In the News: Tilting the Scales
I wanted to build something approachable that would enable anyone to dig for the stories they cared about.
Stay tuned for our next episode on Tuesday, April 28th. Until then, enjoy this update detailing some of our recent work, and keep an eye out for a big announcement coming soon.🐦⬛
In early March, we came across an article from MS NOW discussing the loss of 300 FBI agents who worked on national security matters. Shocking as it was, we knew there was more to the story. It just required a little digging and a healthy dose of ingenuity to uncover.
Somewhere along the way, we started realizing very few organizations have the resources to just throw together a data visualization platform for whatever new thing crosses their desk. So, we did it for them!
Five days after reading that spark of inspiration, we pushed out a website enabling the public to dig deeper into OPM data, capturing the shifts in the federal workforce between January 2025 and 2026. We've since pushed several updates, adding new capabilities and specialized snapshots based on public feedback. All of the code is available for review on GitHub.
Philip also wrote a guest article for Justice Connection, providing further insight into staffing changes across DOJ, as reflected in the OPM data. This article generated quite a bit of interest for our humble little project, and we're happy to report we think we have met and exceeded our goal of making the data more broadly accessible to the public.
We're thankful to all of the individuals and organizations that have reached out, and we look forward to continuing to shine our light in the darkness as we head into the future. Below are a couple of quotes from the last week where we tried to do just that.
Former FBI senior intelligence analyst Philip Fields developed an online tool that breaks down OPM's data from January, 2025-January, 2026, showing that lawyers who left spent, on average, about 14 years at the DOJ, and about 740 held leadership positions.
Lawyers who have been hired are unlikely to have the same type of experience, according to Fields. The data published by OPM shows that new hires generally weren't transfers from another part of the government, he noted.
"That doesn't mean that these people are all fresh out of law school," Fields told USA Today. "But... the assumption is that they're going to have far less experience and qualifications for these types of roles."
—USA Today, Story by Aysha Bagchi
Seventy-eight per cent of the lawyers hired in those US attorneys' offices between January 1 2025 and January 31 this year had no prior government experience, according to analysis by former FBI intelligence analyst Philip Fields, whose Forking Off project tracks government staffing. Those who left had on average almost 14 years of government experience.
—Financial Times, Story by Kaye Wiggins and Stefania Palma
Justice Connection
Read our full analysis at the Justice Connection.
Elsewhere in the News
While drafting the above updates, we also realized we should share some of our other recent contributions to public discourse. In case you missed it...
The White House Mobile App
In late March, Philip shared a technical analysis of the White House mobile app that you should definitely not install, as well as additional public records research that shed light on the lack of quality control and professionalism behind the curtains of the White House. Numerous researchers independently published analyses of the app during the same timeframe.
Ars Technica covered Philip's research into the team behind the app, while NOTUS dug deeper into all of its ugly flaws.
“The U.S. government’s infrastructure is being attacked from all sides right now, and having an amateur WordPress developer running the White House’s public presence puts everybody who visits it at risk,” Philip Fields, a cybersecurity researcher and former FBI intelligence analyst, told NOTUS. “If this were just some random app out on the App Store representing whatever small business … this would not be a story.”
“But it’s not,” Fields said. “This is the White House.”
—NOTUS, Story by Emily Kennard and Samuel Larreal
While armchair developers and infosec experts have questioned some of the app’s technical design choices, a former FBI intelligence analyst uncovered an unusual fact: The small business owner behind the White House app has a side hobby as a conspiracy theorist.
—Ars Technica, Story by Cyrus Farivar
Philip Fields
Read Philip's analysis related to the White House mobile app.
Chaos at the FBI
In January 2026, The New York Times Magazine published a deeply moving article capturing interviews from 45 current and former FBI employees, including Jill and Philip. Jill's interview led to quotes in multiple follow-up pieces, as well as a live interview on KQED's Forum, where she discussed the erosion of the First Amendment.
Jill Fields: Yes, they’re yelling, they’re taunting, but that’s their right. This is what I was worried about and why I pushed back when the L.A. office was asked to investigate protesters last year. It was unthinkable to me then, and now it’s happening. If you start arresting or investigating people for exercising their First Amendment rights, then they don’t have those rights.
—The Morning (New York Times), Hosted by Sam Sifton
Jill Fields: First Amendment rights are being eroded. When you chip away at one person’s rights, you chip away at everyone’s. That’s not what this country was founded on. We do not investigate or silence people simply because we dislike or disagree with what they’re saying.
—Forum (KQED), Hosted by Mina Kim
Jill Fields, a former supervisory intelligence analyst for violent crime in Los Angeles, was alarmed by the way federal agencies, including the F.B.I., were treating anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis.
—The New York Times Magazine, Story by Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser
Jill Fields: ...I was told that we’ve got to do it for optics. It was to make a show for the president...
...I pushed back, and they said, Jill, you can either get fired today, or you can get fired in four years — meaning when another administration comes in and starts looking into constitutional violations. And I was like: Then fire me today. I’m not doing something that is fundamentally wrong.
—The New York Times Magazine, Story by Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser
Shifting Priorities Across Federal Government
In late December 2025, Jill was interviewed and photographed by The New York Times for an article discussing the impact of broad priority shifts across the federal government.
Jill Fields, formerly a supervisory intelligence analyst at the F.B.I., said she was directed to pull analysts off transnational crime cases and assign them to immigration tasks, she said, which had not previously been an agency focus.
—The New York Times, Story by Eileen Sullivan
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Check out Separation Anxiety, our new data project exploring the OPM separation data spanning from January 2025 through January 2026.
hax4libre
Explore the code on GitHub. Pull requests welcomed!