Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon was placed in charge of civil rights enforcement and proceeded exactly as a MAGA culture warrior might be expected to proceed. As head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, she aggressively rolled back protections and reversed gains made under her predecessor, Kristen Clarke.

Dhillon arrived with deep connections to the conservative culture fight. As a private attorney, she represented Donald Trump during the House committee’s Jan. 6 investigation, and her leadership aligned with an administration determined to dismantle traditional civil rights enforcement.

Trump, Stephen Miller and Heritage Foundation figures including Russell Vought, Brendan Carr and Kevin Roberts linked the MAGA culture war to efforts to weaken civil rights protections. That made control of the Civil Rights Division especially consequential, and Dhillon delivered what MAGA wanted.

Her departure may sound encouraging to civil rights advocates, particularly after her fixation on supposed discrimination against white men. But any relief must wait until Trump reveals whom he intends to install as her successor.

Dhillon’s record on discriminatory policing shows the scale of the damage. The Civil Rights Division has historically investigated allegations that law enforcement officers mistreated Black people and members of other marginalized communities, stepping in when violations required federal intervention.

That intervention often involved consent decrees with law enforcement agencies. Those agreements could provide injunctive relief while requiring additional training, accountability measures and other changes intended to address civil rights violations.

Before Trump became president in 2017, cities across the country operated under such agreements. One involved the Ferguson, Missouri, Police Department after an officer shot and killed Black teenager Michael Brown.

Under President Joe Biden, the Justice Department entered into a consent decree with Louisville Metro Government and its police department after police shot and killed Breonna Taylor, a young Black woman. It also reached an agreement with the Minneapolis Police Department after former Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd.

Dhillon ended those agreements. The abandonment of consent decrees reflected the administration’s contempt for traditional civil rights enforcement and sent law enforcement officers a troubling message that federal investigations of their conduct were no longer a pressing concern.

Her office also declined to intervene in allegations of police violations, invoking states’ rights and local control. That approach removed what had been a critical federal safeguard while dismissing findings developed by previous Civil Rights Division lawyers.

The consequences could endure because those cases cannot simply be reopened without new allegations of discriminatory policing. Communities that had relied on federal oversight were left with weakened protections, while the work already completed by career lawyers was effectively cast aside.

Dhillon also oversaw numerous dismissals involving complaints of discrimination and civil rights violations against Black Americans. Her division dismissed more than 50 longstanding school segregation cases and consent decrees dating to the period after Brown v. Board of Education.

She was also responsible for an unwarranted demand for election data that led to the Texas redistricting debacle in the state House. Rather than using the division to protect communities whose oppression prompted civil rights statutes, her tenure repeatedly curtailed their rights.

The transformation extended inside the division itself. In July, Dhillon posted a photograph to her personal Instagram account showing more than 100 newly hired Civil Rights Division attorneys, almost all of whom appeared to be white.

In August, Dhillon told a Breitbart podcast that about 300 attorneys had left the division since she arrived. That exodus, combined with abandoned agreements and dismissed cases, leaves any future leader committed to civil rights facing an enormous rebuilding project.

Repairing the destruction will not be simple because tearing institutions apart is easier than reconstructing them. Reestablishing important legal precedent could require years of court fights, while efforts to close loopholes exploited during Dhillon’s tenure would encounter major legislative obstacles and likely presidential vetoes.

The most immediate concern is whom Trump will choose next. Civil rights advocates may welcome Dhillon’s departure, but her tenure demonstrated how much damage one leader can inflict and why the country should brace for another like minded successor.