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"The most deadly, dangerous, and powerful enemy of African Americans, Latino Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans in general, Women in general, the poor in general, the working class in general, children in general, Freedom in general and Democracy in general in American society today is the truly heinous Republican Party and their endless number of severely bigoted and demagogic minions, mentors, sponsors, and supporters. Anyone who doesn't know or believes this blatantly obvious fact is not only a hopeless FOOL but ultimately deserves their "fate.”
—Kofi Natambu, July 15, 2009
"The Republican Party is the most dangerous organisation in human history. 'Has there ever been an organisation in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organised human life on Earth?' Not that I'm aware of."
--Noam Chomsky, April 24, 2017
"Trump is not just an ethically dead aberration. Rather, he is the successor of a long line of fascists who shut down public debate, attempt to humiliate their opponents, endorse violence as a response to dissent and criticize any public display of democratic principles. The United States has reached its endpoint with Trump, and his presence should be viewed as a stern warning of the nightmare to come. Trump is not an isolated figure in US politics; he is simply the most visible and popular expression of a number of extremists in the Republican Party who now view democracy as a liability."
--Henry A. Giroux, "Fascism in Donald Trump's United States", December 8, 2015
"Like all fundamentally authoritarian and fascist expressions the political, social, economic, and cultural triumph of sheer hatred, greed, stupidity, cruelty, resentment, corruption, ignorance, paranoia, indifferance, psychosis, sadism, cowardice, hypocrisy, cultism, idolatry, and various forms of racial, gender, and class based violence promoted AS PUBLIC POLICY AND IDEOLOGICAL PLATFORM is what the Scumbag-in-Chief fully embodies and represents, and most importantly is what the great overwhelming majority of his over 63 million voters from 2016 most love, respect, encourage, endorse, and support about their very own national zombie cult "leader”. This is the clear and present danger on both an empirical and existential level that we are all up against and absolutely must defeat and remove from power in 2020 and beyond at all cost.”
—Kofi Natambu, December 22, 2019
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND THE 77 MILLION AMERICANS WHO ACTUALLY VOTED FOR A FASCIST FOR PRESIDENT AND THUS A FASCIST GOVERNMENT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN JUSTICE
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DOES NOT BELIEVE IN TRUTH
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DOES NOT BELIEVE IN FACTS
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DOES NOT BELIEVE
IN THE CONSTITUTION
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DOES NOT BELIEVE IN THE RULE OF LAW
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DOES NOT BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND THE MORE THAN 77 MILLION AMERICANS WHO VOTED IN 2024 FOR A FASCIST PRESIDENT AND THUS A FASCIST GOVERNMENT MEANS THAT EVERYTHING THEY STAND FOR, REPRESENT, AND EMBODY IS A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THIS SOCIETY AND THE WORLD
IN THE CONSTITUTION
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DOES NOT BELIEVE IN THE RULE OF LAW
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DOES NOT BELIEVE IN DEMOCRACY
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND THE MORE THAN 77 MILLION AMERICANS WHO VOTED IN 2024 FOR A FASCIST PRESIDENT AND THUS A FASCIST GOVERNMENT MEANS THAT EVERYTHING THEY STAND FOR, REPRESENT, AND EMBODY IS A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THIS SOCIETY AND THE WORLD
Justice Dept.’s Civil Rights Division Pushes Trump’s Culture War Agenda
The head of the division directed its staff to focus on enforcing edicts on transgender women in sports and other issues, shifting from its founding purpose of fighting race-based discrimination.
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Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, has taken steps to reverse a handful of high-profile Biden-era actions focused on addressing racial discrimination. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, via Getty Images
by Glenn Thrush
Reporting from Washington
April 18, 2025
New York Times
The head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division has rewritten a mission statement to prioritize enforcement of President Trump’s culture war edicts, including participation of transgender women in sports, in a sharp break from its founding purpose of fighting race-based discrimination.
In an email, Harmeet Dhillon, a conservative activist close to the White House who leads the unit, directed the division’s career work force to pursue the president’s agenda, outlined in executive orders and presidential memorandums, or face unspecified consequences. The revised statement encouraged investigations into antisemitism, anti-Christian bias and noncompliance with a range of Trump executive fiats.
“The zealous and faithful pursuit of this section’s mission requires the full dedication of this section’s resources, attention and energy to the priorities of the president,” Ms. Dhillon wrote. The memo, obtained by The New York Times, was addressed to the division’s enforcement arm responsible for prohibiting discrimination by recipients of federal funds — nearly every local government entity in the country.
In a separate mission statement sent to the division’s voting rights unit, Ms. Dhillon directed department lawyers to root out voter fraud and prosecute undocumented immigrants who tried to vote in U.S. elections. Both are rare events, despite efforts by Trump Republicans, including Ms. Dhillon, to portray them as a major threat to election integrity.
A Justice Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
She did not explicitly say she would not open investigations into racial discrimination, but Ms. Dhillon and the interim leadership that preceded her arrival this month have already moved to reverse a handful of high-profile Biden-era actions.
Last week, she nullified a 2022 agreement with an impoverished Alabama county intended to address troubling disparities in the quality of drinking water, infrastructure to protect residents from flooding and sewer systems for Black and white residents.
“The D.O.J. will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, D.E.I. lens,” Ms. Dhillon said in a statement announcing the action last week. “Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria.”
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On March 27, the department’s political leadership repurposed a pivotal tool used to address police violence against minorities — so-called pattern-or-practice investigations — to challenge gun control measures enacted by Los Angeles, which, in the administration’s view, violated residents’ Second Amendment rights.
In her email this week, Ms. Dhillon directed her staff to pursue cases based on seven executive orders dealing with a range of culture war issues, including three addressing transgender women’s participation in sports and another declaring English to be the country’s official language.
The executive branch, as the Justice Department’s “sole client,” had an obligation to “administer and enforce” all directives from the White House without dissent, Ms. Dhillon wrote.
Ms. Dhillon’s marching orders, while expected, represent an abrupt U-turn for a celebrated division that has been at the center of fights for racial equality for decades.
Since its creation in 1957, the division — working closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders during the apex of its influence in the 1960s and ’70s — was instrumental in dismantling Jim Crow segregation, prosecuting crimes against Black people and other minorities, and expanding voting rights.
Its muscle has often grown under Democratic presidents, then waned under Republican administrations. What appears different this time is the determination of Ms. Dhillon, whose law firm supported Mr. Trump’s legal effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, to repurpose its mission to serve the president’s agenda in a more vigorous way, according to current and former department officials.
Much of the division’s leverage comes from a section of the 1964 civil rights law, Title VI, that allows the federal government to withhold funding from localities that violate the constitutional rights of their citizens.
Ms. Dhillon’s shift “fundamentally alters the mission” of the division by pressuring career lawyers to pursue political objectives, said Vanita Gupta, a former head of the unit under President Barack Obama who served as a top Justice Department official in the Biden administration.
“It is highly significant and represents the weaponization of the Justice Department against the very civil rights principles that undergirded Title VI, in pursuit of a highly politicized and anti-civil-rights agenda,” she said in an interview.
Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from New York.
by Glenn Thrush
Reporting from Washington
April 18, 2025
New York Times
The head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division has rewritten a mission statement to prioritize enforcement of President Trump’s culture war edicts, including participation of transgender women in sports, in a sharp break from its founding purpose of fighting race-based discrimination.
In an email, Harmeet Dhillon, a conservative activist close to the White House who leads the unit, directed the division’s career work force to pursue the president’s agenda, outlined in executive orders and presidential memorandums, or face unspecified consequences. The revised statement encouraged investigations into antisemitism, anti-Christian bias and noncompliance with a range of Trump executive fiats.
“The zealous and faithful pursuit of this section’s mission requires the full dedication of this section’s resources, attention and energy to the priorities of the president,” Ms. Dhillon wrote. The memo, obtained by The New York Times, was addressed to the division’s enforcement arm responsible for prohibiting discrimination by recipients of federal funds — nearly every local government entity in the country.
In a separate mission statement sent to the division’s voting rights unit, Ms. Dhillon directed department lawyers to root out voter fraud and prosecute undocumented immigrants who tried to vote in U.S. elections. Both are rare events, despite efforts by Trump Republicans, including Ms. Dhillon, to portray them as a major threat to election integrity.
A Justice Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
She did not explicitly say she would not open investigations into racial discrimination, but Ms. Dhillon and the interim leadership that preceded her arrival this month have already moved to reverse a handful of high-profile Biden-era actions.
Last week, she nullified a 2022 agreement with an impoverished Alabama county intended to address troubling disparities in the quality of drinking water, infrastructure to protect residents from flooding and sewer systems for Black and white residents.
“The D.O.J. will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, D.E.I. lens,” Ms. Dhillon said in a statement announcing the action last week. “Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria.”
Trump Administration: Live Updates
Updated
April 24, 2025, 5:54 p.m. ET58 minutes ago
H.U.D. is offering its workers tips on finding private-sector jobs.
The administration announces a grant program for statues to fill Trump’s ‘Garden of Heroes.’
Trump takes a major step toward seabed mining in international waters.
On March 27, the department’s political leadership repurposed a pivotal tool used to address police violence against minorities — so-called pattern-or-practice investigations — to challenge gun control measures enacted by Los Angeles, which, in the administration’s view, violated residents’ Second Amendment rights.
In her email this week, Ms. Dhillon directed her staff to pursue cases based on seven executive orders dealing with a range of culture war issues, including three addressing transgender women’s participation in sports and another declaring English to be the country’s official language.
The executive branch, as the Justice Department’s “sole client,” had an obligation to “administer and enforce” all directives from the White House without dissent, Ms. Dhillon wrote.
Ms. Dhillon’s marching orders, while expected, represent an abrupt U-turn for a celebrated division that has been at the center of fights for racial equality for decades.
Since its creation in 1957, the division — working closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders during the apex of its influence in the 1960s and ’70s — was instrumental in dismantling Jim Crow segregation, prosecuting crimes against Black people and other minorities, and expanding voting rights.
Its muscle has often grown under Democratic presidents, then waned under Republican administrations. What appears different this time is the determination of Ms. Dhillon, whose law firm supported Mr. Trump’s legal effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, to repurpose its mission to serve the president’s agenda in a more vigorous way, according to current and former department officials.
Much of the division’s leverage comes from a section of the 1964 civil rights law, Title VI, that allows the federal government to withhold funding from localities that violate the constitutional rights of their citizens.
Ms. Dhillon’s shift “fundamentally alters the mission” of the division by pressuring career lawyers to pursue political objectives, said Vanita Gupta, a former head of the unit under President Barack Obama who served as a top Justice Department official in the Biden administration.
“It is highly significant and represents the weaponization of the Justice Department against the very civil rights principles that undergirded Title VI, in pursuit of a highly politicized and anti-civil-rights agenda,” she said in an interview.
Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from New York.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
See more on: U.S. Politics, U.S. Justice Department, Joe Biden, Vanita Gupta, Donald Trump
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/18/justice-department-civil-rights-division-trump
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/18/justice-department-civil-rights-division-trump
Trump administration
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
See more on: U.S. Politics, U.S. Justice Department, Joe Biden, Vanita Gupta, Donald Trump
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/18/justice-department-civil-rights-division-trump
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/18/justice-department-civil-rights-division-trump
Trump administration
Trump ally pushes DOJ unit to shift civil rights focus, new messages show
Internal mission statements from Harmeet Dhillon pivots division’s priorities away from marginalized groups’ rights
Internal mission statements from Harmeet Dhillon pivots division’s priorities away from marginalized groups’ rights
by Sam Levine in New York
Fri 18 April 2025
The Guardian (UK)
The justice department’s civil rights division is shifting its focus away from its longstanding work protecting the rights of marginalized groups and will instead pivot towards Donald Trump’s priorities including hunting for noncitizen voters and protecting white people from discrimination, according to new internal mission statements seen by the Guardian.
The new priorities were sent to several sections of the civil rights division this week by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who was confirmed a little more than two weeks ago to lead the division. Several of them give only glancing mention to the statutes and kinds of discrimination that have long been the focus of the division, which dates back to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Several of the mission statements point to Trump’s executive orders as priorities for the section.
The mission statement for the voting section, for example, barely mentions the Voting Rights Act and instead says the section will focus on preventing voter fraud – which is exceedingly rare – and helping states find noncitizens on their voter rolls (noncitizen voting is also exceedingly rare). The guidance for the Housing and Civil Enforcement section does not make a single mention of the Fair Housing Act, the landmark 1968 civil rights law that has long been a central part of the department’s work.
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“It’s absolutely astonishing,” said Sasha Samberg-Champion, a former appellate lawyer in the justice department’s civil rights division. “This reflects the complete abdication of the core responsibilities of each of these sections.”
The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The decision to send new mission statements to the sections is itself unusual. While the priorities of the sections often change from administration to administration, the core work often remains the same and the department’s career attorneys are expected to be apolitical. Trump has moved to end the independence of the justice department and use it as a tool to further his political goals and punish rivals.
“To me, these new mission statements signal a significant change in the priorities that each of these sections will be expected to pursue,” said Jocelyn Samuels, who led the civil rights division from 2013 to 2014. “Some of this is explicit – where, for example, the new statements specifically call out enforcement of some of the president’s executive orders as the guide for the section’s work. Some of it is a matter of omission.
“I suspect that the descriptions don’t themselves dictate what the sections will do, but they certainly manifest the expectations that leadership of the division will impose,” added Samuels, who is currently suing the Trump administration for firing her from her position on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The justice department has already begun to pull back on its civil rights cases. It has withdrawn from several of the voting cases filed under Joe Biden’s administration, terminated an environmental justice settlement on behalf of Black residents in Alabama, and dropped a pay discrimination lawsuit on behalf of a Black lawyer against the Mississippi senate.
The primary focus of the department’s voting section has long been ensuring that voting laws and practices aren’t tainted with discrimination. The new guidance this week shifts that focus and echoes Trump’s rhetoric around fraud.
“The mission of the Voting Rights Section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division is to ensure free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion,” the new mission statement says. “The Section will work to ensure that only American citizens vote in US federal elections and do so securely. Other section priorities include preventing illegal voting, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error. All attorneys within the Voting Section will advocate with zeal on behalf of the United States of America in furtherance of all objectives as tasked.”
It also says the voting section will work with the Department of Homeland Security to help states access citizenship data so that they can remove noncitizens from their voter rolls. The section will also “vigorously enforce the statutes, orders, and priorities” in a recent Trump executive order that requires states to require proof of citizenship to vote and to decertify voting machines. Several civil rights groups are already challenging that order in court and say it is illegal.
“What’s missing from here is the idea that we’re going to protect the right to vote on a nondiscriminatory basis,” Samberg-Champion said. “Silly me, I always thought that was the core purpose of the voting section and the core purpose of the Voting Rights Act.”
Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School and a top official in the civil rights division during the Obama administration, noted that federal law puts certain restrictions in place “before anybody in the federal government, civil rights division included, can lawfully touch state database information”.
Noting that much of the language in the mission statement was broad, Levitt said he would be watching to see how it was implemented.
“Read through the lens of all of the rest that the administration is doing, this is a further example of how off-course the administration is. This isn’t the statement that any administration in the last 68 years would have written,” he said in an email. “But the way this gets cashed out is far more important.”
The new mission statement for the Housing and Civil Enforcement section says the section will focus on protecting the rights of members of the military and enforcing the Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which prevents zoning discrimination. “The aggressive and even-handed deployment of RLUIPA to restore religious liberty will be a top priority,” the document says.
The guidance also says the section will “focus on challenges to racially discriminatory lending programs”. Samberg-Champion said that was a “code red”.
“They’re going to look for opportunities to challenge special purpose credit programs and other lending programs that are meant to enhance credit opportunities for people who have been starved of credit historically,” said Samberg-Champion, who served as deputy general counsel for enforcement and fair housing during the Biden administration. “It’s just astonishing that what they’re trying to do is actually diminish the availability of credit for people and go after banks, go after lenders who presumably are trying to make their credit availability fairer.”
Guidance for the educational opportunities section focuses on preventing discrimination against white applicants and cites the supreme court’s 2023 ruling saying that affirmative action programs are unconstitutional. It also says the department will focus on anti-transgender issues.
“This mandate includes protecting the rights of women and girls to unfettered access to programs, facilities, extracurricular activities, and sports or athletic opportunities that exclude males from presence or participation,” the statement reads. “The mandate also includes preventing racial discrimination in school admissions policies and preventing antisemitism in education wherever it is found.”
The new mission statement for the disability rights section appears to have nothing to do with disability. “The zealous and faithful pursuit of this section’s mission requires dedication of the section’s resources, actions, attention, and energy to the priorities and objectives of the President,” the guidance says. It then goes on to list a series of executive orders that target transgender Americans.
Eve Hill, who served as a top lawyer in the civil rights division under the Obama administration, said she wasn’t “overly alarmed” by the message to the disability rights section.
“It’s hard to tell what effect it will have other than preventing [the disability rights section] from working for people with the disability of gender dysphoria. Which is important, but they hadn’t done much work in that space anyway,” she said.
Several of the mission statements include a similar line that says attorneys are expected to enforce the law “faithfully and zealously”.
That language is significant, Samberg-Champion said.
“They’re anticipating – and I think correctly – that they’re going to get considerable pushback from the career staff as to what they’re being asked to do,” he said. “This reflects their understanding that they are radically changing what each of these sections historically has understood its mission to be. And that this is not going to go over well with the people who have made it their life’s work to enforce these important laws.”
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https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-department-reassigns-about-dozen-civil-rights-attorneys-amid-shakeup-2025-04-22/
US Justice Department reassigns about a dozen civil rights attorneys amid shakeup, say sources
by Sarah N. Lynch and Dan Levine
April 23, 2025
Reuters
Summary
--About a dozen senior career Civil Rights Division being reassigned
--Reassignments include working on FOIA and internal discrimination complaints
--Personnel moves come as Trump administration steers Civil Rights Division away from its historic priorities
WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is reassigning about a dozen senior career attorneys from its civil rights unit, four people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump's administration steers the division away from its historic priorities.
At least three senior career attorneys -- nonpolitical employees who typically remain in their jobs from administration to administration -- who managed offices that investigated abuse by police and handled violations of voting and disability rights, have been ordered to take other assignments, said three of the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss moves that had not been made public.
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The changes are part of a wave of reassignments and resignations affecting at least another nine attorneys, including people who worked on probes of employment or educational discrimination, abuses inside correctional facilities, and voting rights cases, the people said.
Founded in 1957 following the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the division initially focused on protecting the voting rights of Black Americans. Over the decades that followed, Congress expanded its responsibilities to include protecting Americans from discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and military status.
The changes are part of a shakeup by Trump's pick to lead the Civil Rights Division, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon. The division has paused probes of alleged police abuse, launched its first investigation into whether Los Angeles violated gun rights laws, and following Trump's lead, changed the department's stance on transgender rights and probed alleged antisemitism at U.S. colleges involving pro-Palestinian protesters.
"When I assumed my duties as Assistant Attorney General, I learned that certain sections in Civil Rights had substantial existing caseloads and backlogs, and that formed the basis of temporary details to assist those sections in getting, and staying, caught up," Dhillon said in a statement to Reuters.
Division employees are also being urged to take advantage of a new wave of deferred resignation offers that were rolled out early last week, according to two people familiar with the matter and internal memos seen by Reuters.
Dhillon said the deferred resignation options are being offered throughout the government and provide a "unique, generous, and voluntary opportunity" for people to pursue their passions elsewhere. She declined to comment on the specific numbers of staff affected by the changes.
The reassignments for the senior attorneys include handling public records requests or adjudicating internal discrimination complaints, the people said.
In emails sent late last week, Dhillon gave each section in the Civil Rights Division a new "mission statement" that she told employees would "define our expectations going forward."
The Educational Opportunities Section, for example, was told that part of its mandate is to protect the rights of girls and women to have "unfettered access" to sports programs "that exclude males from presence or participation," according to an email seen by Reuters.
The Immigrant and Employee Rights Section was told it should investigate companies that "unlawfully discriminate against U.S. workers in favor of foreign visa workers."
"They are going to eliminate the Civil Rights Division as it was built to exist," one former department employee familiar with the changes told Reuters. "The only purpose now will be to victimize the very people it was created to protect."
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Scott Malone and Leslie Adler
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sarah N. Lynch
Thomson Reuters
Sarah N. Lynch is the lead reporter for Reuters covering the U.S. Justice Department out of Washington, D.C. During her time on the beat, she has covered everything from the Mueller report and the use of federal agents to quell protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, to the rampant spread of COVID-19 in prisons and the department's prosecutions following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Dhillon said the deferred resignation options are being offered throughout the government and provide a "unique, generous, and voluntary opportunity" for people to pursue their passions elsewhere. She declined to comment on the specific numbers of staff affected by the changes.
The reassignments for the senior attorneys include handling public records requests or adjudicating internal discrimination complaints, the people said.
In emails sent late last week, Dhillon gave each section in the Civil Rights Division a new "mission statement" that she told employees would "define our expectations going forward."
The Educational Opportunities Section, for example, was told that part of its mandate is to protect the rights of girls and women to have "unfettered access" to sports programs "that exclude males from presence or participation," according to an email seen by Reuters.
The Immigrant and Employee Rights Section was told it should investigate companies that "unlawfully discriminate against U.S. workers in favor of foreign visa workers."
"They are going to eliminate the Civil Rights Division as it was built to exist," one former department employee familiar with the changes told Reuters. "The only purpose now will be to victimize the very people it was created to protect."
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Scott Malone and Leslie Adler
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sarah N. Lynch
Thomson Reuters
Sarah N. Lynch is the lead reporter for Reuters covering the U.S. Justice Department out of Washington, D.C. During her time on the beat, she has covered everything from the Mueller report and the use of federal agents to quell protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, to the rampant spread of COVID-19 in prisons and the department's prosecutions following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
