All posts tagged "Harmeet Dhillon"

A former prosecutor ripped apart the Trump Justice Department's claim that its new civil rights lawyers rank among the nation's finest.

Lawyer and journalist Katie Phang, a former Miami-Dade prosecutor, picked through the records of new hires in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division on Wednesday's episode of "The Katie Phang Show," drawing on a New York Times report. The division is run by Harmeet Dhillon, President Donald Trump's pick to lead it.

Phang first played a June clip of Dhillon addressing the division’s staffing crunch. “Three-quarters of the lawyers in the department quit,” Dhillon said. “We’ve now hired back over 100 lawyers... I am proud to say that I’ve attracted the best and brightest to the Civil Rights Division.”...

The Justice Department is invoking a landmark civil rights law as it walks back a lawsuit seeking to dismantle a state's affirmative action hiring policy.

In a memorandum filed on Tuesday, the DOJ asked a three-judge panel for leave to amend its complaint in a lawsuit it first brought against the state on January 14.

The suit accuses Minnesota of maintaining a "race- and sex-based affirmative action policy" for its state civil service that amounts to a "pattern or practice" violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the very statute written to bar discrimination in employment....

A Department of Justice lawyer was forced to eat his own words after boasting about getting New Jersey's voter rolls then failing the next day.

On Wednesday, a federal judge dismissed a DOJ case seeking New Jersey's unredacted voter rolls. The decision gave the Trump DOJ its 18th straight defeat in court when it comes to its nationwide effort to grab state voter rolls.

However, Democracy Docket noted in its coverage of the decision that the DOJ's loss was made more ironic by one of its attorneys boasting the day before that it would secure New Jersey's voter rolls....

A Trump-appointed federal judge dealt a blow to the Department of Justice's efforts to collect sensitive voter roll information, according to reports.

U.S. District Judge Lance Walker, a Trump appointee in Maine, ruled against a DOJ lawsuit demanding the state's voter rolls, according to reporting by All Rise News.

“Comity between coequal sovereigns is the hallmark of a thrumming republic," Walker wrote in his ruling. ...

A former prosecutor signaled that President Donald Trump faces a number of heightened challenges, including a dilemma over the Department of Justice.

In a live video conversation between Joyce Vance and Alex Wagner on Substack Friday, Vance suggested that a power struggle was happening behind-the-scenes at the Department of Justice since former Attorney General Pam Bondi has left and an embattled Trump faces a growing number of obstacles from voter dissatisfaction over the economy, the war in Iran and opposition to his ballroom ambitions — all with midterms on the horizon.

"Donald Trump is like a cornered animal right now," Vance said. "He can read the polls. He's got troubles in Iran." ...

Three years ago, Jonathan Cagle was a MAGA loyalist, part of a messaging machine that sowed doubts about the outcome of elections and helped build an air of inevitability around Donald Trump’s return to power.

Last week in Alabama, a federal magistrate judge ordered Cagle held without bond, for allegedly cyberstalking U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, the top civil rights official in Trump’s Department of Justice.

As Trump enters the second year of his tempestuous second term, Cagle’s story offers a signpost to growing disillusionment and division on the U.S. far right. ...