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Trump’s Justice Department is hastily establishing a reputation as the most segregation-friendly White House in recent memory, as it rolls back long-standing desegregation rules and guidelines. The administration’s dissolution of a school desegregation agreement with a Louisiana parish is just the latest example.
The Associated Press reported Thursday:
When the Justice Department lifted a school desegregation order in Louisiana this week, officials called its continued existence a ‘historical wrong’ and suggested that others dating to the Civil Rights Movement should be reconsidered. The end of the 1966 legal agreement with Plaquemines Parish schools announced Tuesday shows the Trump administration is ‘getting America refocused on our bright future,’ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said.
The AP goes on to note, “dozens of school districts across the South remain under court-enforced agreements dictating steps to work toward integration, decades after the Supreme Court struck down racial segregation in education.” Despite these agreements having been in place for decades, school segregation remains a scourge in many parts of the U.S., including in Louisiana.
But Trump administration officials are trying to frame it as a thing of the past. Take this quote from antisemitism-boosting Civil Rights Division lawyer Leo Terrell, for example:
Louisiana ‘got its act together decades ago,’ Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, said in a statement. He said the dismissal corrects a historical wrong, adding it’s ‘past time to acknowledge how far we have come.’
Ahh, yes, the “historical wrong” of ... fighting racism.
This is all part of a pattern. In March, I blogged about the Trump administration removing guidelines that bar federal contractors from running segregated facilities. Thursday’s AP report suggests the Trump administration may roll back more anti-segregation guidelines in the near future.
While discrimination and racial segregation are technically illegal, the rule changes signal Trump’s administration is deprioritizing civil rights enforcement, and some entities may use this as an opportunity to discriminate. This perversion of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is part of the reason why more than 100 DOJ employees have reportedly either left their jobs or are looking to do so, rather than execute the administration’s plan to undermine civil rights, an effort led by Dhillon, the far-right lawyer who leads the division.
Dhillon is a close ally of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, who has notably called for rolling back the Civil Rights Act, which, among other things, bars discrimination and segregation. By discarding guidelines intended to integrate American institutions like schools, Dhillon seems to be working on making the act a dead letter — or at minimum, neutralizing its ability to defend the rights of marginalized groups.