Dive Brief:
- President Donald Trump has tapped a fierce opponent of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to lead the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division.
- Craig Trainor, a Trump administration official, has been appointed as the acting assistant attorney general for the division. U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who announced the pick on social media this week, did not say whether Trainor would be nominated to serve in the role permanently.
- While at the U.S. Department of Education, Trainor authored guidance — now struck down by federal courts — that threatened to pull federal funding from colleges over their DEI initiatives.
Dive Insight:
Trainor’s selection signals that the Trump administration isn’t backing away from its heavy crackdown on colleges and their diversity initiatives. Trainor is set to replace Harmeet Dhillon, one of several top DOJ officials who stepped down after Democrats seized control of both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections.
Under Dhillon, the department’s civil rights division aggressively investigated colleges over pro-Palestinian protests and their policies for admissions, leading several high-profile colleges to cut deals with the Trump administration to end those probes.
The DOJ has even sued the University of California system, alleging that its Los Angeles campus hasn’t adequately responded to harassment toward Jewish and Israeli students.
The agency also sued Harvard University in February to force the Ivy League institution to hand over extensive admissions data and again in March to cut off its access to federal student aid. Judges dismissed both cases against Harvard, but the agency has since appealed the federal student aid case to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
DOJ officials have recently stepped up their crusade against initiatives aimed at recruiting a diverse study body. So far, its investigations into admissions policies have led the department to accuse 10 medical and law schools of racially discriminating against White and Asian applicants.
Trainor has likewise spearheaded major efforts to stamp out DEI in the higher education sector. While serving as the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Trainor threatened in February 2025 guidance to pull federal funding from colleges over DEI initiatives ranging from race-based scholarships to affinity graduation ceremonies.
Federal courts have since struck down the guidance. However, the DOJ released similar sweeping guidance last year that threatens to strip federal grant funding from colleges over what the agency deems as illegal DEI. DOJ officials flagged several commonplace practices as potentially unlawful, ranging from requiring job applicants to provide diversity statements to having identity-based lounges — even if they are open to all.
Trainor pursued similar anti-DEI policies in his most recent appointment as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity. In that role, Trainor issued guidance warning colleges that affinity housing may violate federal law.
