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The list of missteps at Donald Trump’s Justice Department over the past 14 months is not short, but among the most unsettling developments is the frequency with which Main Justice has fired federal prosecutors as part of a brazenly partisan purge. Making matters worse is the fact that U.S. attorneys’ offices have reportedly struggled to find qualified replacements, with lawyers feeling understandable reluctance to join an administration in which the rule of law has been overtly weaponized.

The DOJ, however, apparently has a solution in mind: Bloomberg Law reported that the department has decided to waive the policy that required newly hired federal prosecutors “to possess at least one year of experience practicing law.” From the report:

Many offices have previously adopted their own rules mandating at least three years of legal practice, rather than the nationwide baseline threshold of one year. But the reduced standards this month were implemented in federal districts such as Minnesota and Southern Florida that have experienced significant attrition to put new prosecutors to work straight out of law school.

.....Indeed, by some measures, the entirety of the Trump presidency has been a grand experiment in what happens when an administration embraces amateurism and de-professionalization.

Trump has informally lowered the standards for what it takes to lead the FBI, what it takes to serve in the Cabinet, what it takes to serve as a U.S. attorney, what it takes to be a success in the private sector and what it takes to serve as vice president.

The president himself was, in the recent past, a television reality show host who didn’t know anything about governing, never served a day in any public post and arguably had no business running to serve as the chief executive of the world’s pre-eminent superpower.

Trumpism, in other words, is defined in large part by a lowering of standards. The DOJ is apparently just keeping up.

As for the motivation behind these developments, some of the considerations are practical — the administration is desperate for prosecutors, and good applicants aren’t interested — but it’s also easy to believe there’s a larger strategy unfolding: Departments stripped of their most experienced staff and their professional standards are more easily manipulated.