Trump’s Longing for the Days of Jim Crow
The federal government no longer prohibits contractors from having segregated facilities.
If you believe this statement is a typo from a bygone, shameful era, you are wrong. President Trump made this change in 2025. The pro-segregation order demonstrates Trump’s desire to return to an era of white supremacy, the days when the government actively fought against Black political, economic, and social rights.
Trump’s definition of DEI is sweeping. It encompasses any effort to remedy racial inequality, including the enforcement of Civil Rights legislation. He has issued executive orders weakening the right to vote, access housing, attend integrated schools, and challenge discriminatory policies, while gutting agencies dedicated to enforcing these rights. Numerous states are following Trump’s lead and enacting their own anti-civil rights agendas.
Progress is rarely linear. When it comes to racial progress, the U.S. has experienced far more valleys than peaks. In today’s newsletter, we’ll explore the valley we’re in, a valley that shows how fragile our civil rights gains are. But we will also celebrate those who are fighting against these attacks and attempting to make America a more perfect nation.
If We Can’t Win Them Over, Make Voting Impossible and Attack the People They’ve Elected
One of Trump’s primary strategies to suppress the Black vote is requiring voters to have an ID that proves citizenship status, which effectively means using a passport.
If enforced, the order would disenfranchise millions of Americans who cannot afford the substantial $165 passport fee, or who do not have the time to drive to an office to get one. This order will harm poor and working class white citizens, and will disproportionately harm Black Americans, nearly two-thirds of whom do not possess a passport. Elderly Black Americans born under Jim Crow would be especially harmed- racist laws often prevented their mothers from giving birth in hospitals, so some never received birth certificates.
States are eagerly joining in:
- Always a reliable partner (if not leader) in anti-democratic policy, Texas is considering several bills requiring citizens to prove their citizenship in local, state and federal elections, one of which will result in a Constitutional Amendment.
- In Michigan and Ohio, legislators have introduced bills requiring voters to prove their citizenship before registering.
Where voters have succeeded in electing state and local officials committed to addressing racial inequality, the Administration is going after them.
- The DOJ is investigating Minneapolis’s elected prosecutor, Mary Moriarty, for a plea policy that amongst other things aims to redress racial bias in sentencing. Meanwhile, the order also threatens to undo all consent decrees (court-enforced improvement plans) which are in place to hold police accountable for abuses that disproportionately harm Black communities.
- The DOJ is also investigating Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for a commitment to diversity in hiring.
Bye-bye, Civil Rights Division
The Civil Rights Division enforces a variety of protections, including desegregation orders, voting rights, and police consent decrees. Specifically, in the wake of numerous high profile police killings of Black Americans, the Obama and Biden Administration oversaw increased attention to unconstitutional police practices.
But the division is shedding lawyers. Trump’s abandonment of civil rights enforcement has resulted in a mass exodus of roughly 70% of the Division’s lawyers. That means that even if the Administration wanted to reign in police misconduct, they would likely not have the staff to do so. And in any event, they do not. Experts expect the Trump administration to end any investigations into police violence.
Trump’s attitude, that police should be “unleashed”–has trickled down to states and cities:
- Days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, the DOJ announced the cancellation of police reform settlements in Minneapolis and Louisville and the closing of open investigations into the Phoenix, Oklahoma City and Memphis police departments.
- In Tennessee, an all-white Chattanooga jury acquitted the police officers who killed Tyre Nichols in 2023 in Memphis. Although the crime occurred in Memphis, a majority Black city, the jury was from Hamilton County, a conservative, white county. The long-standing practice of moving police brutality cases to empathetic white enclaves continues to undermine police accountability. Steve Mulroy, the Memphis DA who prosecuted the case, noted that the acquittal demonstrated “that we need to reaffirm our commitment to police reform.”
- In Alabama, the Governor signed into law the so-called “Safe Alabama” package of bills which expands police immunity from civil and criminal liability.
- In Louisiana, concerns abound that the consent decree with the New Orleans Police Department will be terminated early as all the lawyers working on the case have been dropped from the litigation and are no longer employed by the DOJ.
- Even before Trump’s policing EO, Ohio Senator Moreno asked the DOJ to withdraw the Cleveland Police Consent Decree.
The Gutting of Fair Housing Enforcement
Home ownership has been key to building generational wealth in America. Centuries of redlining, blockbusting and outright violence, have excluded African Americans. 74 percent of white Americans own their homes, compared to just 45 percent of Black Americans. The federal government has tried to close this gap through critical policies over the years.
Now Trump is cutting $30 million in funding to 66 different fair housing nonprofits operating in 33 different states. To make matters worse, Trump is proposing a 76 percent reduction in staff at HUD’s Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Division, which is responsible for investigating complaints not handled by non-profits. These cuts come even though discrimination remains: Black applicants in Maryland, for example, are denied loans at higher rates than white applicants, and Black borrowers in New York City are charged higher interest rates than comparable white borrowers.
Trump Takes Aim at Disparate Impact
Trump has also ordered the end of disparate-impact liability. Disparate impact rules target covert discrimination that disproportionately harms certain groups through policies and practices. Think school discipline policies related to hairstyles, or lending criteria, all ostensibly neutral practices that disproportionately injure people of color.
Trump’s order would require victims to find the smoking gun of intentional bias, a nearly impossible task in most cases. This shift away from disparate impact makes it easier for employers, schools, landlords, and elected officials to hide discrimination behind neutral language, even if their policies reinforce deep-seated disparities.
How People Are Fighting Back
All is not lost. We are seeing consistent, collective resistance against these attacks on racial, reproductive and gender justice.
- Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty is not alone– a group of civil rights and criminal justice organizations wrote to the DOJ expressing concern about their investigation and advocating for her leadership.
- A collection of progressive groups filed suit and persuaded a federal court to temporarily block Trump’s order requiring a passport to vote.
- A doctor and pharmacist are challenging a Louisiana law that reclassifies mifepristone and misoprostol as “controlled dangerous substances” therefore making these life-saving drugs commonly used in medication abortions and non-abortion medical care harder to access. This week a judge ruled that their case can proceed.
- Earlier this month, the Trump administration roiled the country by unceremoniously firing Dr. Carla Hayden, the first woman and black congressional librarian, in a belittling, late-night email. The Library of Congress is fighting back. Days after the firing, the Library continued to post her messages and even ousted the Trump loyalists sent to replace her. As Dr. Hayden, who sees libraries as the “cornerstones of democracy” warned in the final days of her post, “when you don’t have a complete picture of history, it almost makes you blind to context, to what’s going on right now, and what could happen in the future.”
- Maine high school runner Anelise Feldman wrote a letter criticizing state Rep. Laurel Libby who made hay of Feldman’s second place finish to a trans athlete. Feldman’s words are inspiring: “Last Friday, I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run…The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt….Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points.”