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The Department of Justice has ordered its civil rights division to halt new cases, further signalling the new administration’s hostility to racial and gender equality since Donald Trump’s return to power.
The decision came amid a blur of frenzied activity across a range of sectors that sent out simultaneous signals of incipient purges and revenge against political opponents, along with a determination to act on radical campaign pledges.
The call to halt civil rights cases – set out in an instruction to Kathleen Wolfe, the new acting head of the justice department’s civil rights division – followed an earlier order putting staff on federal diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs on immediate leave as a prelude to shutting such programs down.
Activists called the move “unprecedented” and warned that it indicated a government intention to abandon civil rights and protections against discrimination that have been enshrined in legislation since the 1950s and 1960s.
“This should make Americans both angry and deeply worried,” said Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, to the Washington Post. “This is more than just a changing course of philosophy – this is exactly what most people feared: a justice department that was created to protect civil rights literally abdicating its duty and responsibility to protect Americans from all forms of discrimination.”
An executive order issued by Trump on Monday ordered “the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the federal government, under whatever name they appear”.
Civil rights campaigners say that, in effect, this move cancels a 1965 order issued by Lyndon Johnson to help enforce the historic Civil Rights Act of the previous year and that prohibited government contractors from discriminating in hiring or employment practices on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
The changed approach to civil rights and equality came among a relentless barrage of policy initiatives and mass firings arising from a fusillade of executive orders issued by Trump in his opening days back in the White House that have left Washington’s political establishment in a state of shocked bewilderment.
About 160 career staff members in the White House’s national security staff were called to a meeting on Wednesday and ordered to go home. Trump staffers prepared to grill them on their loyalty to the new administration, it was reported.
Paving the way for a widespread purge, Trump signed an order called Schedule F that enables the firing of civil servants who have previously had long-standing job protections shielding them from removal by incoming administrations.
“We’re getting rid of all the cancer, the cancer caused by the Biden administration,” Trump said as he signed the order.
An early victim was Adm Linda Fagan, the first-ever female commander of the US Coastal Service, who was fired by his acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, Benjamine Huffman, who cited a supposed “excessive focus” on diversity.
The unstinting pace was also applied to Trump’s signature issue of immigration, where he has pledged to forcibly deport an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants.
Amid reports of widespread fears among immigrant communities, the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration was amassing an expanded army of deportation officers by extending the power to deport agencies with other non-immigration remits.
Deportation powers would be granted to agencies in the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the US Marshals Service, according to a directive issued by Huffman.
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The move followed a Pentagon announcement on Wednesday that it was sending 1,500 active duty troops to the southern US border with Mexico.
Trump, meanwhile, has sent unambiguous signals that he intends to follow through on his campaign threats of retribution.
On his opening day, he revoked security passes of 51 former intelligence officials who signed a 2020 letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop saga had “classic hallmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The following day, he cancelled Secret Service protection for John Bolton, the former national security adviser during his first presidency, who has been the subject of Iranian-backed assassination threats.
On Wednesday, after Trump had pardoned nearly 1,600 rioters convicted in connection with the January 6 insurrection, Mike Johnson, the House of Representatives’ speaker – who has come increasingly under the new president’s sway – announced a new sub-committee to investigate “false narratives” supposedly peddled by the original January 6 investigative committee. The committee’s leading members were pardoned by Joe Biden in his last act as president on Monday.
In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday, Trump noted ominously that Biden had not pardoned himself. “And if you look at it, it all had to do with him,” he said.
“I went through four years of hell by this scum we had to deal with,” Trump replied on being asked if he would order his attorney general to investigate his enemies. “It’s really hard to say they shouldn’t have to go through it also.”
