Joy-Ann Reid: Career Civil Rights Division DOJ Employees Being Encouraged to Leave

Career Civil Rights Division DOJ Employees Being ‘Encouraged’ to Leave
While President Trump may have few real achievements with legislation or the economy, he has managed to turn the clock back decades in the Department of Justice and created a climate of fear in the Civil Rights Division.
Joy-Ann Reid
04.29.17 12:41 PM ET

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The Civil Rights Division was created by the 1957 Civil Rights Act and has a mission that reads like Sessions’ worst nightmare: “enforcing federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status and national origin.” It’s the Division that prosecuted the killers of Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney in Mississippi, and that investigated the assassinations of Medgar Evers and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But under Sessions, morale in the Civil Rights Division has cratered, according to three sources with knowledge of the inner workings. “They are totally freaking out,” said a former high-ranking DOJ official speaking on condition of anonymity to protect those still working there. “They are doing everything they can to keep things going, but everything they do has to run through a front office mired in politics.” Specifically, the politics of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, whose antiquated views on voting rights, immigration and LGBT people he now has the power to put into practice on a national scale.

The Civil Rights Division employs some 700 career civil servants: mostly lawyers cut from the ACLU or NAACP Legal Defense Fund cloth. They are “mission driven, and wicked smart,” said the former official, and they are supposed to be insulated from politics. But while some functions at Justice are self-propelled, based on enforcing existing laws, the mission of the Civil Rights Division can be greatly shaped by the political appointees, who number fewer than a dozen, but who hold immense power over their respective fiefdoms; areas like housing rights the rights of the disabled, employment litigation and voting rights.

“It’s brutal in there,” said the ex official. “This is an administration that has made no bones about being willing to undermine really longstanding civil rights enforcement.”

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/29/the-real-100-days-trump-success.html