Harmeet Dhillon has resigned as head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, becoming the first senior Trump administration official to leave since Democrats swept the midterm elections and won control of both chambers of Congress. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on Thursday 5 November that he had accepted her resignation.

Dhillon, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, had led the division since April 2025, a period of about 18 months in which she reshaped its work to advance the administration's priorities, including challenges to diversity programmes, lawsuits over transgender policies in schools and sports, and election-integrity cases. The division was founded in 1957 to enforce laws against racial discrimination.

In her resignation letter to the president, Dhillon said she had told White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in early October that she planned to leave, and stayed on at the White House's request until after the election. She cited a demanding schedule following the deaths of her husband and her father before the 2024 election, and said she would return to private practice at her law firm, the Dhillon Law Group.

Her tenure was marked by a sharp fall in staffing, with more than three-quarters of the division's lawyers at the start of the second Trump term having left, according to the Associated Press. Supporters credit her with refocusing the division, while critics say she steered it away from its traditional mission of protecting voting rights and fighting discrimination. No successor has been named. USA Today reported the resignation.