned why Hawaii could place limits on another constitutional right in the same context. He said gun rights are often disfavored.

“You say it’s different for the Second Amendment,” Roberts said to Katyal. “What exactly is the distinction?”

The court’s three liberal justices all indicated they thought Hawaii’s law probably passed constitutional muster. Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that Hawaii had long had some of the nation’s strictest gun-control laws and cited polling that indicates the restriction on public carry is popular.

“Nothing about Hawaii’s customs, tradition or culture creates an expectation that the general public carries guns wherever they go, correct?” Sotomayor said.

A trio of gun owners with concealed-carry permits and a gun rights group challenged the Hawaii law, which was enacted in 2023. The Trump administration is backing the gun owners.

The law also bans the carrying of firearms in 15 sensitive locations, including bars, parks, restaurants that serve alcohol and youth centers. The legality of those restrictions is not at issue in the Supreme Court case.

The petitioners argue Hawaii’s law violates the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision inNew York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen,which found that “the Second Amendment guarantees a general right to public carry.”

That ruling held that any restriction on firearms must have precedent rooted in American history. The decision has sparked thousands of challenges to gun-control laws across the country, resulting in rulings that have relaxed restrictions on high-capacity magazines, age limits for firearms purchases and other rules. The decision has also created some confusion among judges about how to conduct the historical analysis.

The Supreme Court clarified the Bruen decision last term in a case in which it held that states could bar people with domestic violence restraining orders from obtaining guns. The court found modern gun restrictions need not have a “historical twin” but rather a “historical analogue.”

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh questioned whether Hawaii’s law was based on precedents deeply rooted in American history. “There’s no sufficient history,” he said. “Case closed.”

The court has largely expanded gun rights since the Bruen ruling, but not in all cases. In one ruling, the justices struck down a federal ban on bump stocks, devices that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire hundreds of rounds a minute. In a major case last term, the justices upheld Biden-era restrictions on ghost guns.

In Hawaii’s case,a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the statelaw in 2023, but a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with the state last year. The appeals court cited historical laws from New Jersey and Louisiana that were “dead ringers” for Hawaii’s statute as it upheld the state law.

The ruling created a split among appeals courts because a Second Circuit panel struck down a similar New York law.

Alan A. Beck, an attorney for the gun owners and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, said the Ninth Circuit ruling illegally constrains their rights since Hawaii’s law essentially outlaws public carry in much of the state. He also said the historical precedents that the appeals court relied on were outliers that should be discounted.

“There’s a clear body of evidence this law was passed to undermine Bruen and the Second Amendment,” Beck said.

Katyal countered that the state’s law had precedent in anti-poaching laws and — controversially during arguments — a Louisiana “Black Code” statute aimed at preventing African Americans from possessing firearms.

“There is no constitutional right that every invitation to enter property is a right to bear arms,” Katyal said.

The case is not the only Second Amendment challenge the justices will hear this term.

The court will also decide the constitutionality of a federal law that bans habitual drug users from possessing firearms. Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, was convicted of violating the law in 2024. Biden later pardoned him.

The Trump administration, which usually supports gun rights, urged the high court to uphold that ban.

“By disqualifying only habitual users of illegal drugs from possessing firearms, the statute imposes a limited, inherently temporary restriction — one which the individual can remove at any time simply by ceasing his unlawful drug use,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief