Inside Trump’s ominous plan to turn civil rights law against vulnerable Americans

In 2016, Christy Lopez was living her dream. She was an attorney at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division working on policing where, among other things, she led the team that investigated the Ferguson Police Department after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown. Lopez believes that her work spurred meaningful policing reforms, both in Ferguson and nationwide.

But when Donald Trump won the 2016 election, Lopez quit. Trump, she thought, would block her team from doing any kind of worthwhile investigation into police use of force.