'Open season on policing': How Trump is torching DOJ’s 'crown jewel'

Although the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was created by Congress in 1870 under GOP President Ulysses S. Grant, it's Civil Rights Division didn't come into existence for another 87 years. The DOJ Civil Rights Division was created by Congress in 1957 under another Republican president: Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on April 11, journalist Jonathan Blanks (not to be confused with actor Jonathan Banks) laments that the Civil Rights Division was long regarded as DOJ's "crown jewel" but is now being horribly degraded by the Trump Administration.

"In the first weeks of President Trump's second term," Blanks explains, "the administration undertook a series of troubling steps to transform the U.S. Department of Justice into an armed political organ. As we have already seen, the politicization of DOJ can protect Trump's allies from accountability for criminal activity. But for the average American, the much more troubling pattern is the dismantling of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, which provides oversight and accountability for state and local law enforcement institutions."

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Blanks stresses that the DOJ Civil Rights Division has a long history of fighting police overreach.

"Congress originally established the Department of Justice as a bulwark of civil rights protection against terrorists, ex-slave owners, and the southern states looking to reestablish white supremacy after the Civil War," Blanks notes. "Although the Department strayed far from its initial function, Congress eventually created the Civil Rights Division in 1957, as some states still enforced segregation and recognized neither the letter nor the spirit of the 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments. For the past seven decades, the Division has acted as a sort of police of the police."

Blanks adds, "When government officials — especially those with badges and guns — violate Americans' rights rather than protecting them, it often falls to the Division to enforce the law against law enforcement."

But Trump, Blanks laments, views DOJ as his personal tool of revenge.

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"Earlier this month, the Senate confirmed Harmeet Dhillon to head the Civil Rights Division," Blanks observes. "Dhillon, a lawyer who helped Trump spread the Big Lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election, is an ardent culture warrior and will likely be a major figure in the administration's war on DEI. But even more pernicious would be a policy — likely unofficial — of looking the other way on police abuse, leading to federal tolerance of over-policing policies like 'stop and frisk' and racially biased pretextual stops of drivers, not to mention another indefinite pause on federal pattern and practice investigations of police departments suspected of widespread civil rights violations…. Announcing open season on policing would be bad enough in any administration, but it's particularly alarming given some of Trump's other actions, including: Terminating the career DOJ lawyers who prosecuted January 6th insurrectionists…. repeatedly and vociferously advocating for law enforcement to use violence against protesters and immigrants."

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Jonathan Blanks' full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.