The Justice Department Has Destroyed Its Voting Rights Section

When new leadership moves to Washington, DC, there is always change in important principles and workers. Alex, lawyer in Department of Justice The Voting Division, survived Donald Trump’s first term, and thought they could survive the second.

In just a few hours of the president establishment, he knew he had not thought wrong.

“I was just wrong,” he says. “It was very different from the first Trump administration. It was an assumption that it would not be the same. Then in the Voting Session, what happened is that they just started removing the cases.”

The Voting Division was established in the Civil Rights Division following the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 to ensure that every American has the right to vote.

Alex, whose name has been changed for protection, is one of many attorneys who have been fired since Trump returned to the White House.

There were about 30 lawyers in the Voting Division when Trump was inaugurated in January 2025. Three months later, only two remained. The retired lawyers have been replaced by half a dozen who have no experience in court cases and who have made many mistakes in the courts. They have also appeared eager to follow Trump’s anti-voting policies, filing numerous lawsuits to force states to do so. submit the unaltered voter rolls.

WIRED spoke with a dozen experts and former Voting Division attorneys about the extensive dismantling of the Justice Department’s Voting Division under Trump. Many spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Trump administration.

As the November midterms approach, multiple sources tell WIRED that the damage done to the DOJ’s Voting Division may be irreversible. They are worried that the main goal is to give Trump the so-called evidence to seize the elections in the states. “I think that in the long run, it’s to produce food to deal with the elections,” says Alex, who worked in the polling station for many years.

“They’ve turned what used to be the cornerstone of the Civil Rights Division, the Voting Division, into a weapon against voters,” Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel at the Fair Elections Center, tells WIRED. “This was the part that forced people to vote, that worked against intimidation, that enacted voting laws that were meant to protect people from discrimination and meant that elections were held in a fair and just manner.

Veteran lawyers from the Voting Division agree. “I spent eight years in the Voting Division as a trial attorney doing what was my bread and butter since its inception, which was enforcing the Voting Rights Act and other federal laws that protect voting rights,” Eileen O’Connor, now senior counsel at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, tells WIRED. “The work he’s doing here is different.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the new Voting Division attorneys, but spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told WIRED that “The Civil Rights Act, the National Voting Rights Act, and the Help America Vote Act all give the Justice Department full authority to ensure that states are following federal election laws, which mandate accurate state voter registration.”

Voting Rights

In the days and weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Trump sought to arm Justice. to appoint special counsels to investigate election conspiracy theories. It didn’t work. Every now and then, the department’s officials and politicians backed down, to the point of threatening mass resignations.

Now Trump also wants to use the power of the Department of Justice to undermine trust in the election. This time around, sources tell WIRED, no one is paying back.