US President-elect Donald Trump nominated Indian-American lawyer Harmeet Dhillon as assistant attorney general for civil rights at the department of justice.
"I am pleased to nominate Harmeet K Dhillon as assistant attorney general for civil rights at the US department of justice," Trump announced in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
"Throughout her career, Harmeet has stood up consistently to protect our cherished civil liberties, including taking on big tech for censoring our free speech, representing Christians who were prevented from praying together during COVID, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers," he added.
Dhillon was born in Chandigarh and went to the United States during her childhood with her parents. She graduated from Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia Law School. She did clerkship at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and founded her own law firm in 2006.
The Indian-American lawyer made headlines when she performed Ardas at the Republican National Convention July. She made history in 2016 as the first Indian-American to take the stage at the GOP Convention in Cleveland.
She previously made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican National Committee chairmanship last year. She wrote a series of legal memos for the Sikh Coalition during the post-9/11 wave of xenophobia, as her Republican colleagues advocated for the Patriot Act. These memos aimed to protect turban-wearing Sikhs from discriminatory profiling, reported SFGATE.
She supports upholding Roe vs Wade, advocates for removing government from marriage, and insists on equal tax benefits for same-sex couples. Further, she has also represented doctors and pharmacists who object to participating in abortions.
Dhillon is the third person of Indian origin to be nominated to the Trump administration. Trump has already announced Kash Patel and Vivek Ramaswamy's nomination to his cabinet.
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