The Trump Justice Department’s top civil rights official on Monday rejected a federal appeals court’s past decision to uphold Illinois’ assault weapons ban , arguing in court that the AR-15 and similar guns are “clearly” protected by the Second Amendment.

But Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon also found herself being questioned by Judge Frank Easterbrook, who’d joined the 2023 decision that’s helped keep the law in place. On Monday, he asked Dhillon whether a lower-court judge’s fact-finding affected her view.

When she said it didn’t, Easterbrook retorted, “You don’t think the facts matter.”

“Facts, of course, do matter,” she told him.

Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, took the unusual step of traveling to Chicago to briefly participate in th

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