Harmeet Dhillon, Trump's DOJ civil rights enforcer, exits after midterms

Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump ally who ran the Justice Department's civil rights division, is stepping down. Attorney General Todd Blanche broke the news on X, saying he accepted her resignation after she led the division for the past 18 months and praising her for enforcing the law without fear or favor. Bloomberg Law was first to report the departure.

The timing is no accident. Dhillon is the first high-ranking DOJ official to walk after midterm elections that handed Democrats control of Congress, and those lawmakers are expected to come after executive agencies hard — the justice department included.

In under two years, Dhillon flipped the division's mission. It dropped case after case alleging discrimination against racial minorities in voting, housing, employment and education, while scores of career lawyers headed for the exits, draining the division of its civil rights expertise. She aimed the department's fire at universities instead, chasing claims that minorities got unfair admissions advantages and claims of antisemitism against Jewish students. A whistleblower has alleged those school investigations were rigged from the start, with lawyers reportedly told to find a reason to sue.

Not everything landed. The division sued more than two dozen states for voter roll data and lost every single one — with several of the judges ruling against it appointed by Trump himself. It also oversaw probes into the killings of US citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good by federal agents in Minnesota during an immigration enforcement surge; neither produced criminal charges.

Stacey Young, a former civil rights division lawyer who now leads the DOJ alumni group Justice Connection, didn't hold back. She called Dhillon the most destructive, lawless and hateful head of the division in the department's history, saying career civil servants who spent their lives protecting vulnerable communities were instead ordered to target them, and that more than three-quarters of the division's lawyers walked out.

Dhillon was a loud presence on X, occasionally dropping news of civil rights investigations on the platform — a move that startled veteran DOJ lawyers used to staying quiet on open probes. She also publicly used a slur for people with disabilities, whose rights her division was charged with protecting, and has described conservative influencers as 'hoes'. Born in India and raised in Smithfield, North Carolina after stints in the UK and New York, she ran her own law firm and served as vice-chair of the California GOP before joining the government — and worked on lawsuits contesting the 2020 election results.