Trump upends DOJ's Civil Rights Division, sparking 'bloodbath' in senior ranks

[mountaineer]

Your daily dose of hyperbole from the media:

Trump upends DOJ's Civil Rights Division, sparking 'bloodbath' in senior ranks
Trump's hand-picked head of the division has outlined priorities that are dramatically at odds with the way past administrations have enforced civil rights law.
April 23, 2025, 7:29 PM EDT
By Ken Dilanian
NBC News

The Trump administration has quietly transformed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, forcing out a majority of career managers and implementing new priorities that current and former officials say abandon a decadeslong mission of enforcing laws that prohibit discrimination in hiring, housing and voting rights.

More than a dozen senior lawyers — many with decades of experience working under presidents of both parties — have been reassigned, the current and former officials say. Some have resigned in frustration after they were moved to less desirable roles unrelated to their expertise, according to the sources.

“It’s been a complete bloodbath,” said a senior Justice Department lawyer in the division who is not authorized to speak publicly.

Last week, President Donald Trump’s hand-picked head of the division issued a series of memos outlining priorities that are dramatically at odds with the way both Republican and Democratic administrations have enforced civil rights law — including the first Trump administration.

Rather than focusing on enforcing federal laws against discrimination, the division is now charged with pursuing priorities laid out in a series of Trump’s executive orders, including “Keeping Men out of Women's Sports” and “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” according to the memos, which were issued by division head Harmeet Dhillon and obtained by NBC News. ...

"Handpicked"? They're all handpicked, you ninny. They're appointed by the president. And wouldn't a "complete bloodbath" include at least a few drops of actual blood?

[mountaineer]

Douglass Mackey
@DougMackeyCase
BREAKING: “Bloodbath” at DOJ Civil Rights Division as Harmeet Dhillon cleans house — NBC News

-Career officials are melting down.

The Trump administration has forced out a majority of career managers and implemented new priorities.

-More than a dozen senior lawyers have been reassigned.

-Some have resigned in frustration after being moved to “less desirable roles unrelated to their expertise.”

-The division is now charged with pursuing priorities laid out in a series of Trump’s executive orders, including “Keeping Men out of Women's Sports” and “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.”

-"These documents appear to have been created in a vacuum completely divorced from reality," a former official whined. “This is a 180 shift from the division’s traditional mission.”

-Many section chiefs have been transferred to roles unrelated to their legal backgrounds, including in the complaint adjudication office and the office that handles public records requests. 😂

-“I was there almost 18 years, and what’s happening now is basically the opposite of what we’ve been doing,” whined one veteran lawyer who recently left the department.

-“They are withdrawing everything we’ve done and taking the opposite side on voting rights, for example,” whined a recently departed Civil Division lawyer.

-Dhillon’s memo outlines new priorities, including “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism,” “Restoring Merit Based Opportunity” and “Designating English as the Official Language of the United States.”

-The “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” task force will be a focus. “The Biden administration engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses,” Pam Bondi said at a meeting of the new task force.
8:40 AM · Apr 26, 2025

[mountaineer]

Jeff Carlson
@themarketswork
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division was the first department within the DOJ to be weaponized by Obama and Eric Holder:

113 extremely left-wing activist lawyers hired with zero moderate, non-ideological, or conservative lawyers. This process of politicization was then extrapolated throughout the DOJ. The actions by Obama & Holder fundamentally changed the entire makeup of the DOJ.
9:21 AM · Apr 26, 2025

[Wingnut]

Not a whole lot of sympathy for them. Used car salesmen have higher apovals than these freaks.  They might have to do a real job of lawyering now....or quit and go back to chasing ambulances.

[mystery-ak]

‘Hundreds’ of Lawyers Quit DOJ’s AWOL Civil Rights Division as Dhillon Cleans House

Joel B. Pollak 29 Apr 2025

Hundreds of lawyers are leaving the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division — a division that had become notorious for partisan litigation, focusing on Democratic Party priorities instead of civil rights.

New DOJ Civil Rights chief Harmeet Dhillon said that the departing attorneys are welcome to leave, since many had placed politics ahead of the actual function of the department.

The New York Times reported:

    “Now, over 100 attorneys decided that they’d rather not do what their job requires them to do, and I think that’s fine,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, the new head of the division, said in an interview with the conservative commentator Glenn Beck over the weekend, welcoming the turnover and making plain the division’s priorities.

    “We don’t want people in the federal government who feel like it’s their pet project to go persecute” police departments, she said. “The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws, not woke ideology.”

The Civil Rights Division did nothing during the wave of antisemitism that rocked American campuses and cities after the Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. It focused instead on filing political cases against Republican states — such as a lawsuit in 2021 that targeted Georgia’s new voting integrity law, which was less stringent than laws in some Democrat-run states. (The Trump administration has dropped the case.)

The division had been politicized under previous Democrat administrations. Under President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Civil Rights Division Chief Tom Perez, for example, the division dropped an open-and-shut case against the New Black Panther Party for intimidating voters in Philadelphia. Members of the party had shown up at polling places in the 2008 election with nightsticks, threatening white voters.

The Civil Rights Division had also been critical to “consent decrees” imposed on local police departments during the heyday of the Black Lives Matter movement, when police were accused of “systemic racism.”

Under President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and DOJ Civil Rights Division chief Kristen Clarke — who had a previous record of tolerating anti-Jewish hatred — had been silent about antisemitism.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/04/29/hundreds-of-lawyers-quit-dojs-awol-civil-rights-division-as-dhillon-cleans-house/

[Free Vulcan]

[mountaineer]

 

[bilo]

“Now, over 100 attorneys decided that they’d rather not do what their job requires them to do, and I think that’s fine,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, the new head of the division, said

Love it!

I voted for this.

[Fishrrman]

[Bigun]

 

[DefiantMassRINO]

They saved the Trump Admin a lot of money and a lot of trouble it would have taken to fire them or lay them off.