U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is bringing the U.S. Department of Justice in line with President Donald Trump’s platform, as she continues the administration’s anti-diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility purge and appears to reverse the pro-civil rights agenda of her predecessor.

On Wednesday — her first day in office — she issued a litany of memos. In one, she stated that the department “must thoroughly evaluate consent decrees, settlement agreements, litigation positions (including those set forth in amicus briefs), grants or similar funding mechanisms, procurements, internal policies and guidance, and contracting arrangements” to root out diversity-oriented initiatives.

“There is no place in these materials for race- or sex-based preferences, diversity hiring targets, or preferential treatment based on DEI- or DEIA-related criteria,” Bondi wrote. “All Department materials that encouraged or permitted race- or sex-based preferences as a method of compliance with federal civil rights laws are rescinded.”

The memo came just weeks after Trump signed executive orders dismantling the federal government’s DEI programs, and only a day before his ongoing attempt to overhaul several federal agencies hit a snag: A judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Trump’s buyout offer for government workers.

Bondi also made plain that the administration’s anti-DEI purge isn’t limited to the federal government, declaring in another memo that the department “will investigate, eliminate, and penalize illegal DEI and DEIA preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities in the private sector and in educational institutions that receive federal funds.”

The department is using the language of equality to attack policies and initiatives created to address the historical wrongs Black Americans and other marginalized groups have endured, and analysts fear what this widespread assault on DEI could mean for vulnerable communities.

Efforts to confront racial inequality and boost diversity — especially in the federal workforce, where discrimination has been easier to check — have “been a godsend for so many people who live in this country and love this country and want their fair shot at making a living and having a good life,” Marcus Board, an associate professor of political science at Howard University, told Capital B.

He added that the past several weeks have made the administration’s intentions abundantly clear: to erode civil rights protections.

The principles of the current Department of Justice contrast sharply with those that guided the previous incarnation of the department, which focused significantly on racial justice and sought to use the power of the state to help marginalized groups.

For instance, under former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, the department launched a dozen pattern or practice investigations into law enforcement agencies everywhere from Phoenix to Minneapolis to Louisville, Kentucky.

Two of these probes were ignited by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020. Black people are nearly three times more likely than white people to be killed by police in the U.S., per an analysis by the Mapping Police Violence project.

Now, under Bondi, a Trump loyalist, the department is going in a different direction, as it takes aim at race-conscious programs designed to turn the dream of racial justice into a reality.

She entered politics as part of the tea party movement, which sprung from Republican opposition to former President Barack Obama. She also was at the forefront of a failed attempt to gut Obamacare in 2012, according to CNN. This was the same year that she and then-Gov. Rick Scott appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Read more: The End of DEI: What Trump’s Executive Orders Mean for Black Americans

Bondi told department attorneys that they’re expected to follow orders, because they “have signed up for a job that requires zealously advocating for the United States.”

“This is how this DOJ will operate. Actions and beliefs are deemed CRIMINAL if they are not in line with this Administration’s beliefs,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, wrote on Bluesky on Wednesday.

“There is no criminal penalty for supporting or even continuing to apply DEIA principles,” she went on. “This is a muscle job. Corporations must stiffen their spines.”

Christy Lopez, a former deputy chief in the special litigation section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division who now teaches at the Georgetown University Law Center, previously told Capital B that the administration’s hostility toward the department might prompt some lawyers to remain and try to act like a bulwark against “the undermining of the work that they’ve invested in.”

Bondi also pledged that department attorneys will “evaluate all potential avenues to strengthen the federal death penalty as a valid means of punishment for the heinous crimes it is intended to punish.”

Civil rights organizations have long denounced capital punishment, urging federal and state governments to abolish it — not encourage it — due largely to persistent racial disparities in sentencing in the U.S.

“Racism is inextricably linked to capital punishment,” as the LDF puts it. “The death penalty has its roots in slavery, lynchings, white vigilantism, and the racial inequities in sentencing persist to this day.”