Inside Trump's Office of Civil Rights, where 'white men replace minorities'

The education agency that investigates discrimination claims faces a ‘sinister’ overhaul, current and former staff tell The Times

https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/ocr-trump-civil-rights-doe-bd7gzfc27

https://archive.ph/hSqO6


President Trump addressed the University of Alabama in May. His objectives for education include targeting “gender ideology” and campus antisemitism

Donald Trump spent years raging against the Biden administration for elevating women and ethnic minorities into positions for which he said they were not qualified. Now, a president who pledged to crack down on favouritism towards select groups in government is being accused of the same bias — in reverse. At the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), a sub-agency of the Department of Education, staff say they are baffled by the crop of new political appointees entrusted with leading the agency’s fight against discrimination in public education.

“They’re just white, straight, male DEI hires,” a senior supervisor who recently left the agency told The Times. “The irony of all of this is that the same people in the front office at OCR are now the same political appointees who were screaming their heads off about DEI.” The agency enforces civil rights laws in schools and universities and investigates disability, sex and race-based discrimination complaints. Under Biden the OCR was led by a woman, Catherine E Lhamon.



She has been replaced temporarily by Craig Trainor, who was arrested and charged with drink-driving in Manhattan in 2010. “We slyly referred to him as our DUI hire,” the former supervisor said. Trainor did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Education denied that he was unqualified for the role, noting he had years of experience as a civil rights attorney.



In addition to Trainor, four men are leading the OCR, three of whom are white. The youngest, David Samberg, graduated law school in 2023. A former senior supervisor said he was “barely out of diapers” and “not qualified to advise anyone on anything … None of these appointees have the experience or qualifications that any non-Trump administration would require, and many of them have no relevant experience at all.”

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