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The head of the division directed its staff to focus on enforcing edicts on transgender women in sports and other issues, shifting from its founding purpose of fighting race-based discrimination.
April 18, 2025Updated 4:42 p.m. ET
The head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division has rewritten a mission statement to prioritize enforcement of President Trump’s culture war edicts, including participation of transgender women in sports, in what appears to be a break from its founding purpose of fighting race-based discrimination.
In an email, Harmeet Dhillon, a conservative activist close to the White House who leads the unit, directed the division’s career work force to pursue the president’s agenda, outlined in executive orders and presidential memorandums, or face unspecified consequences. The revised statement encouraged investigations into antisemitism, anti-Christian bias and noncompliance with a range of Trump executive fiats.
“The zealous and faithful pursuit of this section’s mission requires the full dedication of this section’s resources, attention and energy to the priorities of the president,” Ms. Dhillon wrote. The memo, obtained by The New York Times, was addressed to the division’s enforcement arm responsible for prohibiting discrimination by recipients of federal funds — nearly every local government entity in the country.
A Justice Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
She did not explicitly say she would not open investigations into racial discrimination, but Ms. Dhillon and the interim leadership that preceded her arrival this month have already moved to reverse a handful of high-profile Biden-era actions.
Last week, she nullified a 2022 agreement with an impoverished Alabama county intended to address troubling disparities in the quality of drinking water, infrastructure to protect residents from flooding and sewer systems for Black and white residents.
“The D.O.J. will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, D.E.I. lens,” Ms. Dhillon said in a statement announcing the action last week. “Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria.”
