The Office of Fair Housing And Equal Opportunity (FHEO) at HUD is tasked with ensuring that fair housing laws are enforced and that all Americans have equal access to housing. Trump tapped a (potentially reformed) drunk driver, Craig Trainor, to lead it. On paper, one would argue that Trainor has impeccable qualifications: civil rights lawyer, a former prosecutor in the Tri-state area, Army reservist, and former counsel for a high ranking member of Congress.
However, scratching beneath the service, we see that Trainor is a Republican operative who has been dispatched by the Trump administration to undo years of progress. Also ironic given that Republicans seem to oppose convicted felons even taking advantage of equitable housing initiatives. He is doing this at the Department of Education right now, and he will most certainly do that at HUD. Regardless, Trainor will be another example of the fox guarding the hen house. Let’s take a look at some career high(low) lights:
- Back in 2010, Trainor was arrested for allegedly drunk driving… While serving as a young bright eyed Staten Island prosecutor. What’s more is the assistant district attorney refused to take a breathalyzer. It’s telling that a man that is supposed to be working on behalf of the state flouted the state’s own laws.
- Trainor currently serves as the acting secretary for the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the Education Department. OCR’s purpose is to ensure that protected classes (such as gender, race, national origin, and religion) were not discriminated against on college campuses. Instead, Trainor has spent his time as an acting secretary doing the very opposite of what the office is intended to do. For example, he sent a letter, citing the Supreme Court case that gutted race-conscious admissions, stating that colleges and universities must stop all DEI programs.
- As OCR acting secretary, Trainor also lifted the pause on discrimination claims on college campuses, which is a primary function of the office, but he continued the pause on investigations related to race and gender. It’s worth noting that OCR had opened a record low of only 20 new investigations under Trainor, compared to the 250 new cases that were opened in early 2024. OCR has a backlog of 12,000 cases that were pending under the last Trump administration, and under Trump 2.0, the office is unlikely to open new ones.
- Trainor is an alumnus of his would-be boss Linda McMahon’s America First Policy Institute, a far right, Christian nationalist think tank that has spent years lobbying against diversity initiatives, championing charter schools, and even gun safety measures. AFPI is noteworthy because many other alumni of the organization including Attorney General Pam Bondi, the aforementioned Linda McMahon, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Veteran Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, FBI Director Kash Patrel, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Trainor’s soon-to-be boss Scott Turner, all spent the Biden years working at AFPI to some capacity. In fact, another AFPI alum, Jonathan Pidluzny is slated to start his tenure at the Education Department as an assistant secretary.
- While working for AFPI, Trainor penned an op-ed claiming that New York Attorney General Letitia James had an “obsession” with Donald Trump because the former sued the latter, along with executives at the Trump organization who defrauded insurance companies and lenders for over a decade. He’s also had a long-running habit of attacking Kamala Harris, starting with working as the San Francisco District Attorney.
- Trainor worked on the Hill as senior special counsel for the House Judiciary committee under its Chairman, and known Trump loyalist Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). Some of Jordan’s more policy related antics have included (but are certainly not limited to): voting in favor of a bill that terminated the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), voting against renters protections during COVID, and even voted against a bill that would make funds available to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
- More humorously, outside of working on behalf of the conservative movement, as a private sector attorney Trainor represented a bar owner whose business was wrongfully raided by the NYPD. He also represented the owner of the Hip Hop music blog On Smash, which was seized by the FBI for piracy.
- Trainor started his career as a law clerk in the Northern District of New York. The judge for whom he clerked, Chief Judge Federek J Scullin Jr, was best known for furthering the gun violence epidemic when he granted an injunction back in 2015 that stopped the District of Columbia’s “good reason” order to receive a concealed carry permit.