Hi Kids, Do You Like (Police) Violence? Trump’s DOJ Shuts Down Civil Rights Division

Well, we can go ahead and erase “perhaps” from this not-all-that-prescient-actually-given-the-circumstances headline:

DOJ Issues Perhaps The Last Law Enforcement Investigation Report We’ll See For The Next Four Years

It was inevitable. Trump’s DOJ kicked the Civil Rights Division to the curb faster than Trump cycled through Attorneys General during his first term. Trump promised the police a police state when he first took office following the 2016 election.

His few years away from the Oval Office haven’t softened his stance. Police are right (expect when they’re standing in the way of insurrectionists), and the DOJ is good (so long as it isn’t prosecuting Trump supporters who assaulted police officers), and anyone complaining about abuses by law enforcement better just shut the fuck up for the foreseeable future.

2024 wrapped up with a lot of last-minute releases of DOJ investigations into local law enforcement agencies. Every investigation arrived at the same conclusion: plenty of bad people were wearing uniforms and badges and abusing their power regularly to the detriment of civil liberties and their relationship with the communities they were supposed to be serving.

Unfortunately, all we’re really going to gain from this flurry of DOJ Civil Rights Division activity is additional data that points to a systemic rot in law enforcement, something that’s actively encouraged by upper management personnel more than willing to be part of the problem.

Trump’s administration has made its assault on civil liberties official, as Perry Stein and David Nakamura report for the Washington Post:

The Justice Department has ordered the civil rights division to halt much of its investigative activity dating from the Biden administration and not pursue new indictments, cases or settlements, according to a memo sent to the temporary head of the division that was obtained by The Washington Post.

The letter instructs Kathleen Wolfe — designated by the Trump administration as supervisor of the division — to ensure that civil rights attorneys do not file “any new complaints, motions to intervene, agreed-upon remands, amicus briefs, or statements of interest.”

That brings a whole lot of stuff to a standstill. And this includes stuff that was already in motion before Trump was elected for a second time, including consent decrees and agreements that had already been put in place before the recent, extremely peaceful transfer of power.

A separate memo sent to Wolfe on Wednesday says the civil rights division must notify the Justice Department’s chief of staff of any consent decrees the division has finalized within the last 90 days. That directive suggests that police-reform agreements the Justice Department has negotiated with cities including Minneapolis, Louisville and Memphis could be in jeopardy.

As has often been said of (and so often proved by) the Trump Administration: the cruelty is the point. Trump isn’t simply content with ensuring no cop shop goes punished going forward during his second term. He wants to undo as much positive effort from his predecessor as possible to inflict maximum pain on the American public. We’re a nation once again being run by petty bullies and supported by the sort of people who love bullying, so long as the people they hate get beat up more often than they do.