Executive Branch

Lawfare Daily: DOJ’s Very Online Civil Rights Head, with Quinta Jurecic and Anna Bower

Tyler McBrien, Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, Jen Patja
Tuesday, April 21, 2026, 7:00 AM
Discussing Harmeet Dhillon's tenure as the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice.

In her recent profile of Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic writes, “Dhillon’s leadership of the division is both the next step in the natural progression of a career spent needling liberals and a preview of what is to come if she continues to rise within the Justice Department.” But, Jurecic notes, Dhillon may be “at the top of her game, yet her position has never appeared more precarious.”

For today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Jurecic and Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bower to talk through the life and times of the Justice Department’s current head of the civil rights division. They discuss Dhillon's extensive social media presence, the hallmarks of her tenure at the Justice Department thus far, and why there may be limits to how high she can climb in the MAGA movement.

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Tyler McBrien is the managing editor of Lawfare. He previously worked as an editor with the Council on Foreign Relations and a Princeton in Africa Fellow with Equal Education in South Africa, and holds an MA in international relations from the University of Chicago.
Anna Bower is a senior editor at Lawfare. Anna holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Cambridge and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School. She joined Lawfare as a recipient of Harvard’s Sumner M. Redstone Fellowship in Public Service. Prior to law school, Anna worked as a judicial assistant for a Superior Court judge in the Northeastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. She also previously worked as a Fulbright Fellow at Anadolu University in Eskişehir, Turkey. A native of Georgia, Anna is based in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Quinta Jurecic is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She was previously a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare.
Jen Patja is the editor of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, and serves as Lawfare’s Director of Audience Engagement. Previously, she was Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics and Deputy Director of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier, where she worked to deepen public understanding of constitutional democracy and inspire meaningful civic participation.
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