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https://www.youtube.com/embed/M6Ne8zMcJ6o
Sunday, May 10, 2026
Saturday, May 9, 2026
FASCIST AMERICA 2026: The Direct Links Between the Destruction of the Voting Rights Act, the overt political support and White Supremacist consolidation of fundamental fascist ideas, values, and principles by the Trump regime, the Supreme Court, and the massive national white nationalist and fervently rightwing evangelical Christian MAGA movement since the spring of 2024
https://truthout.org/articles/black-disenfranchisement-has-not-been-this-intense-since-jim-crow/
Black Disenfranchisement Has Not Been This Intense Since Jim Crow
The federal government is carrying forward a white nationalist backlash to the mass uprisings that took place in 2020.
by Austin C. McCoy
May 8, 2026
Truthout
Voters check in before casting their ballots on the first day of early voting at the Louisiana State Archives on May 2, 2026, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Tyler Kaufman / Getty Images
The Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate Louisiana’s congressional map creating two Black-majority districts continues to remind us of how much the U.S. has backpedaled away from the so-called racial “reckoning” of the summer of 2020. The Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais undermines another key plank of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, passed more than 60 years ago with the intent of protecting Black Americans’ voting rights and political representation.
With SCOTUS ruling majority-minority districts as a form of discrimination against non-Black people, Republican-led states are poised to dilute Black political power in a manner echoing the Jim Crow era when white southerners retook power from elected Black lawmakers and neutralized Black Americans’ voting rights for multiple generations. During Reconstruction, hundreds of African Americans won elected office as thousands of newly emancipated citizens engaged in the electoral process. The number of Black officeholders declined following Reconstruction’s end in 1877, when federal troops were withdrawn from the South. White supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan launched terror campaigns against Black communities in efforts to blunt Black political power. Many whites also justified their attempts at undermining Black power by claiming African Americans were corrupt and thus not fit to participate in self-governance.
White theft of African Americans’ civil rights and economic power accompanied the destruction of Black political influence following the end of Reconstruction. White southerners moved to pass laws instituting segregation in education, public accommodations, and in the private sector. Jim Crow laws also entailed enforcing policies preventing Black Americans from voting, such as poll taxes and literacy tests.
One difference between the racial dictatorship of Jim Crow and the burgeoning racial regime is the contemporary manifestation of oppression is grounded in what sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva calls “colorblind racism,” or non-racialized actions and policies that reinforce Black and Brown marginalization. In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the conservative majority, justified invalidating Section 4b of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder by pointing to the “great strides” in Black participation in electoral politics. Justice Samuel Alito echoed Roberts in his opinion for Louisiana v. Callais: “First, vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South, which have made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination.”
However, eliminating minority-majority districts threatens to leave millions of Black Americans without representation that reflects their interests. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed off on a new congressional map which could award up to four more GOP seats. Tennessee Republicans have drafted a new map that would eliminate the only predominantly-Democrat, and predominantly-Black, district. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s call for state Republicans to revisit Alabama’s map is striking because she is framing her actions as an attempt to remain in compliance with the law. Again, this ruling allows Republicans in states to disenfranchise Black voters under the guise of following “colorblind” law.
SCOTUS’s decision is the latest in a series of rollbacks in civil rights not seen since the post-Reconstruction era. Since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, his administration has sought to eliminate any policy associated with addressing historical instances of racism. The administration’s attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies has led to historic job losses for Black women. According to economist Katica Roy, more than 319,000 Black women lost their jobs in three months in 2025.
Many red states, especially in the South, continue to wage a war against Black history, especially the aspects of it that challenge myths of colorblindness and white innocence and victimhood. After complaining about how anti-racist activists have tried to “erase” history by tearing down Confederate monuments during his first presidency, Trump’s federal government continues its efforts to whitewash history, from its unsuccessful attempt to remove mentions of George Washington enslaving Black people at Independence Hall in Pennsylvania to reinstating names of military bases named after Confederate generals. This follows the ongoing assault that Republicans and higher education administrators in Florida, Texas, and Alabama have waged against DEI programs in education and the teaching of African American Studies, race, and gender studies. These attacks on anti-racism descend from the “Lost Cause” myth that emerged amid Reconstruction, which erased slavery as a cause of the Civil War and instead emphasized how the Confederate South fought valiantly to defend “state’s rights.”
Diluting the Voting Rights Act, attacking Black history and employment, challenging birthright citizenship legalized in the 14th Amendment — another pillar of Reconstruction policy — and eliminating immigration from “less desirable” countries in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East are all part of this administration’s strategy to maintain the United States as a white nationalist country. The “Great Replacement” theory animates these attacks as many Americans believe that people of color threaten to overrun the U.S. and replace and oppress white Americans.
Like white reactionaries in the South attacking Black Americans’ freedoms and white northerners’ defense of segregation after the Civil War, this administration’s efforts to curb Black political and economic power and immigration are a backlash to the global racial justice uprisings in response to Breonna Taylor’s and George Floyd’s murders by police in 2020. The 2020 protests represented everything that many white nationalists feared — a multiracial, multinational, and working-class movement against police violence, racism, colonialism, and capitalism. It seemed that a new political majority seeking a long overdue reckoning with the histories of racism and settler colonialism was on the cusp of formation amid the rebellion.
The backlash to the anti-racist conflagration emerged soon after the summer of 2020. Believing that anti-racist education projects like the 1619 Project lay at the foundation of the rebellion, Trump tried to undermine it with the “1776 Project,” which asserted a whitewashed and American exceptionalist interpretation of U.S. history. Attacks on critical race theory and DEI efforts followed and continued after Trump left office, as right-wing activists like Christopher Rufo waged a culture war against anti-racism. Democrats like then-Rep. and now-Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and President Joe Biden criticized calls to defund the police. Biden called for funding law enforcement, further undermining one of the main demands of 2020 demonstrators.
Resistance to this racist regime may start in a manner similar to Black Americans resisting Jim Crow and structural racism in the North during the 20th century civil rights movement and the organizing that laid the foundation for the 2020 protests — local people resisting “colorblind” racism and organizing protests and movements against the structures of white supremacy. Minnesotans have demonstrated the power of collective solidarity and community defense while resisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection’s attempts to round up immigrants. And, as Jonathan Stegall and Anne Kosseff-Jones wrote in January for Truthout, Minneapolis’s anti-ICE resistance would not have transpired without the city’s 2020 racial justice uprising.
Collective political education is once again relevant as state legislatures and the federal government have sought to ban Black history, ethnic studies, gender studies, and other disciplines critical of settler colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. Political education programs such as Study and Struggle and efforts such as the hundreds of Black churches creating history programs to educate their communities are great examples of critical education capable of countering right-wing propaganda about race and racism, gender, war, immigration, and capitalism. Studying how power operates, organizing tactics and strategies, and histories of resistance also prepares us for confronting and defeating authoritarianism.
The only path to stopping this regime from completely disenfranchising everyone but its most privileged adherents is to make good on the longstanding calls by Black activists like W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, and groups like the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Black Workers Congress to transform U.S. society. We also learned from the range of abolitionist organizations and formations in the Twin Cities fighting against state violence like Black Visions, Reclaim the Block, the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, and the recent collective opposition to ICE that we cannot reform ourselves out of structural racism. The structure of white power that can rear its monstrous head in response to racial justice movements must be destroyed and a new, more just and equal system must be built in its place.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Austin C. McCoy
Austin McCoy is a scholar of African American history, labor, social movements, and popular culture. He is also the author of Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made. Follow him on Bluesky.
The Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate Louisiana’s congressional map creating two Black-majority districts continues to remind us of how much the U.S. has backpedaled away from the so-called racial “reckoning” of the summer of 2020. The Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais undermines another key plank of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, passed more than 60 years ago with the intent of protecting Black Americans’ voting rights and political representation.
With SCOTUS ruling majority-minority districts as a form of discrimination against non-Black people, Republican-led states are poised to dilute Black political power in a manner echoing the Jim Crow era when white southerners retook power from elected Black lawmakers and neutralized Black Americans’ voting rights for multiple generations. During Reconstruction, hundreds of African Americans won elected office as thousands of newly emancipated citizens engaged in the electoral process. The number of Black officeholders declined following Reconstruction’s end in 1877, when federal troops were withdrawn from the South. White supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan launched terror campaigns against Black communities in efforts to blunt Black political power. Many whites also justified their attempts at undermining Black power by claiming African Americans were corrupt and thus not fit to participate in self-governance.
White theft of African Americans’ civil rights and economic power accompanied the destruction of Black political influence following the end of Reconstruction. White southerners moved to pass laws instituting segregation in education, public accommodations, and in the private sector. Jim Crow laws also entailed enforcing policies preventing Black Americans from voting, such as poll taxes and literacy tests.
One difference between the racial dictatorship of Jim Crow and the burgeoning racial regime is the contemporary manifestation of oppression is grounded in what sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva calls “colorblind racism,” or non-racialized actions and policies that reinforce Black and Brown marginalization. In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the conservative majority, justified invalidating Section 4b of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder by pointing to the “great strides” in Black participation in electoral politics. Justice Samuel Alito echoed Roberts in his opinion for Louisiana v. Callais: “First, vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South, which have made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination.”
However, eliminating minority-majority districts threatens to leave millions of Black Americans without representation that reflects their interests. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed off on a new congressional map which could award up to four more GOP seats. Tennessee Republicans have drafted a new map that would eliminate the only predominantly-Democrat, and predominantly-Black, district. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s call for state Republicans to revisit Alabama’s map is striking because she is framing her actions as an attempt to remain in compliance with the law. Again, this ruling allows Republicans in states to disenfranchise Black voters under the guise of following “colorblind” law.
SCOTUS’s decision is the latest in a series of rollbacks in civil rights not seen since the post-Reconstruction era. Since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, his administration has sought to eliminate any policy associated with addressing historical instances of racism. The administration’s attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies has led to historic job losses for Black women. According to economist Katica Roy, more than 319,000 Black women lost their jobs in three months in 2025.
Many red states, especially in the South, continue to wage a war against Black history, especially the aspects of it that challenge myths of colorblindness and white innocence and victimhood. After complaining about how anti-racist activists have tried to “erase” history by tearing down Confederate monuments during his first presidency, Trump’s federal government continues its efforts to whitewash history, from its unsuccessful attempt to remove mentions of George Washington enslaving Black people at Independence Hall in Pennsylvania to reinstating names of military bases named after Confederate generals. This follows the ongoing assault that Republicans and higher education administrators in Florida, Texas, and Alabama have waged against DEI programs in education and the teaching of African American Studies, race, and gender studies. These attacks on anti-racism descend from the “Lost Cause” myth that emerged amid Reconstruction, which erased slavery as a cause of the Civil War and instead emphasized how the Confederate South fought valiantly to defend “state’s rights.”
Diluting the Voting Rights Act, attacking Black history and employment, challenging birthright citizenship legalized in the 14th Amendment — another pillar of Reconstruction policy — and eliminating immigration from “less desirable” countries in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East are all part of this administration’s strategy to maintain the United States as a white nationalist country. The “Great Replacement” theory animates these attacks as many Americans believe that people of color threaten to overrun the U.S. and replace and oppress white Americans.
Like white reactionaries in the South attacking Black Americans’ freedoms and white northerners’ defense of segregation after the Civil War, this administration’s efforts to curb Black political and economic power and immigration are a backlash to the global racial justice uprisings in response to Breonna Taylor’s and George Floyd’s murders by police in 2020. The 2020 protests represented everything that many white nationalists feared — a multiracial, multinational, and working-class movement against police violence, racism, colonialism, and capitalism. It seemed that a new political majority seeking a long overdue reckoning with the histories of racism and settler colonialism was on the cusp of formation amid the rebellion.
The backlash to the anti-racist conflagration emerged soon after the summer of 2020. Believing that anti-racist education projects like the 1619 Project lay at the foundation of the rebellion, Trump tried to undermine it with the “1776 Project,” which asserted a whitewashed and American exceptionalist interpretation of U.S. history. Attacks on critical race theory and DEI efforts followed and continued after Trump left office, as right-wing activists like Christopher Rufo waged a culture war against anti-racism. Democrats like then-Rep. and now-Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and President Joe Biden criticized calls to defund the police. Biden called for funding law enforcement, further undermining one of the main demands of 2020 demonstrators.
Resistance to this racist regime may start in a manner similar to Black Americans resisting Jim Crow and structural racism in the North during the 20th century civil rights movement and the organizing that laid the foundation for the 2020 protests — local people resisting “colorblind” racism and organizing protests and movements against the structures of white supremacy. Minnesotans have demonstrated the power of collective solidarity and community defense while resisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection’s attempts to round up immigrants. And, as Jonathan Stegall and Anne Kosseff-Jones wrote in January for Truthout, Minneapolis’s anti-ICE resistance would not have transpired without the city’s 2020 racial justice uprising.
Collective political education is once again relevant as state legislatures and the federal government have sought to ban Black history, ethnic studies, gender studies, and other disciplines critical of settler colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. Political education programs such as Study and Struggle and efforts such as the hundreds of Black churches creating history programs to educate their communities are great examples of critical education capable of countering right-wing propaganda about race and racism, gender, war, immigration, and capitalism. Studying how power operates, organizing tactics and strategies, and histories of resistance also prepares us for confronting and defeating authoritarianism.
The only path to stopping this regime from completely disenfranchising everyone but its most privileged adherents is to make good on the longstanding calls by Black activists like W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, and groups like the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Black Workers Congress to transform U.S. society. We also learned from the range of abolitionist organizations and formations in the Twin Cities fighting against state violence like Black Visions, Reclaim the Block, the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, and the recent collective opposition to ICE that we cannot reform ourselves out of structural racism. The structure of white power that can rear its monstrous head in response to racial justice movements must be destroyed and a new, more just and equal system must be built in its place.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Austin C. McCoy
Austin McCoy is a scholar of African American history, labor, social movements, and popular culture. He is also the author of Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made. Follow him on Bluesky.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-demolishes-voting-rights-act/
The Supreme Court Has Completed Its Quest to Kill the Voting Rights Act
In its 6–3 decision, the court gutted the legislation that ended apartheid in this country—and once again gave white people the ability to suppress Black political power.
by Elie MystalApril 29, 2026
The Nation
PHOTO: Demonstrators outside the US Supreme Court Building during oral arguments for Louisiana v. Callais, Oct. 2025.(Eric Lee / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The 1965 Voting Rights Act is the most important piece of legislation in United States history. It is the law that freed this country from apartheid. Before the Voting Rights Act—despite the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Reconstruction Amendments and the various civil rights acts passed throughout history—the white majority could systematically disenfranchise Black citizens, as well as other minority groups. White folks could prevent non-white people from voting; they could make it harder for non-white people to vote; or they could simply make their votes not matter. And they could do this by means of violence, poll taxes, gerrymandering, and any other mechanism white people could dream up.
The VRA was the first piece of legislation that seriously tried to change this, to ensure every citizen the ability to participate in democratic self-government. It did this by enforcing the 15th and 19th Amendments and their prohibitions on denying the vote on account of race or gender. Remember, constitutional amendments mean nothing if there is no legislation to support them. Nobody, for instance, went to jail for having a beer in violation of the 18th Amendment’s prohibition on alcohol; instead, people went to jail for violating the Volstead Act (which attempted to enforce the 18th Amendment in the most draconian and stupid way possible). Similarly, every Black person alive in the South between 1865 and 1965 could tell you that nobody got to vote because of the 15th Amendment. Black people got to vote because of the Voting Rights Act.
To be clear, the VRA did not remove white supremacy from politics; it opened a door, and Black political power flooded into the white’s-only space of the US government. In 1964, there were only four Black people in Congress, and zero in the Senate. By 1968, that number had more than doubled to nine. Today, there are 67 Black people and 56 Latinos in Congress, the highest number for both groups in this country’s history.
The story is similar for women. In 1964, there were just 13 women in Congress; today, there are 154. (Always remember that the 19th Amendment did nothing for Black women, who have become the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, until the VRA got their back). And everybody should know that just 43 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, this country elected a Black president. The Voting Rights Act changed the face and the structure of American politics—and government.
Some people have never gotten over it—and six of those people sit on the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts has made it his lifelong crusade to oppose the Voting Rights Act and its democratization of political power. He opposed the expansion of the VRA when he was a young lawyer working in the Ronald Reagan White House, and he has done everything he can while on the Supreme Court to cut out the very heart of Black political power.
On Wednesday, Roberts and his cabal of ruling Republicans finally completed their quest to suppress the strength of the emerging non-white majority in this country. In Louisiana v. Callais, the court ruled, 6–3, that the Voting Rights Act cannot be used to protect minority political power from being diluted through gerrymandering. The ruling effectively ends the VRA, and with it the all too brief era of multiracial democracy in America.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act is the most important piece of legislation in United States history. It is the law that freed this country from apartheid. Before the Voting Rights Act—despite the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Reconstruction Amendments and the various civil rights acts passed throughout history—the white majority could systematically disenfranchise Black citizens, as well as other minority groups. White folks could prevent non-white people from voting; they could make it harder for non-white people to vote; or they could simply make their votes not matter. And they could do this by means of violence, poll taxes, gerrymandering, and any other mechanism white people could dream up.
The VRA was the first piece of legislation that seriously tried to change this, to ensure every citizen the ability to participate in democratic self-government. It did this by enforcing the 15th and 19th Amendments and their prohibitions on denying the vote on account of race or gender. Remember, constitutional amendments mean nothing if there is no legislation to support them. Nobody, for instance, went to jail for having a beer in violation of the 18th Amendment’s prohibition on alcohol; instead, people went to jail for violating the Volstead Act (which attempted to enforce the 18th Amendment in the most draconian and stupid way possible). Similarly, every Black person alive in the South between 1865 and 1965 could tell you that nobody got to vote because of the 15th Amendment. Black people got to vote because of the Voting Rights Act.
To be clear, the VRA did not remove white supremacy from politics; it opened a door, and Black political power flooded into the white’s-only space of the US government. In 1964, there were only four Black people in Congress, and zero in the Senate. By 1968, that number had more than doubled to nine. Today, there are 67 Black people and 56 Latinos in Congress, the highest number for both groups in this country’s history.
The story is similar for women. In 1964, there were just 13 women in Congress; today, there are 154. (Always remember that the 19th Amendment did nothing for Black women, who have become the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, until the VRA got their back). And everybody should know that just 43 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, this country elected a Black president. The Voting Rights Act changed the face and the structure of American politics—and government.
Some people have never gotten over it—and six of those people sit on the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts has made it his lifelong crusade to oppose the Voting Rights Act and its democratization of political power. He opposed the expansion of the VRA when he was a young lawyer working in the Ronald Reagan White House, and he has done everything he can while on the Supreme Court to cut out the very heart of Black political power.
On Wednesday, Roberts and his cabal of ruling Republicans finally completed their quest to suppress the strength of the emerging non-white majority in this country. In Louisiana v. Callais, the court ruled, 6–3, that the Voting Rights Act cannot be used to protect minority political power from being diluted through gerrymandering. The ruling effectively ends the VRA, and with it the all too brief era of multiracial democracy in America.
Current Issue
The nuts and bolts of the decision are fairly straightforward. Louisiana has six congressional districts, and about a third of its population is Black. Mathematically, that means Louisiana should have two majority-minority congressional districts, but its 2020 redistricting allowed for only one. The state was sued under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and forced to draw a map with two Black districts. It did. Then white people sued, arguing that they were somehow constitutionally entitled to congressional overrepresentation, and that the two majority-minority districts discriminated against their white-bred interests.
In Callais, the Supreme Court ruled for the white people. It holds that the Voting Rights Act cannot be used to force Louisiana to draw a second majority-minority district. The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, makes two key points:
States cannot use race as a factor in districting even when those states are trying to prevent the disenfranchisement of nonwhite minorities.
The Voting Rights Act only protects against intentional discrimination.
What this means in reality is that white people can gerrymander away Black political power, just like they did in the old days, as long as they say they’re only trying to take away Democratic political power. It means that even if you can show that the gerrymander was obviously targeted to dilute the Black vote and not the “Democratic” vote (as was the case in Louisiana, where neighborhoods full of white Democrats were left untouched but neighborhoods full of Black people were chopped up) it doesn’t matter unless the white gerrymanderers say something like, “I drew this map because I hate Negroes” or some other similarly vile statement bold enough to get Alito excited. It means that the Voting Rights Act is effectively dead.
I have to say “effectively dead” because Alito spends most of his opinion arguing that it’s not. He says that the VRA “properly construed” (emphasis his, not mine) still exists, it just has to be construed exactly as Alito wants it to be and not as Congress intended it to be. Congress explicitly intended the VRA to include “disparate impact”—the idea that a law that results in racism is indeed racist whether or not the racists who wrote the law admit to their nefarious plans. Alito’s construction explicitly rejects this concept. Nobody elected Alito or the other Republicans on the court to make this decision for us, but they’ve decided that only Republicans on the Supreme Court know what racism truly is.
Alito doesn’t want to say he’s killing the VRA; he just wants to turn it into a zombie. That’s a bit of a departure for Alito and for the Republican supermajority. After all, this is the same Alito who seemed almost gleeful when directly overturning Roe v. Wade and consigning women to second-class status. In this case, he clearly wants you to think, and the media to report, that the Voting Rights Act still exists. I suppose it is more comforting to white people if they are allowed to believe that they’re not living in an apartheid state again. The white folks who are against voting rights don’t all want to feel like they’re Elon Musk.
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan brings clarity to what Alito tries to hide. She writes: “I dissent. The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—‘one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history.’… It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”
The phrase “now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act” is the only analysis that matters. The VRA has been demolished, as the Republicans have long intended.
American-style apartheid was not constructed in a day, and multiracial democracy will not disappear in a night. Given that all the states interested in mid-decade redistricting already have their plans well underway, it’s unclear if, and I’d say unlikely that, this ruling will have a huge impact on the upcoming midterm elections. All it’s likely to mean is that states that were already trying to dilute the Black vote will indeed be able to dilute the Black vote. Florida will be bad, but Florida was always going to be bad, and this Supreme Court was never going to stop white-boots DeSantis from being bad.
The real bite of this ruling will come in 2030, when there’s a new Census and a new round of redistricting. That’s when we’ll see red state after red state dismantle Black and Latino voting power. Louisiana had one majority-minority district. It should have two. By 2030, it will have zero.
There’s only one way out of this, and it involves people using what voting power they have to to send people to Congress committed to multiracial democracy. Congress can overrule the Supreme Court on this. It can pass a new Voting Rights Act that explicitly defines what “intentional” discrimination looks like over and above what Roberts and Alito say it does. It can outlaw vote dilution. It can require disparate-impact analysis, and it can attempt to hold the Supreme Court to Congress’s interpretation of the Constitution through the practice known as “jurisdiction stripping.” Essentially, Congress can say “our interpretation of the 15th Amendment can be enforced by this new Voting Rights Act, and our interpretation is final.”
Beyond that, if Democrats take back the House and the Senate, kill the filibuster, and elect a Democratic president in 2028, Congress can pack the court and fill it with people who do not believe in a white’s-only theory of voting rights. Those new justices could overrule not just Callais but all of the other voting rights cases the Roberts court has issued to try to destroy minority voting rights. Those new justices could overturn the court’s prior gerrymandering decisions. A new court could reject the white supremacy the Roberts court embraces.
All of that will require a lot of political will, but it can start with the midterms. Democrats simply must take control of Congress and the Senate in November. Then, they must win the presidency in ’28, and hold that control through the 2030 Census. Thanks to Callais, this may be the last opportunity for Democrats to do so, because after 2030, if Callais has not been thrown in the trash, it will be very hard for Democrats to wrest political control from Republicans for decades.
Black people have used their political power to support the Democratic Party since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. In response, the Republican Party has set out to kill the VRA and reduce Black power to that of the Jim Crow era. Republicans have succeeded. We’ve got about four years to reverse their gains, or their victory will be complete.
The Voting Rights Act is dead. We need a new one, or the racists win. It’s as simple and as depressing as that.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elie Mystal
Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and a columnist. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author of two books: the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution and Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, both published by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter “Elie v. U.S.” here
Mystal on Southern state redistricting: ‘This is Jim Crow 2.0’
MS NOW
May 9, 2026
VIDEO:
#GOP#Politics#Redistricting
Elie Mystal says the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais is reminiscent of the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision “in terms of the racism that the Supreme Court has ushered in.” “This is Jim Crow 2.0.”
"What's Past is Prologue..."
DEFEAT FASCISM BEFORE FASCISM DEFEATS YOU
FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES
(Originally posted on February 29, 2024):
Thursday, February 29, 2024
THE FIX IS IN: Brilliant Lawyer, Activist, Critic, Public Intellectual, and Fearless Advocate For Justice Elie Mystal On Exactly How and Why the Truly Heinous and Criminally Rightwing Supreme Court is 100% In The Bag For the Fascist MAGA GOP Leader and Former President Donald J. Trump
https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/n-ari-mystal-240228-205139013789
The Beat with Ari
SCOTUS under fire for ‘trying to make Trump win’
The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether former President Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity over criminal election interference charges. MSNBC’s Ari Melber is joined by former RNC Chair Michael Steele and The Nation correspondent Elie Mystal, who says SCOTUS is “trying to make Trump win.”
February 28, 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He0IU4-lo40
The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether former President Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity over criminal election interference charges. MSNBC’s Ari Melber is joined by former RNC Chair Michael Steele and The Nation correspondent Elie Mystal, who says SCOTUS is “trying to make Trump win.”
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trump-coup-trial-delayed-as-supreme-court-agrees-to/id1314172351?i=1000647482638
Trump coup trial delayed as Supreme Court agrees to hear ‘presidential immunity’ case
The ReidOut with Joy Reid
MSNBC
February 28, 2024
Politics
MSNBC
February 28, 2024
Politics
#Trump #SCOTUS #immunity
In breaking news from the Supreme Court, the 6-3 conservative majority has decided to hear the case of Trump vs. the United States on whether Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity over his criminal election interference charges.VIDEO:
In breaking news from the Supreme Court, the 6-3 conservative majority has decided to hear the case of Trump vs. the United States on whether Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity over his criminal election interference charges.VIDEO:
Joy Reid leads this episode of The ReidOut on MSNBC with breaking news from the Supreme Court. The 6-3 conservative majority has decided to hear the case of Trump vs. the United States on whether Donald Trump can claim presidential immunity over his criminal election interference charges. Plus, Mitch McConnell is stepping down as the Senate Republican leader in November. “But the fact remains--no individual has done more damage to the Senate than Mitch McConnell,” Joy says. Joy gives her analysis of what she calls McConnell’s "shameful legacy." All this and more in this edition of The ReidOut on MSNBC.
Posted by Kofi Natambu at 1:49 AM
Labels: 2024 Presidential election, Ari Melber, Elie Mystal, GOP. MAGA, Joy Reid, Michael Steele, MSNBC,Rightwing Judges, The Beat, The Reidout, The Supreme Court
Posted by Kofi Natambu at 1:49 AM
Labels: 2024 Presidential election, Ari Melber, Elie Mystal, GOP. MAGA, Joy Reid, Michael Steele, MSNBC,Rightwing Judges, The Beat, The Reidout, The Supreme Court
May 7, 2026
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FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES (Originally posted on April 24, 2025)
FROM THE PANOPTICON REVIEW ARCHIVES
(Originally posted on April 24, 2025):
Thursday, April 24, 2025
The Fascist and Clearly Anti-Black WAR that the Scumbag-in-Chief and his White Supremacist, Sexist, and Xenophobic Minions, Flunkies, Acolytes, and Fellow Reactionary Apparatchiks in the GOP, MAGA, and Beyond Are Waging And Are Absolutely Intent On Continuing To Destroy This Country No Matter What
"What's Past is Prologue..."
"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 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
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/us/politics/trump-doj-civil-rights.html
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.
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
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
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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Approval Rating Falling Steadily: Trump’s approval rating has sunk to about 45 percent, down from 52 percent one week after he took office.
Musk Backs Away: As Elon Musk moves to spend less time in Washington, it is unclear whether his plan to overhaul the federal bureaucracy will have lasting power. The endeavor has still not come close to cutting the $1 trillion he vowed to find in waste, fraud and abuse.
Oil, Gas and Mining Projects: The Trump administration plans to dramatically reduce environmental reviews before permitting drilling and mining projects on public lands and in federal waters.
Private Dinner for Memecoin Investors: A website promoting $TRUMP, the president’s so-called memecoin, announced that the largest buyers would be invited to meet President Trump. It was, in effect, an offer of access to the White House in exchange for an investment in one of the president’s crypto ventures.
Meals on Wheels: A tiny division responsible for overseeing services for people with disabilities and older Americans, including programs like Meals on Wheels, is being dismantled as part of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s overhaul of his department.
https://www.anativeson.org/p/american-undone-by-its-own-racism
American Undone by Its Own Racism with Prof. Eddie Glaude
A recording from Eddie and THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali's
Guest: Eddie Glaude, Jr.
THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali
April 16, 2025
Native Son
VIDEO: To access this video please click on the following link: https://www.anativeson.org/p/american-undone-by-its-own-racism
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
A U.S. Justice Department logo or seal showing Justice Department headquarters, known as "Main Justice," is seen behind the podium in the Department's headquarters briefing room, January 24, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
Summary
--About a dozen senior career Civil Rights Division being reassigned
--Reassignments include working on FOIA and internal discrimination complaints
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.
Summary
--About a dozen senior career Civil Rights Division being reassigned
--Reassignments include working on FOIA and internal discrimination complaints
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.
The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. Sign up here.
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.
FASCIST AMERICA 2026: This is the REAL Relationship Between 'Race and Class' in American Politics Whether We Honestly Acknowledge and Deal with It Or Not. The Bedrock Reality is that The Central Structural, Institutional, and Systemic Role Of the Ideology of White Supremacy Is Absolutely Never Separate From The Reality of Class Or Gender Or the Content and Expression Of Domestic And Foreign Policy in the United States
The Quietest Coup in American History Is Happening Right Now ft. Elie Mystal | Native Land Pod
Native Land Pod
Premiered 16 hours ago
VIDEO:
Native Land Pod
Premiered 16 hours ago
VIDEO:
Native Land Pod
On episode 130 of Native Land Pod, hosts Angela Rye, Andrew Gillum, and Bakari Sellers are joined by guest Elie Mystal. Elie Mystal is an author, commentator, and the justice correspondent for The Nation. His fiery prose on the Supreme Court and legal issues writ large are unmatched, and in a seismic week for voting rights America, it’s a good time to welcome Elie home. The Supreme Court has fast-tracked their recent ruling which gutted what remained of the Voting Rights Act. They are allowing Southern states to change their electoral maps BEFORE the midterm elections, which will almost certainly dilute Black voting power.
Our SCOTUS expert, Elie Mystal, weighs in. FOR YOUR SITUATIONAL AWARENESS: 1. Primary Results in Ohio and Indiana test President Trump’s influence on Republican Primaries. 2. The Detroit News caught a Michigan Senate candidate calling for intimidation at Detroit polling precincts. 3. Trump’s Medicaid cuts are becoming a reality in Nebraska, where they went into effect on May 1st. It will be the first test of how many people lose their insurance due to new work requirements. 4. Trump Praises the Confederate General, Robert E. Lee, and says that he almost won the Civil War. 5. South Carolina State University rescinded an invitation to SC’s Lt. Governor Pamela Evette to speak at graduation. In response, South Carolina Republican officials threatened to pull SCSU’s funding. 6. On Sunday, a federal judge reinstated New Orleans Court Clerk, Calvin Duncan. But then Louisiana won an appeal with the 5th US Circuit Court to keep Duncan out of office… for now. Calvin Duncan was democratically elected, winning 68% of the vote.
On episode 130 of Native Land Pod, hosts Angela Rye, Andrew Gillum, and Bakari Sellers are joined by guest Elie Mystal. Elie Mystal is an author, commentator, and the justice correspondent for The Nation. His fiery prose on the Supreme Court and legal issues writ large are unmatched, and in a seismic week for voting rights America, it’s a good time to welcome Elie home. The Supreme Court has fast-tracked their recent ruling which gutted what remained of the Voting Rights Act. They are allowing Southern states to change their electoral maps BEFORE the midterm elections, which will almost certainly dilute Black voting power.
Our SCOTUS expert, Elie Mystal, weighs in. FOR YOUR SITUATIONAL AWARENESS: 1. Primary Results in Ohio and Indiana test President Trump’s influence on Republican Primaries. 2. The Detroit News caught a Michigan Senate candidate calling for intimidation at Detroit polling precincts. 3. Trump’s Medicaid cuts are becoming a reality in Nebraska, where they went into effect on May 1st. It will be the first test of how many people lose their insurance due to new work requirements. 4. Trump Praises the Confederate General, Robert E. Lee, and says that he almost won the Civil War. 5. South Carolina State University rescinded an invitation to SC’s Lt. Governor Pamela Evette to speak at graduation. In response, South Carolina Republican officials threatened to pull SCSU’s funding. 6. On Sunday, a federal judge reinstated New Orleans Court Clerk, Calvin Duncan. But then Louisiana won an appeal with the 5th US Circuit Court to keep Duncan out of office… for now. Calvin Duncan was democratically elected, winning 68% of the vote.
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If you’d like to submit a question, check out our tutorial video: / c5j_obxlig0 and send to @nativelandpod. We are 180 days away from the midterm elections. Welcome home y’all!
Contents: 00:00:00
Start 00:02:30
FYSA Headlines 00:18:00
NOLA Court Clerk Gets Un-Elected 00:29:45
SCOTUS Redistricting Update w/Elie Mystal 00:55:15 Tennessee Redistricting 01:12:10
Watch full episodes of Native Land Pod here on YouTube. Native Land Pod is brought to you by Reasoned Choice Media. Thank you to the Native Land Pod team: Angela Rye as host, executive producer, and cofounder of Reasoned Choice Media; Andrew Gillum as host and producer, Bakari Sellers as host and producer, and Lauren Hansen as executive producer
Contents: 00:00:00
Start 00:02:30
FYSA Headlines 00:18:00
NOLA Court Clerk Gets Un-Elected 00:29:45
SCOTUS Redistricting Update w/Elie Mystal 00:55:15 Tennessee Redistricting 01:12:10
Watch full episodes of Native Land Pod here on YouTube. Native Land Pod is brought to you by Reasoned Choice Media. Thank you to the Native Land Pod team: Angela Rye as host, executive producer, and cofounder of Reasoned Choice Media; Andrew Gillum as host and producer, Bakari Sellers as host and producer, and Lauren Hansen as executive producer
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