Federal judges in Milwaukee announced that Brad Schimel’s temporary appointment as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin will expire next week.
Schimel, the state’s former attorney general who unsuccessfully ran for the Wisconsin Supreme Court last year, was tapped by Attorney General Pam Bondi for the role in November.
His appointment came as Wisconsin’s two senators, Democrat Tammy Baldwin and MAGA Republican Ron Johnson, could not agree on who should serve in the role.
That resulted in Schimel’s term being just temporary, and under federal law it was set to end March 17 unless a majority of judges in the Eastern District of Wisconsin agreed to extend his appointment, which they did not.
“In doing so, the Court 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 announcement read.
The judges await the “nomination and confirmation of a full-time United States Attorney by the President and United States Senate,” the announcement concluded.
Last week, Baldwin said she opposed Schimel continuing to serve in the role as she argued that the Senate needs “to get back to that process and not allow the Trump administration to skirt the law.”
“We have a process in Wisconsin that has worked to advance high-quality, impartial, and experienced candidates. Sometimes it’s been hard, but getting the right person who will uphold the rule of law, not pledge loyalty to the President, is more important than ever,” she said in a statement.
In response, Schimel told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he was unaware where Baldwin’s “vitriol” was coming from, and said they had a “pleasant” working relationship.
In reaction to the news that Schimel would not be staying past his 120-day interim period, Baldwin said, “I’m glad that the judges of the Eastern District of Wisconsin are respecting the process that Senator Johnson and I have to get high quality, impartial prosecutors to serve Wisconsin.”
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House, DOJ, and Eastern District of Wisconsin for comment.
Several of Trump’s temporary prosecutors have been dealt the same blow that Schimel now has.
Trump’s former personal attorney, Alina Habba, was thrown out of the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s office last year in a dramatic back-and-forth in court.
Schimel served as the state’s attorney general from 2015 to 2019 alongside former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The pair lost their re-election campaigns in 2018, and Walker appointed him to the Waukesha County Circuit Court.
He lost the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, even with Elon Musk’s high-value endorsement, by more than 10 percentage points to now-Justice Susan Crawford in what became the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.
The state’s 2025 Supreme Court race was seen as an early litmus test for how the Trump administration’s policies were playing out, especially as Wisconsin has been a key swing state in presidential elections for the last decade.
Republicans hold a slight edge over Democrats in the state’s voter roll, and it is the only state left that has a Republican and a Democrat currently representing it in the Senate. Baldwin hung onto her Senate seat in the 2024 election, all while Trump won the state by about 30,000 votes over Kamala Harris.
