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Trump Makes 4,000 Appointments: Consider One—Harmeet Dhillon

By Walter Donway

March 18, 2025

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With headlines about the Trump administration routinely throwing around phrases like “tariff chaos,” “Trump tumult,” “Trump market crash,” and other apocalyptic “news” headlines, it might be useful to focus on just one of President Trump’s decisions, one appointee, and its significance.

Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney, was nominated Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice by President Trump.

Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, an attorney, was nominated Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice by President Trump on December 9, 2024. As of March 15, 2025, her nomination is embattled in the Senate. Ms. Dhillon was an at-large delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention from California. In 2012, she was a Republican candidate for District 11 of the California State.

Kimberly Strassel writes in the March 14, 2025, Wall Street Journal that Dhillon is “the woman soon to take on the federal government’s most treacherous bog. Bring on the hazard pay for Harmeet Dhillon…

“What former Attorney General Eric Holder called the Justice Department’s ‘crown jewel,’ the Civil Rights Division has for decades successfully repelled any effort at reform or even oversight. It is a hotbed of liberal activism that  acts as a law unto itself.”

Fifty-six-year-old Dhillon was born in Chandigarh, India, into a Sikh household, and as a child, immigrated to the United States with her family. She later attended  Dartmouth College, where she served as editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Review, the conservative student newspaper, and president of the Speakers Union. (Interestingly, at least to me, she majored in classical studies: Ancient History, Greek, Latin, Archaeology, Literature.)  She went on to earn her J.D. at the University of Virginia School of Law, and clerked for Judge Paul Niemeyer in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. It seems that throughout her legal career, she has advocated conservative causes. She founded the Dhillon Law Group in 2006, focusing on commercial litigation, employment law, First Amendment rights, and election law matters. Notably, she represented clients challenging pandemic-related restrictions, advocating against perceived Big Tech censorship, and in high-profile, free-speech cases.

No surprise, then, that her nomination aligns with President Trump’s efforts to reshape federal agencies. Her legal career reflects a commitment to challenge what government overreach and advocate for individual liberties. Her appointment, to put it mildly, suggests a departure from traditional civil-rights enforcement toward religious freedom, free speech, and election integrity. She seems to interpret civil rights laws in a manner consistent with conservative principles, which would affect affirmative action, voting rights, and anti-discrimination measures. (Just two days after taking office, the Trump administration ordered a halt to all ongoing litigation pending within the Civil Rights Division and directed the office to not pursue any new cases or enter into any settlement agreements.)

Frankly, her new post sounds terrifying. The Division, for all practical purposes, does not seem to hire conservative-leaning attorneys; its lawyers come from left-activist organizations. They are openly hostile to opposition and reportedly engage in sabotaging cases that are not politically correct. Strassel exposes much of this and writes:

“The outside advocacy groups that feed the Civil Rights Division [NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, La Raza] with personnel and cases are waging a ferocious battle against her confirmation. A letter signed by 65 activist groups warns of an assault on ballot boxes, an outbreak of hostile workplaces, nonstop attacks on vulnerable communities. The coalition finds it ‘insulting’ that Ms. Dhillon is interested in enforcing civil liberties beyond those they have sanctioned—among them, imposing federal voting regimes, protecting ‘reproductive rights,’ and guarding the ‘LGBTQ+ community.’

“Yet it is precisely that narrow ideological agenda that has stripped Americans of any confidence the Justice Department is truly interested in protecting the rights of all.”

Where is Dhillon coming from intellectually? She does not seem to talk much about her sources of ideas and inspiration.  But her legal approach is “originalist” and “textualist,” an interpretation of laws based on their original meaning at the time of enactment. In other words, skeptical of judges making law (judicial activism) and supporting a strict constructionist view of civil rights law.​

She emphasizes individual rights, implying a colorblind interpretation of civil rights law that prioritizes individual liberties over collectivized “rights.”

She emphasizes individual rights, implying a colorblind interpretation of civil rights law that prioritizes individual liberties over collectivized “rights.” She opposes what she perceives as government overreach in regulatory agencies, favoring limited federal intervention in matters she believes should be left to states or individuals. In fact, her views align with the Federalist Society and other conservative legal networks suggesting she will advocate for reinterpreting civil rights laws to limit affirmative action; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and sweeping anti-discrimination mandates. ​She is with President Trump in reducing the power of the administrative state (a.k.a., the “deep state”), limiting the authority of unelected bureaucrats in making expansive civil rights regulations.

To move to a few specifics, she has litigated for election integrity, with concerns about voter fraud, and supported stricter voter-identification laws. ​She has criticized progressive policies in education, corporations, and government as “overreach.” Her positions on policing policies, immigration, and gender-related legal disputes seem to align with the populist political reaction against “wokeism” that helped sweep Trump into office.

She filed suit in 2017 against UC Berkeley on behalf of the Berkeley College Republicans  and Young America’s Foundation focusing on free speech issues, particularly the school’s cancelling Ann Coulter’s speech—quoting security problems. In 2020, she sued Antifa on behalf of journalist Andy Ngo, seeking $900,000 damages for assault and emotional distress and enjoining further harassment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dhillon promoted many lawsuits challenging California’s response to the pandemic including restrictions imposed by stay-at-home orders.)

She has litigated for election integrity, with concerns about voter fraud, and supported stricter voter-identification laws.

As mentioned, Dhillon has not put much on record about influences on her legal philosophy by specific thinkers. She is often identified with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonia Scalia’s for advocacy for textualism and originalism. Ronald Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin Meese shaped the conservative legal movement, influencing organizations like the Federalist Society, with which Dhillon is affiliated. And Justice Clarence Thomas’s judicial philosophy on race, affirmative action, and administrative law seems close to Dhillon’s. (To what extent is she “libertarian” like Justice Thomas versus conservative? (On stage at the 2016 Repu​blican National Convention, she offered a Sikh prayer.)

Changes likely in the Civil Rights Division under Dhillon’s scrutiny are of policies on affirmative action, voting rights, and anti-discrimination measures, and interpreting civil rights laws conservatively as mandating color-blind individualism. Cases involving religious liberty, free speech, and election integrity would stem from her legal background and ideology.​ She seems unlikely to resist the Trump/Musk overriding agenda of reducing bureaucratic influence and emphasizing state and individual rights over federal intervention.​

Consider the potential of this single appointment out of some 4,000 President Trump will make.

It is early days, of course. We must hope first that Dhillon will be confirmed. But consider the potential of this single appointment out of some 4,000 President Trump will make. Does Trump grasp the potential power he wields with every single choice? Imagine what difference launching the national political career of Dhillon might make. No, regrettably, there are no indications that  Trump thinks in terms of principles. He seems to be aligned, as though by an American sense of life, with ideas like those of Dhillon. Not being conscious or explicit, this sense cannot be relied upon. But every Harmeet Dhillon lifted into influence in public life offers infinite promise.

 

 

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