Trump Recasts Mission of Justice Dept.’s Civil Rights Office, Prompting ‘Exodus’

The New York Times ^ | April 28, 2025, 3:26 p.m. ET | Devlin Barrett

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Hundreds of lawyers and other staff members are leaving the Justice Department’s civil rights division, as veterans of the office say they have been driven out by Trump administration officials who want to drop its traditional work to aggressively pursue cases against the Ivy League, other schools and liberal cities.

The wave of departures has only accelerated in recent days, as the administration reopened its “deferred resignation program,” which would allow employees to resign but continue to be paid for a period of time. The offer, for those who work in the division, expires on Monday. More than 100 lawyers are expected to take it, on top of a raft of earlier departures, in what would amount to a decimation of the ranks of a crucial part of the Justice Department.

“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.”

Traditionally the department has protected the constitutional rights of minority communities and marginalized people, often by monitoring police departments for civil rights violations, protecting the right to vote and fighting housing discrimination.

Now, more than a dozen current and former civil rights division lawyers say, the new administration appears intent on not simply modifying the direction of the work, as has been typical during changeovers from a Democratic administration to a Republican one.

The administration is instead determined, the lawyers said, to fundamentally end how the....

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TOPICS: Breaking News; Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: dhillon

[No name given]

More winning!

[Da Coyote]

Great. Now we can get some real lawyers in there instead of liberals.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

More than 100 lawyers are expected to take it, on top of a raft of earlier departures, in what would amount to a decimation of the ranks of a crucial part of the Justice Department.

Christmas comes in April this year! This is music to my ears.

[Qwapisking]

not seeing a problem here.

[gildafarrell]

The people are happy for the cleaning. Leave and don’t let the door slap you on your posterior as you’re walking out. You were useless to the people anyway.

[jonascord]

Since applying woke DEI dicta is a direct violation of the civil rights act of 1964, failing to focus on these crimes seems to be deliberately ignoring the oath they took when they assumed the office.

As an example, Washington state just signed a law that authorizes $120,000 in free money for home loans, with the program restricted to POCs.

This SCREAMS racism.

Meanwhile, the state is $16 billion in the hole already...

[DAC21]

“Great. Now we can get some real lawyers in there instead of liberals”

Well they best get busy as they may only have three years to get things right before a potential Rat President casts them off.

[catnipman]

AWESOME: Self-Draining Swamp!

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I guess I am suppose to be upset about this.

[Kazan]

Great news!

[FlyingEagle]

Wonderful news from NYT

[ComputerGuy]

...Hundreds of lawyers and other staff members are leaving the Justice Department’s civil rights division...

A great start.

[cross_bearer_02]

Interesting and efficient way of flushing the toilet. Ask them to do something you know the really don’t want to do and grinds their gears, then put the offer on the table, “Or you could just quit now, with pay.”

[j.havenfarm]

“Crucial” yeah. Among their crucial activities are bullying localities into consent orders in the face of federal threats to bring them to dust, in light of the government’s unlimited resources

[Psalm 73]

Harmeet K. Dhillon is typical Trump "disrupter-type", like Pete Hegseth.

Job one is to institute radical course-correction.

Seems most of Trump's hires have that trait.

[JimSp]

What an encouraging post

[Lockbox]

Hundreds of lawyers and other staff members are leaving the Justice Department

Well, that’s a good start…….

[rxh4n1]

“Ask them to do something you know the really don’t want to do and grinds their gears”

Hey, the Aleutian Islanders have Civil Rights that need protecting. Maybe we can send them there to serve.

[ChessExpert]

Good news.

By the way, does anyone in the press realize that decimate means one in ten?