Harmeet Dhillon, the far-right lawyer nominated by Donald Trump to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, was confirmed by the Senate on a 52-45 vote Thursday. The confirmation elevates a MAGA loyalist who has sought to undermine many Americans’ civil rights into the top post responsible for upholding them.
Dhillon is a key cog in conservatives’ vision for “lawfare” — that is, weaponization of the law against political opponents. She co-chaired the group Lawyers for Trump, and she and her law firm have arguably been as rabid as anyone in attacking Americans’ voting rights and pushing bogus claims that Trump was cheated out of victory in the 2020 presidential election.
In late 2022, Dhillon launched a failed insurgent bid to oust Ronna McDaniel as chair of the Republican National Committee — an effort that was supported by far-right activist Charlie Kirk, who has openly railed against the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination against marginalized groups. Tellingly, Dhillon’s main argument in that race was that the GOP needed to invest in a larger army of lawyers to help conservatives carry out their lawfare dreams and restrict Americans’ access to the ballot. And Dhillon is also known to peddle the conservative movement’s “anti-woke” propaganda, which seeks to marginalize racial and ethnic minorities and demonize LGBTQ people.
She is, in a variety of ways, an enemy of civil rights. And if you’ve been watching Trump’s other selections for top government posts, most of whom are antagonistic to the goals of the agencies they now lead, the reason Dhillon was chosen seems clear: to pervert the DOJ’s civil rights division and ensure it suits Trump’s illiberal ambitions.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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