The Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice has long been a far-left viper’s nest of career social justice warriors masquerading as civil rights attorneys. Many of them left in protest after Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon took lead of the division, but the government-wide hiring freeze is making it difficult to replace the bad attorneys with ones who will execute President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Like any deep-state bureaucrats who hate conservative policies, many staff attorneys at the Civil Rights Division have been able to either ignore or actively thwart initiatives they personally do not like. It was a hallmark of the first Trump administration, but with lessons learned from Trump 45, Trump 47 knows to be more skeptical of the career staff.

‘Crying Sessions’ And The Hiring Freeze

In recent public addresses and interviews, most notably to the Federalist Society and on the Tucker Carlson Show, Dhillon has described her experience with the career staff at the division in her first several weeks on the job.

Speaking with the Federalist Society in May, Dhillon described the division as the “color revolution wing” of the Department of Justice working to “slow things down” they do not like.

“I have been privileged to work with a number of amazing, dedicated people who are doing a fantastic job of working and focusing on the President’s agenda. Several of them are career professionals, not just the political people who have come along with me,” she said. “But there are hundreds of people working at the DOJ Civil Rights Division that had some different ideas about our agenda.”

“I found there [were] … hundreds of lawyers who were actively in resistance mode,” Dhillon told Carlson. “There were memos out there by former government lawyers telling current government lawyers in my department how to resist if you’re given a direct order, ask for clarification, send 20 emails, question it slow down your response time, say it can’t be done.”

Dhillon had written up memoranda for each of the eleven sections of the division, stating what the statutes for which they are responsible say, what the Trump administration’s agenda is, and how the new administration would actually be enforcing laws like Title VII employment discrimination, or Title VI racial discrimination in light of executive orders canceling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology, or the Americans with Disabilities Act — emphasizing unbiased enforcement.

Those memos, which simply informed staff attorneys of the law and the priorities of the Trump administration, “catalyzed hundreds of lawyers to quit,” she told Carlson, agreeing that they had been so entrenched that division attorneys thought they were “immune to democracy” and following the will of the American people who voted for Trump’s agenda.

“It is cutting to the core of the liberal ethos that we’re actually trying to apply these civil rights laws which I believe in, in an even-handed way,” Dhillon said.

When she came on, the Civil Rights Division had about 400 attorneys and 200 other staff. After the Trump administration offered millions of federal employees the “fork in the road,” a program offering to buy employees out of their jobs, the number of attorneys was cut in half because they chose the buyout.

But that came after leaking, “open crying in the halls,” and hosting what Dhillon described as “unhappy hours,” where attorneys would invite political appointee supervisors to make sure they knew how perturbed they were. Dhillon also said that there are now emotional support groups for former attorneys.

She told a story at the Federalist Society where, when trying to pull together volunteers for an antisemitism task force, only three out of 400 attorneys volunteered. She further pointed to other frivolous and “fact-free” pursuits of the division like suing Georgia for “improving its voter laws.”

Of the attorney who stayed behind, Dhillon said “I actually don’t care what their politics are, they can have their views. I believe in the First Amendment. The question is, are you willing to do the job under the job description as set out by this administration? After all, the DOJ is part of the executive branch. The president gets to pick the top people running it, and he kind of gets to set the agenda.”

But because of the hiring freeze, the Civil Rights Division is running at half capacity, in what Dhillon described as being in the “DOGE phase” of the government — meant to cull the masses of unnecessary bureaucrats and cut waste, fraud, and abuse across the government.

DOGE cuts are incredibly important, and are one of the major items for which Americans voted for Trump, but the blanket nature of some of its operations may be too blunt an object for something as important as reviving true civil rights enforcement with an army of attorneys ready to right the ship.

The problem at the Civil Rights Division appears to be threefold: Hundreds of far-left attorneys remain in the division, hundreds of far-left activist attorneys quit, and Dhillon cannot hire back good personnel to fill the positions to execute the important work of the division.

“So we’re making do with who’s left behind, some of whom share the views of the ones who left, but perhaps weren’t as able to get jobs outside, and some who I think are willing to work with us,” she told Carlson.

She has yet to be able to replace anyone, but even if the hoard of left-wing activist lawyers who remain in the Civil Rights Division comply totally with the goals of the administration, their dispositional anger at the work they are being required to do will create a vastly different product than someone who knows the mission and is eager to execute it.

A Vision To Reform Civil Rights

Quoting John Adams to the Federalist Society audience, Dhillon said, “The revolution was affected before the war commenced. The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.”

That was a jumping-off point to describe the Trump administration’s vision for how to bring the Civil Rights Division back from the brink, truly reflect “the will of the American people,” and be “the plaintiffs’ firm for the American people.”

“This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution. Under President Trump’s leadership, we have a generational opportunity for a reformation within civil rights,” she said.

Dhillon listed a litany of problems that had been allowed to fester in the government under far-left control, like racial quotas and mandates, violations of religious liberties, violations of women’s rights to have private spaces, a bastardization of Title IX to warp equal access to education and sports opportunities, and a complete and total lack of election integrity, among many other things.

She was also critical of the conservative movement which had taken a far too free market approach to the law which many believed would “self-correct its imperfections.”

“Well, let’s review how that market has delivered civil rights as we understand it today. The persistent cry of deregulation has gotten us pervasive illegal entrenchment of DEI in our states, for our universities, and our workplaces; missed opportunities for girls and women to achieve titles, awards, and scholarships in their sports, free from male competition; political indoctrination of transgenderism and gender ideology in children’s schools without parental consent; clear abuse of the FACE Act to target the peaceful speech and prayers of people of faith; myriad unenforced federal election laws preventing American citizens from believing that their elections are free and fair,” she said.

But aside from actual enforcement, Dhillon came back to staffing. Not as a numbers issue, but as a dispositional problem for conservatives who go to law school.

All too often, she said, conservatives will pursue Supreme Court or appellate clerkships or big law, where the payout is extremely attractive.

She said the “fork in the road for the conservative movement,” at least among lawyers, will be choosing a less risk-averse path. Instead of chasing a paycheck, “which has essentially displayed itself as a tacit alignment with the defense bar,” she added, conservatives would need to come in droves to civil rights law so that the overwhelming majority of attorneys are no longer far-left activists.

Not doing so has “really stifled the conservative movement’s ability to do the work needed to defend the rights of the most vulnerable in our nation, both in public service and in the private sector,” she said. “We need people committed, courageous, people that, as lawyers and paraprofessionals, willing to do the work to make this mission a reality.”