They're 'Using the Civil Rights Division Against Civil Rights'

Half of the lawyers employed by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division have left their jobs in recent weeks as a new director brings the office in line with President Trump's agenda, the Washington Post reports. Harmeet Dhillon, a California lawyer who represented Trump in challenging the 2020 election results, has reportedly directed staff to focus on combating antisemitism, anti-Christian bias, "woke ideology," and the participation of transgender athletes in women's sports. More than a dozen career staffers—including "section chiefs overseeing police brutality, disability and voting rights cases"—have been reassigned to areas outside their legal expertise, sources tell the Post.

The division's 11 sections have been issued new mission statements "with many offering a passing reference to the major statutes they enforce," per the Hill. The statement for the voting section now references the need to combat "illegal dilution or error," a nod to Trump's unproven claims of widespread voter fraud, while the one for housing focuses on religious freedom cases in zoning regulations, the outlet notes. Aaron Zisser, a former attorney in the division, argues Dhillon is "using the Civil Rights Division against civil rights," per the Hill. Others say no other administration, Republican or Democrat, has reshaped the division's enforcement priorities in such a way, per NBC News.

The division counted about 380 attorneys in January. Resignations have been piling up in advance of a Monday evening deadline for deferred resignations, allowing staffers to be paid through September. On Saturday, Dhillon claimed more than 100 division attorneys had said they would leave, many disagreeing with the new direction. "That's fine," Dhillon said on Glenn Beck's podcast, per the Post. "We don't want people in the federal government who feel like it's their pet project to go persecute police departments based on statistical evidence or persecute people praying outside abortion facilities instead of doing violence ... The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws—not woke ideology." (More Justice Department stories.)