Former justice department employees sound alarm over ‘near destruction’ of civil rights division
Sam Levine
More than 200 former employees in the justice department’s civil rights division signed a letter released on Tuesday decrying the “near destruction” of the agency that is supposed to enforce America’s civil rights laws and accused political leadership of waging a campaign to purge career experts from its ranks.
There was a mass exodus of lawyers earlier this year after political appointees removed career managers, detailed employees to menial work unilaterally dropped cases, and made it clear the division’s focus would be enforcing Donald Trump’s priorities. By 1 May of this year, the department had lost about 70% of its attorneys – a staggering number. The letter was released on Tuesday to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the founding of the civil rights division.
Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who leads the civil rights division, has cheered the departures of career employees, describing them as activists who did not want to do the work that was asked of them. “That could not be further from the truth. We left because this Administration turned the Division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights,” the letter says. “Having no use for the expertise of career staff, the Administration launched a coordinated effort to drive us out.”
The letter goes on to detail how the division has abandoned civil rights enforcement, including dismissing key cases involving voting rights, sexual abuse of unaccompanied migrant children, and multiple consent decrees involving police departments across the country. Dhillon also encouraged lawyers to leave and accept a paid leave offer and threatened to lay employees off if they did not, the letter says. Justice department officials appeared caught off guard by how many people were leaving earlier this year and quietly asked employees to reconsider leaving.
“America deserves better,” the letter says. “The future of the Civil Rights Division is in jeopardy, and with it, the rights it protects. We hope that one day we can return the Division to its righteous work. Until then, we will continue to defend those rights and the Constitution wherever we find ourselves. We call on all Americans to join us. Demand that the Division enforce our civil rights laws and defend the Constitution’s promise of equal justice for all.”
Key events
Federal judge grants DoJ request to unseal Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury documents
A federal judge in New York has granted the justice department’s request to unseal grand jury documents in the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell – the companion and accomplice of the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. It comes after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Donald Trump signed last month.
The legislation requires the Department of Justice to release the full tranche of records related to disgraced financier, in a searchable format by 19 December.
In his order today, judge Paul A Engelmayer also granted the DoJ’s request to release discovery material – which could comprise thousands of documents and exhibits. However, Engelmayer stipulated that the justice department would still be required to abide by a protective order to “withhold or redact segregable portions that contain personally identifiable and other victim-related information”.
A reminder that Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for her role in Epstein’s sex-trafficking crimes in a minimum security facility in Texas. In October, the supreme court rejected her petition to overturn her conviction.
My colleague, Jakub Krupa, is covering the latest out of Europe on our dedicated live blog today. In his interview with Politico, Donald Trump dismissed EU leaders as “weak” and labelled Europe as a “decaying group of nations”.
Trump also said he didn’t have much hopes about European involvement in Ukraine peace talks, as “they talk, but they don’t produce, and the war just keeps going on and on.”
Jakub notes that “these comments will do nothing to reassure European leaders concerned about the anti-EU outbursts over the weekend coming from the American right.”
While these comments are, in many ways, more of the same from the president, the timing is certainly significant.
“For him [Trump] to repeat all these lines with some pride as he gets named by Politico as ‘the most powerful person shaping Europe’ at the same time as European leaders want – or, more accurately, really need – to stay close to him on Ukraine … it makes it all very complicated for everyone involved,” Jakub writes.
Donald Trump will travel to Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, today for a rally-style event to push out his administration’s affordability messaging.
As we reported earlier, the president touted the state of the US economy under his leadership in an interview with Politico. We can expect more of the same lines at his event today, in a county that swung for Trump in 2024, after voting for the Democratic candidate in several prior presidential elections.
Before Trump heads to Pennsylvania, he’ll attend vice-president JD Vance’s Christmas reception.
Trump concluded his interview with Politico with some musings on the future leadership of the Republican party. Asked if anyone in the party could energise such a wide coalition as he had, Trump said:
I hope so. I don’t know. You never know until they’re tested. You know, it’s like, uh, you jump in the water; you can swim or you can’t.
Hegseth can testify before Congress over 2 September boat strike ‘if he wants’, Trump says
In his interview with Politico published on Tuesday morning, Trump was asked if the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, should testify under oath before Congress about a second US military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug ferrying boat on 2 September.
“He can if he wants,” Trump said, adding: “I don’t care. I would say do it if you want, Pete.”
Trump said he had seen the video of the strikes. Asked if he thought the second strike was necessary, he said:
Uh, well, it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat, but I don’t get involved in that. That’s up to them.
Trump claimed that each strike on an alleged drug boat saved the lives of 25,000 Americans, a figure that has been strongly questioned by public health experts.
He added:
And we’re gonna hit ’em on land very soon, too.
Trump grades US economy as ‘A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus’
Asked by Politico to grade the US economy, Trump first rated it as “A-plus”, before upgrading it to “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus”. Questioned over the cost of living for voters, Trump said he “inherited a total mess”, and added: “Prices were at an all-time high when I came in. Prices are coming down substantially … It’s been 10 months. It’s amazing what we’ve done.”
Asked if he would rule out reducing tariffs on any more goods, Trump said:
“On some. And on some I’ll increase tariffs. Because you know what happens is because of tariffs, all of the car companies are coming back.”
You know, we lost 58% of the automobile business. We a monopoly in the world. We had everything. And because we had presidents that either weren’t smart or didn’t have business sense or their people didn’t do a good job … they could’ve kept that.
Trump also spoke about the computer chip industry, after yesterday’s decision to allow Nvidia to sell some of its chips to China.
“We could’ve kept the chip market. We had 100% of the chip market, Intel, all of these guys. You know, there’s the thing. They came in to see me, Intel. They needed something to be done by the government. I said, I’m gonna do it, but I think you have to give us 10% of your company. You know what happened? We made $40bn on that deal. The price went through the roof. The United States … in about 10 minutes, I made $40bn. Nobody talks about that.”
Nvidia shares boosted by Trump’s announcement of chip sales to China
Nvidia shares rose 1.7% in US pre-market trading on Tuesday after Trump said he would allow the sale of its H200 chips to approved Chinese customers. The US president announced on Monday that he had granted Nvidia permission to ship H200 chips to China in exchange for a 25% surcharge for the US, a move that could allow the world’s most valuable company to win back billions of dollars in lost business.
China’s tech stocks slipped slightly after Trump’s announcement. China’s SSE Star Chip index dropped by 1% at the start of trading, before recovering slightly to a 0.43% fall. China’s CSI semiconductor industry index had a similar drop, before recovering to a 0.36% fall.
Last night, Trump insisted that Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips wouldn’t be sold to China, posting on Truth Social:
Nvidia’s US Customers are already moving forward with their incredible, highly advanced Blackwell chips, and soon, Rubin, neither of which are part of this deal.
My Administration will always put America FIRST. The Department of Commerce is finalizing the details, and the same approach will apply to AMD, Intel, and other GREAT American Companies. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Trump’s move was criticized by some senior Democratic senators, including Jeanne Shaheen and Chris Coons — the top two Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee — Jack Reed, the Democratic head of the Senate armed services committee, and Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Senate banking committee.
They, and other Democratic senators, urged Trump to reverse the decision, saying:
“The Trump administration’s announcement that it will allow the export of advanced H200 AI chips to China is a colossal economic and national security failure. The H200s are vastly more capable than anything China can make and gifting them to Beijing would squander America’s primary advantage in the AI race.”
More from that Politico interview with Donald Trump published this morning: Trump told the politics site that he would expect his pick for chair of the Federal Reserve to support an immediate cut to interest rates.
Trump has not yet chosen a new Fed chair, but has been putting pressure on the current chief, Jerome Powell, to cut rates.
Asked if the new chair should lower rates immediately, Trump said:
This guy [Powell] should too. But I think he’s a combination of not a smart person and doesn’t like Trump. But the reason he doesn’t like Trump … is because I hit him hard because he’s doing a bad job.”
Trump says only ‘dark and sinister forces’ would want his tariffs to end
Donald Trump has defended his tariff regime as he prepares to give a speech on the US economy and cost of living at a rally in Pennsylvania this evening.
Posting on his social media platform Truth Social in the early hours of Tuesday morning, Trump wrote:
Because of Tariffs, easily and quickly applied, our National Security has been greatly enhanced, and we have become the financially strongest Country, by far, anywhere in the World. Only dark and sinister forces would want to see that end!!!
Supreme court justices are due to make a ruling on Trump’s tariffs soon, having heard oral arguments on their legal validity last month. The ruling is expected by the end of this year or early 2026.
In a second post, Trump wrote:
The biggest threat in history to United States National Security would be a negative decision on Tariffs by the U.S. Supreme Court. We would be financially defenseless. Now Europe is going to Tariffs against China, as they already do against others. We would not be allowed to do what others already do!
On Monday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said that he had told Beijing that if China did not reduce its “unsustainable” trade deficit with EU, then Europeans would be forced to take measures such as imposing tariffs on Chinese products.
On Tuesday, the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, said that “mutually destructive consequences of tariffs have become increasingly evident” over the course of this year, though he did not mention Donald Trump by name.
Hegseth and Rubio expected to brief ‘Gang of Eight’
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, are expected to brief the “Gang of Eight” lawmakers on Tuesday afternoon, Reuters reports, citing two sources familiar with the plan and a Trump administration official.
The “Gang of Eight” – which includes intelligence committee and Senate and House of Representatives leaders from both parties – is traditionally briefed on major national security actions.
The sources did not discuss the nature of the briefing, expected to take place at 3:30pm ET.
Tensions have been mounting between the US and Venezuela, as Donald Trump threatens land strikes against suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers, after more than three months of a military campaign against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. On Tuesday, Politico published an interview with the president in which he refused to rule out putting US troops into Venezuela. “I don’t comment on that. I wouldn’t say that one way or the other,” he said.
Asked if he would consider adopting a similar strategy to that taken with Venezuela against Mexico and Colombia, Trump replied: “Yeah, I would. Sure. I would.”
The US military has also built up the presence of warships in the Caribbean, including an aircraft carrier strike group and a nuclear submarine.
Adm Alvin Holsey, the outgoing commander of the US military’s southern command, which oversees American troops in Latin America, is also expected to brief a separate group of House and Senate lawmakers on Tuesday, two people familiar with the matter said.
Holsey will step down on Friday, less than two months after the surprise announcement of his early retirement, which came just over a month into the Pentagon’s accelerating campaign against suspected drug boats. The strikes have resulted in the deaths of nearly 90 people and raised concerns among Democrats and legal experts.
Trump’s military operations have been under increased scrutiny since a 2 September decision to launch a second strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean.
The video of the attack, viewed by lawmakers last week, showed two men clinging to wreckage after their vessel was destroyed in the first strike, according to sources familiar with the imagery. They were shirtless, unarmed and carried no visible communications equipment.
The defense department’s Law of War Manual forbids attacks on combatants who are incapacitated, unconscious or shipwrecked, as long as they abstain from hostilities and do not attempt to escape. The manual cites firing upon shipwreck survivors as an example of a “clearly illegal” order that should be refused.
On Monday, Trump said he would let Hegseth decide whether to release the full video of the strike, in a shift from comments last week when he said the government would “certainly release” any footage, “no problem”.
“Whatever Hegseth wants to do is OK with me,” Trump said on Monday.
The annual defense policy bill currently passing through Congress includes provisions that would compel the Pentagon to provide Congressional committees with unedited video of the strikes. Lawmakers in Congress have tried in recent months to compel Hegseth’s department to share more information about the attacks. The bill would withhold a quarter of the Pentagon’s travel funds if the footage is not shared.
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