Trump Names Craig Trainor Acting Head of DOJ Civil Rights Division, Succeeding Harmeet Dhillon
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on X on the evening of November 10 that President Donald Trump has appointed Craig Trainor as acting assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, succeeding Harmeet Dhillon, who resigned on November 5. The division was led on an interim basis by Jesus Osete after Dhillon's resignation.
Trainor currently serves as the Department of Housing and Urban Development's assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, a Senate-confirmed post he has held since October 2025, overseeing federal fair housing enforcement. He previously served as acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education and as senior special counsel to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, where he was lead counsel on the committee's inquiry into allegations of censorship and antisemitic harassment on college campuses. He also spent more than a decade practicing criminal defense and civil rights law in New York City and worked for the America First Policy Institute.
In his announcement, Blanche said Trainor was the principal architect of HUD's civil rights enforcement policies, which cut the Biden-era fair housing case backlog in half.
Under Dhillon, the Civil Rights Division was redirected toward obtaining state voter rolls and challenging diversity policies, and hundreds of attorneys left the division. Trainor inherits those priorities, along with lawsuits accusing UCLA and Harvard University of tolerating campus antisemitism.
Related: DOJ Civil Rights Chief Harmeet Dhillon Resigns; Attorney General Todd Blanche Accepts Her Departure
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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