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civil rights
DOJ Slammed for Ending Efforts to Tackle Racist Policing
One critic called the move "an unprecedented abandonment of the Department of Justice's responsibility to enforce civil rights laws and protect communities from unlawful police abuse."
May 22, 2025
Racial justice advocates decried Wednesday's announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice that it will end law enforcement reform and accountability efforts, including the Biden administration's agreements with the cities of Minneapolis and Louisville—a move that came just days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis cop.
The Department of Justice's (DOJ) Civil Rights Division said it is dropping lawsuits against the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments and ending pending consent decrees—court-enforceable agreements under which law enforcement agencies commit to reform—with the two cities. The deals, which have been submitted to judges for approval, have been held up in federal court as the Trump administration has sought to block their implementation.
The Civil Rights Division said it "will also be closing its investigations into, and retracting the Biden administration's findings of constitutional violations on the part of," the Louisiana State Police and police departments in Phoenix; Memphis; Oklahoma City; Trenton, New Jersey; and Mount Vernon, New York.
To “disappear” DOJ findings like this is the most disturbing and disgraceful part. A key advantage of DOJ pattern & practice investigations is that DOJ has the resources to absorb the cost of generating the findings that indiv civ rights groups suing police depts find onerous & often prohibitive.
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— Sherrilyn Ifill ( @sifill.bsky.social) May 21, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, who represents the families of George Floyd—murdered by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020—and Breoanna Taylor, who was killed earlier that year by Louisville police, called the DOJ announcement a "slap in the face."
"Just days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder—a moment that galvanized a global movement for justice—the U.S. Department of Justice has chosen to turn its back on the very communities it pledged to protect," Crump said in a statement Wednesday.
"By walking away from consent decrees in Minneapolis and Louisville, and closing its investigation into the Memphis Police Department while retracting findings of serious constitutional violations, the DOJ is not just rolling back reform, it is attempting to erase truth and contradicting the very principles for which justice stands," he asserted.
"These consent decrees and investigations were not symbolic gestures, they were lifelines for communities crying out for change, rooted in years of organizing, suffering, and advocacy," Crump continued, adding that the DOJ's moves "will only deepen the divide between law enforcement and the people they are sworn to protect and serve."
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) lamented the DOJ move and accused the Trump administration of acting "like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd's lives didn't mean a damn thing."
Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said his city would proceed with reforms despite the DOJ's announcement, while questioning the move's timing.
"The Trump administration is a mess. It is predictable that they would move for a dismissal the very same week that George Floyd was murdered five years ago," he said. "What this shows is that all [President] Donald Trump really cares about is political theater."
The DOJ claimed the Biden administration falsely accused the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments of "widespread patterns of unconstitutional policing practices by wrongly equating statistical disparities with intentional discrimination and heavily relying on flawed methodologies and incomplete data."
"These sweeping consent decrees would have imposed years of micromanagement of local police departments by federal courts and expensive independent monitors, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of compliance costs, without a legally or factually adequate basis for doing so," the agency argued.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon—the conspiracy theorist who heads the Civil Rights Division despite, or perhaps because of, her troubled history of working against voting, reproductive, LGBTQ+, and other civil rights—said in a statement Wednesday that her agency is ending the Biden administration's "failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees."
"Overbroad police consent decrees divest local control of policing from communities where it belongs, turning that power over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, often with an anti-police agenda," Dhillon added.
"DOJ's actions today amount to a public declaration that law enforcement agencies are above the law."
Legal Defense Fund director of strategic initiatives Jin Hee Lee called the DOJ announcement "an unprecedented abandonment of the Department of Justice's responsibility to enforce civil rights laws and protect communities from unlawful police abuse."
Lee said the DOJ investigations that led to the consent decrees "revealed a litany of systemic harms to community members, whom officers are sworn to protect—from wanton violence and sexual misconduct to unlawful stops, searches, and arrests, and racially discriminatory policing."
"By abandoning its obligation to pursue legal remedies that would stem this unlawful conduct, DOJ necessarily condones it," Lee added. "DOJ's actions today amount to a public declaration that law enforcement agencies are above the law."
NAACP president Derrick Johnson said on social media, "It's no surprise that Trump's Department of Coverups and Vengeance isn't seeking justice."
"It's been five years, and police reform legislation still hasn't passed in Congress, and police departments still haven't been held accountable," Johnson added, referring to Floyd's murder. "Five years."
Furthermore, speculation is growing over the prospect of Trump pardoning Chauvin. Addressing the possibility, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walzsaid earlier this week that "if Chauvin's federal conviction is pardoned, he will still have to serve the remainder of his 22-and-a-half-year state prison sentence for murder and manslaughter."
Opponents vowed to fight the Trump administration's civil rights pushback.
"Let me be clear: We will not give up," Crump said. "This movement will not be swayed or deterred by fickle politics. It is anchored in the irrefutable truth that Black lives matter, and that justice should not depend on who is in power."
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140+ Groups Oppose House GOP's Sweeping Ban on State AI Regulation
"Americans deserve both meaningful federal protections and the ability of their states to lead in advancing safety, fairness, and accountability when AI systems cause harm."
May 19, 2025
Demand Progress on Monday led over 140 organizations "committed to protecting civil rights, promoting consumer protections, and fostering responsible innovation" in a letter opposing U.S. House Republicans' inclusion of legislation that would ban state and local laws regulating artificial intelligence in a megabill advanced by the Budget Committee late Sunday.
Section 43201(c)—added by U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) ahead of last Tuesday's markup session—says that "no state or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this act."
"Protections for civil rights and children's privacy, transparency in consumer-facing chatbots to prevent fraud, and other safeguards would be invalidated, even those that are uncontroversial."
In the new letter, the coalition highlighted how "sweeping" the GOP measure is, writing to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), and members of Congress that "as AI systems increasingly shape critical aspects of Americans' lives—including hiring, housing, healthcare, policing, and financial services—states have taken important steps to protect their residents from the risks posed by unregulated or inadequately governed AI technologies."
"As we have learned during other periods of rapid technological advancement, like the industrial revolution and the creation of the automobile, protecting people from being harmed by new technologies, including by holding companies accountable when they cause harm, ultimately spurs innovation and adoption of new technologies," the coalition continued. "In other words, we will only reap the benefits of AI if people have a reason to trust it."
According to the letter:
This total immunity provision blocks enforcement of all state and local legislation governing AI systems, AI models, or automated decision systems for a full decade, despite those states moving those protections through their legislative processes, which include input from stakeholders, hearings, and multistakeholder deliberations. This moratorium would mean that even if a company deliberately designs an algorithm that causes foreseeable harm—regardless of how intentional or egregious the misconduct or how devastating the consequences—the company making that bad tech would be unaccountable to lawmakers and the public. In many cases, it would make it virtually impossible to achieve a level of transparency into the AI system necessary for state regulators to even enforce laws of general applicability, such as tort or antidiscrimination law.
"Many state laws are designed to prevent harms like algorithmic discrimination and to ensure recourse when automated systems harm individuals," the letter notes. "For example, there are many documented cases of AI having highly sexualized conversations with minors and even encouraging minors to commit harm to themselves and others; AI programs making healthcare decisions that have led to adverse and biased outcomes; and AI enabling thousands of women and girls to be victimized by nonconsensual deepfakes."
If Section 43201(c) passes the Republican-controlled Congress and is signed into law by President Donald Trump, "protections for civil rights and children's privacy, transparency in consumer-facing chatbots to prevent fraud, and other safeguards would be invalidated, even those that are uncontroversial," the letter warns. "The resulting unfettered abuses of AI or automated decision systems could run the gamut from pocketbook harms to working families like decisions on rental prices, to serious violations of ordinary Americans' civil rights, and even to large-scale threats like aiding in cyber attacks on critical infrastructure or the production of biological weapons."
The coalition also called out "Congress' inability to enact comprehensive legislation enshrining AI protections leaves millions of Americans more vulnerable to existing threats," and commended states for "filling the need for substantive policy debate over how to safely advance development of this technology."
In the absence of congressional action, former President Joe Biden also took some steps to protect people from the dangers of AI. However, as CNNpointed out Monday, "shortly after taking office this year, Trump revoked a sweeping Biden-era executive order designed to provide at least some safeguards around artificial intelligence. He also said he would rescind Biden-era restrictions on the export of critical U.S. AI chips earlier this month."
Today, Demand Progress and a coalition of artists, teachers, tech workers and more asked House leaders to reject a measure that would stop states from regulating AI. Read the full story by @claresduffy.bsky.social at @cnn.com
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— Demand Progress (@demandprogress.bsky.social) May 19, 2025 at 10:15 AM
The groups asserted that "no person, no matter their politics, wants to live in a world where AI makes life-or-death decisions without accountability... Section 43201(c) is not the only provision in this package that is of concern to our organizations, and there are some provisions on which we will undoubtedly disagree with each other. However, when it comes to this provision, we are united."
"Americans deserve both meaningful federal protections and the ability of their states to lead in advancing safety, fairness, and accountability when AI systems cause harm," concluded the coalition, which includes 350.org, the American Federation of Teachers, Center for Democracy & Technology, Economic Policy Institute, Free Press Action, Friends of the Earth U.S., Greenpeace USA, Groundwork Collaborative, National Nurses United, Public Citizen, Service Employees International Union, and more.
In a Monday statement announcing the letter, Demand Progress corporate power director Emily Peterson-Cassin blasted the provision as "a dangerous giveaway to Big Tech CEOs who have bet everything on a society where unfinished, unaccountable AI is prematurely forced into every aspect of our lives."
"Speaker Johnson and Leader Jeffries must listen to the American people and not just Big Tech campaign donations," she said. "State laws preventing AI from encouraging children to harm themselves, making uninformed decisions about who gets healthcare, and creating nonconsensual deepfakes will all be wiped away unless Congress reverses course."
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Alcatraz Push 'No More Than a Sensational Distraction' From Trump's Attack on Public Safety
Less than two weeks ago, Trump's DOJ slashed nearly $1 billion from existing public safety grants that experts warn will "imperil public safety, not promote it."
May 05, 2025
Add "distraction" to the list of words being used to describe President Donald Trump's "psychotic," "deluded," and "unbefuckinglievable" talk about reopening the island prison of Alcatraz in California's San Francisco Bay.
In a statement to reporters on the White House lawn Sunday night, Trump said the idea for reopening Alcatraz—which he first floated in a social media post—was "just an idea I had" and that the prison was a "symbol of law and order."
But less than two weeks ago, the Trump administration ordered the cancellation of an estimated $811 million in grants for public safety from the Justice Department that experts and advocates say were proving successful at reducing crime and curbing harm in communities nationwide—all with bipartisan support.
"Alcatraz," said civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger in response to Trump's social media post—which sparked no shortage of headlines across the news media—is "no more than a sensational distraction from this: Trump just cut nearly $1 billion from bipartisan, proven, successful anti-crime, violence prevention programs around the country."
The various programs impacted by the grant cuts—including gun violence prevention and law enforcement trainings—said Hechinger, were designed to prevent crime "before people were ever harmed."
Arguing that Trump has made the country less safe, not more, by his policies, Hechinger added, "now he's stomping and parading around with big words and sensational capital letters about a wasteful reopening of a domestic torture complex that will never actually happen and do nothing to keep America safer. All while claiming to care about violence prevention. What a dangerous joke."
Lamenting the public safety grant cuts in a blog post last week, the Brennan Center for Justice's Rosemary Nidiry, senior counsel in the group's justice program, detailed how the grant funding slashed by Trump "filled critical gaps" in the nation's public safety infrastructure.
The grants, she noted, "supported victims of crime, trained law enforcement, offered treatment to people with behavioral health and substance issues, and helped people reintegrate into society after incarceration. They also promoted research used to create and guide effective policies. Many if not all were ended immediately and without warning, in the middle of a typical 3-year grant period, disrupting programs and creating financial strain for nonprofits."
"The slashed programs have been proven to make communities safer," wrote Nidiry, "and their end will in fact imperil public safety, not promote it."
When Alcatraz was closed by the Bureau of Prisons in 1963, the cost of running the crumbling facility was the primary driver of that decision.
As Newsweek reports, "Operating Alcatraz proved to be significantly more expensive than other federal prisons. In 1959, the daily per capita cost at Alcatraz was $10.10, compared with $3.00 at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, making it nearly three times more costly to operate. This high expense was largely due to the island's isolation, which necessitated that all supplies, including food, water, and fuel, be transported by boat. For instance, nearly one million gallons of fresh water had to be barged to the island each week."
In a letter on Friday, over three dozen Democratic lawmakers called on the Justice Department to reinstate $150 million in grants awarded for gun violence prevention.
"This funding, appropriated by Congress, directly contributes to making communities safer," the lawmakers stated in a letter. "We urge you to honor the grants already awarded and to implement this funding as Congress directed."
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