The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has a new boss, at least for now. On Tuesday night, Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on X that President Trump appointed Craig Trainor as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the division. Blanche thanked Trainor “for taking on this critical role and for his dedicated service to the American people and President Trump.”
For gun owners, the title matters less than what sits underneath it. The Civil Rights Division is where Harmeet Dhillon built DOJ’s first Second Amendment Section, and Dhillon resigned on November 5. In the days between her exit and Blanche’s post, Jesus A. Osete, her principal deputy, was running the division. As of Wednesday afternoon, the Civil Rights Division homepage still listed Osete as acting head. Trainor’s name hadn’t gone up yet.
Who is Craig Trainor?
Trainor isn’t a gun lawyer. Since October 2025, he has been the Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at HUD. The Senate confirmed him to that post 51 to 47 on a party-line vote on October 7, 2025, one of 107 nominees confirmed en bloc.
Before HUD, Trainor served as Acting Assistant Secretary and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Education Department, where his Federalist Society biography calls him a “Day One” official. Before the administration, he was Senior Special Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government under Chairman Jim Jordan, and he did litigation work for the America First Policy Institute and The Fairness Center.
He came up as a New York lawyer. Trainor clerked for Chief Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr. of the Northern District of New York, worked at a white-collar criminal defense firm, and served as a New York City prosecutor. He then ran his own criminal defense and civil rights practice in New York City for more than ten years. He holds a law degree from Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law and a bachelor’s degree in government from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
What has he said about guns?
Not much, and that is the story. AmmoLand News couldn’t find a court filing, brief, op-ed, speech, or post where Trainor takes a position on the Second Amendment, carry permits, gun bans, or New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. His government jobs have dealt with schools and housing.
The closest thing to a gun record is an August 2020 piece he wrote for The American Conservative as New York crime climbed. He wrote that New Yorkers were asking him “how they can obtain firearm licenses and when they would be justified in using force, deadly or otherwise, to defend themselves.” He laid out the Castle Doctrine, under which “the homeowner has no duty to retreat and can thus neutralize the intruder with deadly force,” and pointed out that “Americans have purchased a record-breaking 8.3 million guns” that year.
A year later, in City Journal, he blamed part of the city’s crime problem on “the elimination of plainclothes anti-crime units that spent their nights hunting illegal gun carriers.” That is a law-and-order position on illegal carry. It doesn’t tell anyone what he thinks about a New Yorker who wants a permit.
His 2021 Federalist Society author bio also says he tried cases “from unlawful gun possession to racketeering conspiracy.” It doesn’t name those cases or say which side he was on.
What he inherits
Whatever Trainor thinks, he walks into a division that has spent the past year suing for gun owners. The division filed DOJ’s first affirmative lawsuit on behalf of gun owners on September 30, 2025, going after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over concealed carry delays. Dhillon then stood up the Second Amendment Section, and she announced it on camera in December.
That section sued Washington, D.C. in May over its AR-15 and suppressor bans. On July 1, the division sued Virginia over its new “assault firearms” sales ban and California over its Glock-style pistol ban and handgun roster. Several of those cases are still pending. The section’s page still lists Barry Arrington as Acting Chief.
Then there is Los Angeles. The proposed settlement with the sheriff’s department would put LASD’s permitting under four years of reporting and federal court enforcement, but it doesn’t take effect until a judge signs off. As I wrote in an article for AmmoLand News when Dhillon left, that reporting window “only works if DOJ keeps enforcing it.” Sections don’t delete themselves overnight, but priorities do.
Osete’s future is also unsettled. He is a pending nominee for a federal judgeship in Missouri, and that seat opens May 11, 2027. DOJ hasn’t said what his role will be under Trainor.
The record people will fight about
Trainor’s civil rights record outside of guns is plenty contested. At Education, he issued the February 14, 2025 “Dear Colleague” letter on race in schools. A federal judge in New Hampshire blocked enforcement of the letter in April 2025, and a federal judge in Maryland vacated it that August. At HUD, he told bankers in May that his office “will no longer chase phantom discrimination based upon statistical disparities without evidence of intentional unlawful treatment,” according to a summary of the speech. In an October letter to HUD Secretary Scott Turner and Trainor, Senator Elizabeth Warren cited whistleblower accounts that HUD had “ground fair housing enforcement to a halt.”
None of that tells gun owners much. As of Wednesday afternoon, no major gun rights group had said anything about Trainor himself.
It’s also not clear how long he’ll be there. MS NOW reported that it is unclear whether Trump will nominate him for the job permanently, which would require Senate confirmation.
So gun owners are left with what they can actually measure. Do the D.C., Virginia, and California cases keep moving? Does DOJ enforce the Los Angeles deal? Does the Second Amendment Section keep its people? Trainor hasn’t said anything publicly about any of it. The docket will tell us soon enough.
About John Crump
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and constitutional activist with more than 26 years of experience in networking and cybersecurity for major Fortune 100 companies. John has written about firearms, the Constitution, and cybersecurity, and has interviewed people from all walks of life. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons. Follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.
