#Trump upends #DOJ's #CivilRightsDivision, sparking 'bloodbath' in senior ranks

Trump's hand-picked head of the division has outlined priorities that are dramatically at odds with the way past administrations have enforced #CivilRights law.

April 23, 2025, 7:29 PM EDT
By Ken Dilanian

Excerpt: "Founded in 1957 after the passage of the 20th century’s first major civil rights legislation, the Civil Rights Division has always been subject to the policy preferences of the president, and enforcement priorities tend to differ in Republican and Democratic administrations. But there is no precedent for the changes that have been made over the last three months, which are far more consequential than anything that occurred in Trump’s first term, current and former officials say.

" 'I was there almost 18 years, and what’s happening now is basically the opposite of what we’ve been doing,' said a veteran lawyer who recently left the department. 'In the first Trump administration, they engaged with us as attorneys. The political appointees were normal lawyers. Sometimes we persuaded them and sometimes they disagreed, but there was always a conversation about why and what the law required. That is not happening.'

"In the Biden administration, the Civil Rights Division convicted 180 police officers of violating people’s civil rights, according to Justice Department records. It also prosecuted a variety of high-profile hate crimes cases, including one against the Texas man who targeted Mexicans when he killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso and the Pennsylvania man who killed 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

"Among the many settlements over racial discrimination, the division secured reforms at Hawkins County Schools in Tennessee, where an investigation found that incidents of harassment — including a mock 'slave auction' to sell Black students to their white counterparts and a 'monkey of the month' campaign to ridicule Black students — created a racially hostile environment. On voting rights, the division successfully challenged an Arizona law requiring people registering to vote to list their birthplaces and provide proof of citizenship.

"Current and former employees say many of those enforcement actions are unimaginable under the new regime.

" 'They are withdrawing everything we’ve done and taking the opposite side on voting rights, for example,' said a recently departed Civil Division lawyer. 'This is not ‘Oh, we want to do more religion cases’ or ‘We don’t want to do creative redlining cases.’ This is abandoning everything that we have done in the past. They are actively anti-civil rights. This didn’t happen in Trump 1.'

"Dhillon took office April 7, but the changes had already been underway. So far the Civil Rights Division has suspended investigations of police abuse and launched probes into whether Los Angeles is violating people’s gun rights and whether American #universities are tolerating antisemitism. The division was also involved in the lawsuit filed last week accusing the state of #Maine of violating the law by allowing #TransgenderAthletes to participate on women’s sports teams."

Read more:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-upends-dojs-civil-rights-division-sparking-bloodbath-senior-rank-rcna202622?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

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