The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice hasn’t always been as effective as it could be in extending rights to all Americans. Under some presidents, it’s been forceful and energetic. Under others, enforcement has been much more lax. But under Donald Trump, the division’s whole purpose is about to be perverted.
The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.
A memo now circulating among the staff of the Civil Rights Division is looking to recruit lawyers to this cause. And it’s being given singular importance.
The announcement suggests that the project will be run out of the division’s front office, where the Trump administration’s political appointees work, rather than its Educational Opportunities Section, which is run by career civil servants and normally handles work involving schools and universities.
Under Donald Trump, the EPA has become a tool for degrading the environment and the Education Department has become a means of damaging public schools. Now the Civil Rights Division is being used to reverse Civil Rights.
It’s also a reminder that just because Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is under attack from Donald Trump, that doesn’t make him any less of a racist Klan fan who is determined to punish African Americans by every means available.