The Department of Justice will remain laser-focused on combating actions it believes violate civil rights laws, including initiatives promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
That plan includes using subpoenas, prosecutions or revocation of federal funding, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a civil rights and DEI-focused Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday.
“The goal is clear — either DEI will end on its own, or we will kill it,” Dhillon told lawmakers, arguing that DEI, by pushing for equity-based outcomes rather than individual rights and opportunity, is “a form of group justice that is a Marxist concept” and equates to “invidious racial discrimination.”
Under the second Trump administration, the 368 attorneys have left the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which enforces federal statutes protecting Americans’ constitutional right to nondiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, class or religion.
But despite widespread agency cuts, the DOJ, Department of Education, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have remained busy enforcing President Donald Trump’s civil rights agenda.
During Trump’s first six months in office, the administration has cut nearly all DEI-based federal contracts, frozen federal funding for higher education institutions that enable antisemitism or promote “woke” initiatives, redirected DEI-related funding for Smithsonian museums, and taken actions to ban transgender-identifying men from competing in women’s sports.
Dhillon said the DOJ is “taking our guidance from the priorities of this administration and the obvious violations that are occurring” by cracking down on any schools, businesses, and government programs that violate equal treatment under the law through affirmative action, social justice initiatives or other discrimination.
“Our responsibility toward the taxpayers requires us to focus on those big-ticket items, but we are also looking at offenders up and down the spectrum,” Dhillon added.
She referenced activities such as schools offering minority-only scholarships, admissions and hiring quotas, legal attacks on religious business owners, and minority-only taxpayer-funded grants as instances of “illegal discrimination.”
Rep. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., praised Dhillon and the Trump administration for their recent actions, calling DEI an “illegal,” “fraudulent” and “cynical” ideology.
“For at least the last decade, America’s civil rights laws have been used not to prohibit discrimination, but to institutionalize it,” Schmitt said. “The modern civil rights machine, both inside and outside the government, has been wielded like a weapon.”
Democratic lawmakers, however, reversed the accusation, arguing that the Trump administration has weaponized civil rights laws against things it dislikes, rather than actual violations.
“What you’re doing to use the sledgehammer of federal funding with universities to try to coerce them [in]to accepting your right-wing agenda is disgraceful, and using that cudgel will have far-reaching implications,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told Dhillon.
“Out of all the years of criticism of ‘cancel culture,’ you seem to want to cancel any institution that has views that you disagree with,” he added.
