Background: The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin building located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (U.S. District Courts). Inset left: Then-Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel makes his concession speech to a crowd at his election night party, in Pewaukee, Wis., April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Manis, File). Inset right: Attorney General Pam Bondi listens as she testifies before a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner, file).
Judges on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin will not extend Attorney General Pam Bondi”s interim choice for top federal prosecutor in Milwaukee, marking the latest Trump administration-designee in a top U.S. attorney role to face the prospect of losing their job.
Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin Brad Schimel will not remain the area’s top federal prosecutor past March 17, at least by this court’s prerogative. A majority of the court’s judges decided not to exercise their “permissive authority” in extending his tenure beyond a temporary basis.
Months after losing the critical race to become Wisconsin’s newest Supreme Court justice, Schimel was nominated by Bondi to serve as the interim U.S. attorney in Milwaukee on Nov. 17, 2025. As the district court notes in its press release, this appointment expires on March 17.
In declining to extend Schimel’s tenure, the court said it “intends no criticism or commentary on the performance or qualifications of the Interim United States Attorney or any of the attorneys in the United States Attorney’s Office.”
“To the credit of that office, from the Court’s perspective, it has continued to represent the citizens of this district well,” the judges add. “The Court awaits the nomination and confirmation of a full-time United States Attorney by the President and United States Senate.”
Earlier this month, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin openly called for a bipartisan judicial nominating commission to appoint the state’s next U.S. attorney. She said that such an action is necessary because, despite interim appointments being limited to only 120 days, the Trump administration has allegedly tried to “skirt this law to keep other interim U.S. Attorneys, who are ardent supporters of the President, in place longer.”
“I never thought a clearly partisan actor like Brad Schimel should be a top federal prosecutor in our state to begin with, and he certainly shouldn’t get an extension for this job,” she wrote on March 4.
The Trump administration has faced intense criticism from federal judges for appointing certain interim or acting U.S. attorneys. Several — John Sarcone in New York, Lindsey Halligan in Virginia, and Alina Habba in New Jersey — were declared to be unlawfully serving.
Despite Sarcone being deemed an illegitimate acting top prosecutor for the Northern District of New York, he clung to his claimed title even after a judge quashed his grand jury subpoenas of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office and found that Sarcone “used authority he did not lawfully possess to direct the issuance of the subpoenas[.]”
Halligan similarly continued to identify herself as a “United States Attorney & Special Attorney” despite a district judge ruling last November that she was a “private citizen” who was never validly appointed to serve as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Habba was likewise found to have been unlawfully appointed as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey. A federal judge excoriated Bondi for attempting to keep her in place and then appointing a “triumvirate” of prosecutors to take Habba’s place — warning that Bondi’s maneuvering put “thousands” of cases at stake.
