I have met Trump haters before, lots of them, the kind who seize upon every conspiracy theory and refuse to give him any benefit of any doubt. The four people I recently spent the morning with at Solly’s Tavern in D.C. (sans booze, don’t worry) were not Trump haters. They were, however, Trump quitters.

All of them, at some point over the course of the last nine months, had left their posts within the current administration, having decided that they could better serve their country from outside the government than from within. They weren’t happy about quitting, either. They were civil servants who wanted to remain civil servants, who, except for one, had worked under presidents of both parties. They had disagreed with superiors over the years, they had been fearful of new regulations and wary of political appointees, but they stayed on because that’s the nature of career work in government. This was different.

When they came together for this discussion two weeks ago, the rapport was instantaneous. The vibe was as convivial and familiar as a reunion, except for the fact that they had been strangers five minutes before. They hailed from different parts of the bureaucracy, they ranged widely in age and background, but they had undergone such similar mental calculations since Trump’s election. Would their friends at work feel betrayed by their quitting? Would they be opening up their job to someone with views antithetical to their own? Having spent most of their lives in back offices, did they really feel comfortable taking such a public stand? Once we got into the interview proper, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, they were candid, funny and furious. They may not work for the government anymore, but they all still see themselves as public servants.

All right, Sharon, you were the first to flee. Let’s start with election night. What were you thinking? What did it feel like?

[1] At DOJ, she helped advance progressive policies, like marriage equality. She is now the Director of Strategy for Lambda Legal Sharon McGowan (a former principal deputy chief in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department) There was this sense of dread that started to take over me, like in a very physical way. So the day after the election, my wife and I decided that we needed to stay home and regroup as a family. As a same-sex couple in this country, we knew exactly what the stakes were. And for the first couple of days, I tried to will myself to a place where I could think: maybe Trump didn’t really mean a lot of it, maybe it was just for the ratings. And it sort of worked! At least until Jeff Sessions was announced as the nominee for attorney general. That’s when I knew my days within the government were numbered. At DOJ, she helped advance progressive policies, like marriage equality. She is now the Director of Strategy for Lambda Legal

You had no doubt you had to go?

McGowan No, I definitely had moments of doubt. On the day of my resignation, for instance, [acting Attorney General] Sally Yates stood up and said that she wouldn’t defend the Muslim ban, and I was like, Oh, no, maybe I did the wrong thing. Maybe I should stay on the inside. And then, of course, we all came back from commercial break and saw that Yates had been fired. So I felt like the universe suggested to me that I hadn’t jumped ship too quickly.

Walt, you stuck around until July. Talk to me about the moment when you realized your world had fundamentally changed.