Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The Washington Post reports:
The new head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division is dramatically reshaping the office to propel President Donald Trump’s social agenda, prompting the departure of about half of the division’s lawyers in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the situation and public statements from top officials.
Since being sworn in this month, civil rights director Harmeet K. Dhillon has redirected her staff to focus on combating antisemitism, anti-Christian bias, the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, and what Trump and his allies have described as Democrat’s “woke ideology.”
The division changed mission statements across its sections to focus less on racial discrimination and more on fighting diversity initiatives and anti-Christian bias. And department officials reassigned more than a dozen career staffers — including section chiefs overseeing police brutality, disability and voting rights cases — to areas outside of their legal expertise.
The New York Times reports:
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.
Dhillon is a far-right activist who represented Trump in lawsuits seeking to overturn the result of the 2020 election. Last year the cult attacked her for delivering a Sikh prayer at the Republican National Convention.
War is peace at the Justice Department, as the Civil Rights Division is turned against civil rights. Career attorneys are leaving rather than undermine their life’s work. The only way to address the crisis & restore sanity is to vote out the fascists and then rebuild. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/u…
— Paul Barrett (@paulthedogman.bsky.social) April 28, 2025 at 4:37 PM