Eyes on the Prize

Susan Estrich on Jan 25, 2025

The Justice Department has ordered its civil rights division to halt any ongoing litigation from the Biden administration and not pursue any new cases or settlements, according to a memo sent to the temporary head of the division that was obtained by The Washington Post. It's a freeze on everything, which is a prelude to an about-face when/if Harmeet Dhillon is confirmed as assistant attorney general. The memo states that officials are implementing the freeze to be "consistent with the Department's goal of ensuring that the Federal Government speaks with one voice in its view of the law and to ensure that the President's appointees or designees have the opportunity to decide whether to initiate any new cases."

It's not just the new cases that will have to make it through the "one voice" screen. It's the old cases, too. A separate memo asks the division for notice of any consent decrees the division has finalized within the last 90 days. Two such settlement agreements are especially noteworthy: one with the city of Louisville, where the 2020 police killing of Breonna Taylor sparked nationwide protests, and another -- a police accountability plan --with the city leaders of Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed. Those agreements were years in the making. Will the reforms in the settlements be enforced or ripped apart by a new administration?

Some of this is what happens when you don't win.

Some of this is what happens when you don't pay attention.

The only way you ever know the difference is by paying attention.

I hear a lot of people saying that they're simply not going to pay attention anymore, that denial and ignorance is the best way to avoid all the other feelings that come over a significant percentage of us when forced to confront the daily doings of the new administration. Surveying the front page -- the front screen, as it usually is -- is painful. There are so many stories to not read.

But ignorance isn't bliss. It just means you're going to do nothing about it. And while that might be the right approach to things you cannot change, it is not the right approach to things you cannot accept.

The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has a long tradition of standing up for rights that, too often, states were unwilling to enforce. It has, for years, been at the forefront of police brutality cases. Should it back away now? Should it become the branch of government that will enforce the mandate that there are only two genders, male and female, and no place for those who fit into a different category. Is that its future?

At a time when some in the mainstream media seem more inclined than ever to get in bed with the object of their attention, we have never needed them to be more independent. Who will tell us what is going on? Who will report on the memoranda to the interim directors, which is what The Washington Post was doing in its story on the Justice Department?

This administration has committed itself to attacking the "Deep State," -- aka, the civil service, the establishment, the moderate middle that has always been the bulwark of our government -- that they think frustrated their revolutionary impulses last time around. And rather than being met by a skeptical audience, as Trump was last time, he is being met by a fawning one. They may be fawning out of fear, out of a better-than-the-alternative concession, but the concern is the same.

Who will tell us what is really going on? They have had four years to plan, and dream, of what they will do, and they are doing it before our eyes. It is no time to take our eyes off the prize.

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