Trump upends DOJ's Civil Rights Division, sparking 'bloodbath' in senior ranks

More than a dozen senior lawyers in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division – many with decades of experience – have been reassigned.

The Trump administration has quietly transformed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, forcing out a majority of career managers and implementing new priorities that current and former officials say abandon a decadeslong mission of enforcing laws that prohibit discrimination in hiring, housing and voting rights.

More than a dozen senior lawyers — many with decades of experience working under presidents of both parties — have been reassigned, the current and former officials say. Some have resigned in frustration after they were moved to less desirable roles unrelated to their expertise, according to the sources.

“It’s been a complete bloodbath,” said a senior Justice Department lawyer in the division who is not authorized to speak publicly.

Last week, President Donald Trump’s hand-picked head of the division issued a series of memos outlining priorities that are dramatically at odds with the way both Republican and Democratic administrations have enforced civil rights law — including the first Trump administration.

Rather than focusing on enforcing federal laws against discrimination, the division is now charged with pursuing priorities laid out in a series of Trump’s executive orders, including “Keeping Men out of Women's Sports” and “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” according to the memos, which were issued by division head Harmeet Dhillon and obtained by NBC News.