Architect of Trump’s attack on DEI to lead DOJ Civil Rights Division

Craig Trainor, a lawyer and administration official who played a key role in President Donald Trump’s attacks on civil rights protections, will now be charged with enforcing laws that protect Americans’ right to vote as head of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division.

He takes over the job from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversaw the division’s pivot from its traditional mission of protecting voting rights to attacking them. Dhillon stepped down last week.

Trainor came to public prominence in February 2025 while working for the Department of Education, when he authored a letter threatening U.S. schools and universities with a loss of federal funding for their embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies — which he referred to as “pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination.”

He currently works as assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity. In a social media post announcing Trainor’s appointment as assistant attorney general for civil rights Wednesday, Attorney General Todd Blanche highlighted his work overseeing enforcement of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) civil rights statutes.

Trainor’s work at both departments has been sharply criticized for rolling back civil rights protections within the federal government. 

In 2025, the NAACP sued Trainor over his letter challenging DEI programs at universities. In a statement, NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the letter a “gross distortion of reality that attempts to erase the lived experiences of millions of Black and Brown children in this country.”

“The Department of Education, tasked with a responsibility to protect the civil rights of all children, has instead claimed systemic racism doesn’t exist—effectively sanctioning the very discrimination that our civil rights laws were designed to prevent,” Johnson added. 

At his new post, Trainor will likely continue the DOJ’s attacks on voting. 

Under Dhillon, the department aggressively attempted to gain access to private voter data from every state, earning it a humiliating streak of 28 straight losses in court. As the DOJ cast aside its traditional mission of protecting Americans’ voting rights, Dhillon oversaw the depletion of the Civil Rights Division’s ranks, with veteran attorneys resigning or being reassigned and resources increasingly getting shifted toward investigating allegations of voter fraud. 

Though Trainor may not have much direct experience with voting rights, he has worked closely with prominent figures who have tried to undermine them. 

He was previously a lawyer with the America First Policy Institute, working under former Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Trainor also served as the senior special counsel with the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary when it was chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Jordan, who was just elected as the new House GOP leader, actively helped President Donald Trump try to subvert the 2020 election results and promoted anti-voting conspiracy theories.