U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) says her office received internal documents from whistleblowers working within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that “show that the Trump administration is attacking civil rights and appears to be ignoring the law.”
Warren explained in the video below: “Right now, if you’re a mom protecting your kids from living with an abusive father, or if you’re getting denied a mortgage because of the color of your skin, you have civil rights protection under U.S. law,” but according to Warren, “the Trump administration has been systemically destroying such federal protections for renters and homeowners.”
If you buy or rent a home – or want to someday – you have to hear this.
New documents from whistleblowers suggest the Trump Administration is gutting your rights under the law.
We need an independent investigation. pic.twitter.com/gIQM6p9iLS
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) September 22, 2025
Warren says the Trump administration is “firing and reassigning as many people from the civil rights office as they possibly can…to make it impossible for the few staff that remain to actually do the jobs and help people the way the law says.”
[Note: Since January, there’s been a 65 percent reduction of staff at HUD’s fair housing office. The New York Times reports “there were 31 employees in January; once mandatory transfers go through next month, there will be 11.”]
Warren added: “Already hundreds of housing discrimination cases have just been dropped or stalled.” The Senator announced that she’s calling for an investigation of HUD and the Trump administration’s “attack on civil rights, an attack that’s been exposed by the whistleblowers who are there.”
Warren added a link to today’s New York Times article titled ‘Trump Appointees Roll Back Enforcement of Fair Housing Laws,’ with the subtitle, “Interviews and internal documents show that signature civil rights protections in housing are being dismissed as ideologically driven and D.E.I. in disguise.”
HUD spokeswoman Kasey Lovett said in a statement to the Times that it was “patently false” to suggest the department was rolling back enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, and said that the current administration had inherited a “deeply inefficient case system.” Lovett accused the Biden administration of allowing cases to “languish.”
Note: This week five lawyers who worked in the HUD fair housing office filed a federal lawsuit alleging that they had been “unlawfully targeted by HUD leadership and forced to leave” their roles “against their will.”