Fears for civil rights as Trump taps Maga darling for key justice department role

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December 17, 2024

By George Chidi, The Guardian

Harmeet Dhillon on Capitol Hill in May last year. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

The history of the justice department’s civil rights division is the product of lynchings, aged patients dying of neglect, and police officers murdering people in the street. It is the legacy of Matthew Shepard and Breonna Taylor and Emmett Till.

When local authorities would not investigate civil rights violations – or were violating rights themselves – communities have had to rely on federal investigators to fill the gap in justice. The question these communities will ask over the next four years is who the civil rights division under Donald Trump will protect.

Trump plans to tap a loyalist whose civil rights résumé largely consists of culture-war battles over campus free-speech issues and attacks on diversity initiatives to helm the justice department’s civil rights division. The move puts at risk hundreds of active investigations, from police misconduct to employment and housing discrimination to abuses in jails and prisons.

Trump intends to replace the assistant attorney general, Kristen Clarke, the current chief of the civil rights division and the first Black woman to lead the division, with Harmeet Dhillon, a Maga darling and fixture in rightwing media.

The Guardian has more.

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