According to a new report, the United States federal government has taken a massive step back from its role in protecting civil rights across the country. On Thursday, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch issued a 112-page analysis of the government’s civil rights activities from January 2025 through the start of 2026, a period that captures the opening months of President Donald Trump’s second term. The report concludes that the federal agencies responsible for stopping discrimination have largely been gutted of their staff.
Additionally, top-down directives by Trump have de-emphasised the federal government’s role in protecting civil rights across the country, according to the group. The report examines four key agencies within the federal government dedicated to civil rights. They include the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, the Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department, the Fair Housing Office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Human Rights Watch spoke with current and former federal workers, lawyers, complainants and community groups who had been involved in cases alleging discrimination. It also reviewed court filings and federal agency directives that illustrated the pivot in priorities under the second Trump administration. The federal government’s role in civil rights protections goes back centuries, starting with the US Constitution.
In 1791, Congress ratified an addition to the country’s founding document that established civil protections like the freedom of religion. Those first 10 amendments became known as the Bill of Rights. Over the decades, more amendments were added, most notably after the US Civil War, to guarantee rights like equal protection under the law.
While the Constitution contains explicit language about religion and race, critics point out that there is no language that confers equal protection based on sex or gender. The history of the Department of Justice is closely entwined with the need to enforce civil rights law after the Civil War. Created in 1870, the department addressed several needs, including a push to professionalise and centralise the country’s federal law enforcement.
But it also helped prosecute violent white supremacist groups at a time when local authorities, particularly in southern states, sometimes refused to. The US Civil Rights Movement, starting in the 1950s, also spurred a surge in federal infrastructure. It was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, for instance, that established a dedicated civil rights division within the Justice Department.
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