It’s offi­cial: Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump has nom­i­nat­ed Sen­a­tor Jeff Ses­sions (R – AL), a long­time ally, to become his attor­ney gen­er­al. Ses­sions is known as an immi­gra­tion hard-lin­er with an alleged his­to­ry of racist remarks and actions, spark­ing fears that his con­fir­ma­tion could mean major changes at the Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ) — espe­cial­ly as it relates to com­mu­ni­ties of color.

“I would hope the folks who have been activists around police reform, who have built an important and effective movement, will see this as a moment where that movement needs to get bigger,” says Smith.

As the nation’s top law enforce­ment agency, the DOJ over­sees oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies like the FBI, the Drug Enforce­ment Agency and the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co and Firearms. It is also tasked with address­ing pub­lic safe­ty threats and enforc­ing fed­er­al laws, includ­ing those con­cern­ing civ­il rights. A DOJ led by Ses­sions might well drop legal chal­lenges to the state-lev­el vot­er ID laws that oppo­nents say dis­en­fran­chise poor and minor­i­ty vot­ers, or per­mit widen­ing police sur­veil­lance of Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties. The DOJ also reviews many of the inter­nal poli­cies relat­ed to drone and sur­veil­lance pro­grams, and Pres­i­dent Trump could also alter those rules, as For­eign Pol­i­cy reported.

Uphold­ing civ­il rights and defend­ing minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties have gen­er­al­ly been regard­ed as pri­or­i­ties under cur­rent AG Loret­ta Lynch and her pre­de­ces­sor Eric Hold­er, the sec­ond and first black attor­ney gen­er­als in U.S. his­to­ry, respec­tive­ly. Ses­sions’ record on these issues is deeply con­cern­ing to crit­ics. In 1986, his nom­i­na­tion for a fed­er­al judge­ship was reject­ed by the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, in large part because of alle­ga­tions that sur­faced dur­ing his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing. For­mer col­leagues said that Ses­sions had referred to civ­il rights groups like the South­ern Chris­t­ian Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence and N.A.A.C.P. as ​“Com­mu­nist-inspired” and ​“un-Amer­i­can,” as well as jok­ing that the Klu Klux Klan was ​“okay … until I found out they smoked pot.” The year before his failed con­fir­ma­tion, Ses­sions also led a failed pros­e­cu­tion of civ­il rights work­ers reg­is­ter­ing black vot­ers in the South, accus­ing them of vot­er fraud in a case that was thrown out, as the New Repub­lic reported.

One of the first changes the new DOJ may make is a dra­mat­ic reduc­tion in the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s role in over­see­ing local police agen­cies. In the wake of high-pro­file police killings, Barack Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion has relied heav­i­ly on a 1994 law that allows the DOJ to inves­ti­gate poten­tial civ­il rights vio­la­tions at local police depart­ments. If the DOJ doc­u­ments a ​“pat­tern or prac­tice” of such vio­la­tions, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment can com­pel cities to reform with the threat of lit­i­ga­tion. Under Oba­ma, the DOJ has ini­ti­at­ed inves­ti­ga­tions in Bal­ti­more, Chica­go and 21 oth­er cities. The depart­ment has reached court-mon­i­tored agree­ments, known as con­sent decrees, with 11 local depart­ments — more than under any oth­er admin­is­tra­tion. From the first day of Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion, he and his attor­ney gen­er­al could influ­ence whether the DOJ con­tin­ues launch­ing such inves­ti­ga­tions and how thor­ough­ly it imple­ments them.

What does this mean for cities like Chica­go and Bal­ti­more, where fed­er­al efforts to reform police depart­ments are ongo­ing? The DOJ civ­il rights divi­sion could not imme­di­ate­ly be reached for com­ment. But Jonathan Smith, a for­mer top offi­cial, tells In These Times that regard­less of who was com­ing in under the new admin­is­tra­tion, DOJ offi­cials would be like­ly to fin­ish their probes this year. ​“It is not the kind of thing they would leave undone,” he says. But he also believes there’s a real dan­ger that under a Trump DOJ, the result­ing reform agree­ments will lack teeth.

Trump’s state­ments to police unions and law enforce­ment orga­ni­za­tions, which often bris­tle at fed­er­al over­sight, give fur­ther cre­dence to this con­cern. Trump was endorsed by the Fra­ter­nal Order of Police (FOP), the biggest police union in the coun­try, and won sup­port from sim­i­lar groups fol­low­ing rebukes of Black Lives Mat­ter pro­tes­tors and calls for an end to ​“the war on our police.”

In August, the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chiefs of Police issued a ques­tion­naire ask­ing pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates about their pol­i­cy posi­tions. One ques­tion asked, ​“How would you respond to an inci­dent involv­ing law enforce­ment, such as a police-involved shoot­ing or use-of-force inci­dent that has gained nation­al atten­tion?” Trump’s respond­ed, ​“Nation­al atten­tion does not mean nation­al involve­ment of the fed­er­al government…local issues should remain local.” He reit­er­at­ed sim­i­lar posi­tions in a ques­tion­naire from the FOP that Hillary Clin­ton report­ed­ly declined to fill out.

Union lead­er­ship isn’t uni­ver­sal in its sup­port of Trump. Sean Smoot, direc­tor and chief legal coun­sel for the Police Benev­o­lent and Pro­tec­tive Asso­ci­a­tion of Illi­nois, says he did­n’t vote for the pres­i­dent-elect, though he sup­ports com­ments from Trump about peo­ple need­ing to show cops more respect. Smoot said he does­n’t back oth­er state­ments Trump has made sug­gest­ing that stop-and-frisk is a solu­tion to curb crime giv­en ques­tions about its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty and real impact on crime rates, and he does­n’t see the polic­ing strat­e­gy as an effec­tive piece of the police reform puz­zle going forward.

It’s impor­tant to note that many advo­cates for police reform ques­tion whether fed­er­al reform efforts were get­ting the job done in the first place. Clout-heavy police unions have often been able to impede fed­er­al efforts, par­tic­u­lar­ly when col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments con­tra­dict pro­posed civ­il rights reforms. Though the DOJ has the might of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment behind it, it has tend­ed to avoid clash­es with unions rather than wade into poten­tial­ly lengthy and cost­ly legal battles.

Saman­tha Mas­ter, a Bal­ti­more-area orga­niz­er with the Black Youth Project 100, says that the move­ment has nev­er put much faith in fed­er­al author­i­ties. ​“We have nev­er relied on DOJ inter­ven­tion to actu­al­ize our demands for black lib­er­a­tion,” she notes. ​“We see the DOJ as an enti­ty that has a cer­tain amount of pow­er and author­i­ty to do things like demil­i­ta­rize the police … [and] rescind the Safe Cops pro­gram, which has nev­er done a good job of keep­ing our peo­ple safe. So the DOJ will remain a tar­get, but they have nev­er been cen­tral to our strat­e­gy or how we organize.”

Smith notes that activists, attor­neys and advo­cates can still pres­sure local police depart­ments and elect­ed offi­cials to imple­ment changes that address police misconduct.

“I would hope the folks who have been activists around police reform, who have built an impor­tant and effec­tive move­ment, will see this as a moment where that move­ment needs to get big­ger,” he says.

Activists con­cur, but not just because of the poten­tial shifts in the DOJ. Mas­ter notes that Trump’s pres­i­den­cy has embold­ened pro­po­nents of white suprema­cy, xeno­pho­bia, homo­pho­bia, trans­pho­bia and anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ments in the U.S. She says that means activists from mar­gin­al­ized groups have to change their approach, bol­ster their bases and col­lab­o­rate more with one another.

“Trump’s régime … doesn’t stop our work,” she says. ​“It makes it more pressing.”

Like­wise, while Chica­go is still wait­ing for the out­come of a DOJ inves­ti­ga­tion, Ed Yohn­ka of the ACLU of Illi­nois acknowl­edges, ​“We can expect that police reform in Chica­go is going to come through local advo­ca­cy and local solutions.”

“This is real­ly going to be about the com­mu­ni­ty com­ing togeth­er to demand account­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy from CPD,” he says. ​“That was always going to be an ele­ment of what­ev­er hap­pened, but I think that’s real­ly going to be the main thrust of what reform looks like going forward.”