Harmeet Dhillon resigns as head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division after 18 months in charge

What happened

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who led the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, resigned on Thursday, according to Attorney General Todd Blanche. Blanche announced the resignation in a post on X and thanked her for her service. NPR and CBS News both reported that she had been in the job for 18 months.

NPR reported that Dhillon is the first senior department official to leave the Trump administration since Democrats retook control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. In an email to staff obtained by NPR, Dhillon said she plans to return to private practice.

How the division changed under Dhillon

NPR noted that the division was created some 70 years ago during the civil rights movement to end racial segregation. Both outlets described her tenure as a sharp break from that history.

Staff departures

NPR reported that Dhillon pushed out roughly 300 career attorneys and replaced them with inexperienced ideological allies. CBS News reported that more than 75% of the division's staff left last year.

New priorities

According to CBS News, the division shifted toward protecting gun owners' rights, curbing diversity, equity and inclusion policies at universities, and opposing civil rights protections for transgender people. NPR reported that the division accused universities and law schools of discriminating against white and Asian students and sued UCLA and Harvard over alleged campus antisemitism. CBS News reported that the department dismissed more than 50 decades-old consent decrees with public schools and dropped two pending consent decrees with the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments.

Voter rolls and poll monitors

CBS News reported that the division filed 31 lawsuits, mostly against blue states and the District of Columbia, seeking unredacted voter rolls. Division lawyers later admitted in court that the department intended to share the data with the Department of Homeland Security, CBS reported, and NPR said courts tossed the lawsuits. On Election Day, the division sent more than 1,000 monitors to polling sites nationwide, a record number, according to CBS News.

Competing accounts of her exit

In her resignation letter, seen by CBS News, Dhillon said she told White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in early October that she would step down after the midterms. Her staff email, as reported by NPR, said she informed Trump in early October.

Two sources told CBS News that Trump demanded she be fired after watching her Oct. 18 appearance on "60 Minutes" about election integrity efforts. One source said Trump felt she should have been more forceful. The sources said department officials stalled so she could resign after the election. CBS also reported that a Sept. 10 memo showed the deputy attorney general's office, not the Civil Rights Division, solicited election monitor volunteers, though a senior official denied that work had been taken from her.

Reaction

Blanche wrote that Dhillon "defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor." White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told CBS News that Dhillon did a "fantastic job." Dhillon called the job "the honor of a lifetime," according to NPR.

Stacey Young, a former division attorney who leads the alumni group Justice Connection, called Dhillon "the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history," both outlets reported. More national coverage is available in our Nation section.

What to watch next

• Dhillon's return to private practice; she wrote that she "will continue fighting for our country in the years ahead," according to CBS News.
• The Pretti shooting case in Minneapolis, where CBS News reported no charges have been filed and state officials are separately investigating.