By Spencer Overton
One year after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, a pattern emerges. Across dozens of executive orders, agency memos, funding decisions and enforcement changes, the administration has weakened federal civil rights law and the foundations of the country’s racially inclusive democracy.
From the start, the U.S. was not built to include everyone equally. The Constitution protected and promoted slavery. Most states limited voting to white men. Congress restricted naturalized citizenship to “free white persons.” These choices were not accidents. They shaped who could belong and who could exercise political power, and they entrenched a racial political majority that lasted for generations.
That began to change in the 1960s. After decades of protest and pressure, Congress enacted laws that prohibited discrimination in employment, education, voting, immigration and housing.
Federal agencies were charged with enforcing those laws, collecting data to identify discrimination and conditioning public funds on compliance. These choices reshaped U.S. demographics and institutions, with the current Congress “the most racially and ethnically diverse in history,” according to the Pew Research Center. The laws did not eliminate racial inequality, but they made exclusion easier to see and harder to defend.
The first year of the second Trump administration marks a sharp reversal.
Cumulative retreat
Rather than repealing civil rights statutes outright, the administration has focused on disabling the mechanisms that make those laws work.
Drawing on over two decades of teaching and writing about civil rights and my experience directing a GW Law project on inclusive democracy, I believe this pattern reflects not isolated administrative actions but a cumulative retreat from the federal government’s role as an enforcer of civil rights law.
Over the past year, the president and his administration have taken a series of connected actions:
• On its first day in office, announced the end of all federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, including diversity officers, equity plans and related grants and contracts.
• Shut down or sharply cut funding for federal programs aimed at reducing inequality, including offices focused on minority health, minority-owned businesses, fair federal contracting, environmental justice and closing the digital divide in broadband.
• Warned schools that diversity programs could jeopardize their federal funding, opened investigations into colleges offering scholarships to students protected under DACA – the Obama-era policy providing deportation protection for undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children – and signaled that colleges risk losing federal student aid if their accrediting agencies consider diversity.
• Revoked security clearances and access to federal buildings for employees at law firms with diversity policies. The FCC investigated media companies for promoting diversity and threatened to block mergers by companies with similar programs, leading several companies to drop their initiatives.
• Issued a government-wide memo labeling common best practices in hiring, admissions and other selection and evaluation processes – such as compiling diverse applicant pools, valuing cultural competence, considering first-generation or low-income status and seeking geographic and demographic representation – as potentially legally suspect. The memo warned that federal funding could be cut to schools, employers and state and local governments using such practices. Federal prosecutors reportedly investigated federal contractors that consider diversity, characterizing such initiatives as fraud.
• Weakened enforcement against discrimination by ordering agencies to stop using disparate impact analysis. That kind of analysis identifies disparities in outcomes, assesses whether they are justified by legitimate objectives, and intervenes when they are not. The Department of Justice, the EEOC, the National Credit Union Administration and other agencies complied and dropped disparate impact analysis. Because algorithmic systems typically operate without explicit intent, eliminating disparate impact analysis reduces federal agencies’ ability to detect and address discriminatory outcomes produced by increasingly automated government and private-sector decision-making.
• Rescinded an executive order that barred discrimination by federal contractors, required steps to ensure nondiscriminatory hiring and employment, and subjected contractors to federal compliance reviews and record-keeping. This weakened a key mechanism used since 1965 to detect and remedy workplace discrimination.
Bob Parent/Getty Images
• Eliminated data used to track inequality, including rolling back guidance encouraging schools to collect data on racial disparities in discipline and special education. The administration also removed data used to identify racial disparities in environmental harms.
• Dismantled or sharply reduced civil rights offices across federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Education. About three-quarters of lawyers in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division left.
• Pressured the Smithsonian to remove exhibits about racial injustice, restored Confederate monuments and military base names, and barred schools and teacher training programs from including material the administration labeled divisive, such as unconscious bias.
• Declared English the nation’s only official language, repealed a requirement that federal agencies provide meaningful access to government programs and services for people with limited English proficiency, and prompted the General Services Admininistration and the departments of Justice, Education and other agencies to scale back language-assistance requirements and services.
• Attempted to limit birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, and adopted practices that treat ethnicity and non-English accents as legitimate reasons for immigration stops.
The pattern is hard to miss
Taken together, these shifts have practical consequences.
When agencies stop collecting data on racial disparities, discrimination becomes harder to detect. When disparate impact analysis is abandoned, unfair practices with no legitimate purpose go unchallenged. When diversity programs are chilled through investigations and funding threats, institutions respond by narrowing opportunity. When history and language are recast as threats to unity, truth and freedom of speech and thought are suppressed and undermined.
Yoichi Okamoto, LBJ Library
Administration officials argue that these steps are needed to prevent discrimination against white people, promote unity, ensure “colorblind equality” and comply with a Supreme Court decision that struck down affirmative action in college admissions. But that ruling did not ban awareness of racial inequality, or neutral policies aimed at reducing it. Many of the administration’s actions rely on broad claims of illegality without providing specific violations.
The selective nature of enforcement is also telling.
Books about racism and civil rights were removed from military libraries, while books praising Nazi ideas or claiming racial intelligence differences were left untouched. The administration suspended admissions of refugees – over 90% of whom have been from Africa, Asia and Latin America in recent years – but then reopened the refugee program for white South Africans.
One year in, the pattern is hard to miss.
The administration is not simply applying neutral rules. It is dismantling the systems that once helped the U.S. move toward a more open and equal democracy. It is replacing them with policies that selectively narrow access to economic, cultural and educational participation.
The result is not simply a change in policy, but a fundamental shift in the trajectory of American democracy.
Spencer Overton is Professor of Law at George Washington University.
JimboXYZ says
Inclusive Democracy ? Every citizen that doesn’t have a criminal record gets their vote, unless you wanted to pick someone else to represent the Democratic party in 2024. Trumps done nothing to strip me of any rights I didn’t already have from birth as a citizen, reaching the age of majority at age 18.
As for MLK Day, it was cold, uneventful pretty much. Most everyone got their federal holiday. Nobody marched or protested, I wasn’t even aware of any event scheduled today. Would’ve avoided it, not into crowds, can’t control the disgruntled one’s that infiltrate them. Everyone was free to celebrate the day as they saw fit as usual. Who knows, there were probably those that chose to commit a crime & were arrested for that relative celebration in that manner ? They got their free room & board at the “Green Roof Inn” ?
Judith G. Michaud says
Oh wow ! Take your head out of the sand and stop watching Fox !
BillC says
In remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr on his day: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Al says
I grew up in the late 50s and into the 60s in a poorer side of town. I went to a black doctor and dentist, we tought nothing of it. They worked hard to get through school and were competent. I also witnessed the rise of women into higher roles of their careers. Today I won’t go to a black doctor ( tried a few years ago and she was a block head ). I won’t trust a black or Hispanic lawyer, dentist, accountant because I’m not sure how they got through school. We’re the standards lowered to fill a gap, we’re the bad scores overlooked to pass them. What about the medical boards and the state bar examiner, did they overlook mistakes. I want the rules to be equal for all not tilted for outcome.
R.S. says
Sounds like solid prejudice to me, unless you have solid evidence in the form of statistics to undergird your assertions. But your uncertainty says much about you, not a darned thing about differently complected professionals. You also sound dreadfully paranoid. Do you really believe that entire university systems collaborated to change the rules for differently complected people? That’s a bit weird an assumption, no?
Kennan says
The standards were never lowered Al. Your own personal experiences are not necessarily the way the Earth rotates.
Standards and practices under this new regime have never been lower. Your comments are proof of that.
Skibum says
Yes, Al, it is THEM, always THEM… others who are the problem. The uneducated of today. The ignorant of today. The incompetent of today. But it sounds like you refuse to accept that during all of the past experiences you just rehashed, YOU didn’t change, your views remain exactly the same, your sense of understanding and coexistence never deluded, never brainwashed or psychologically altered by the maga talking heads on fauxinfotainment or the racist, convicted felon in the WH that you continue to make excuses for in your comments I read.
To sum up your belief system from the above hodgepodge of misdirection and misinformation, YOU haven’t changed on bit… still the same, accepting non-judgmental, lovable, cuddly individual until you have to be around or deal with a medical professional who happens to be black, or a dental employee who happens to be Hispanic, or a woman who worked hard and rose through the ranks to a higher paying position of authority, or maybe a suspected gay tax accountant you raise an eyebrow over due to their mannerisms. Then, it appears by your last sentence, all semblance of acceptance, of respect, of equality disappears from your mind because it must be, just has to be that it is THEM who have broken the rules and somehow unjustly usurped YOUR white male superiority that you equate to equality… simply by being themselves. They MUST have risen to where they are in society because of reverse discrimination, DEI, wokeness. How else could they possibly have attained the positions they have except by taking them from more deserving white guys just like you???
How illuminating! I get it now.
Sherry says
Thank you Skibum! You summed up “al” perfectly!
Skibum says
Al seems fixated about unqualified, unjustly appointed individuals being placed into job positions… but ONLY those who are black, brown, women, etc. No mention at all, none, of white males who have attained positions of power and/or authority for no reason other than who they know. Not their experience. Not their education. Not their brains or abilities. Just the color of their skin… over and over and over again and BAM they are hired.
Or elected… like DJT, the individual that one of his Wharton College professors declared as the stupidest SOB he ever had in one of his classes! The individual who apparently just by being himself, a self ordained brainiac, bankrupted so many of his businesses it is difficult to keep count of every one of his business failures and fraudulent schemes! The same individual who is an avowed and unrepentant racist! An adjudicated sex abuser! A convicted felon! But wait… Also the very person who Al and every other maga mush brain said to themselves, WOW, he’s my man, I’m voting for HIM! TWICE!!!
And now he fancies becoming Emperor of the Western Hemisphere! Aren’t you sheeple proud of your own incompetence and delusions about who is the best possible person who should be sitting in the Oval Office!?
Laurel says
It’s like worshiping the devil! What’s really wild, is the Evangelicals worship him the most! They claim God speaks through flawed people. So, does that mean Jesus Christ was as flawed as Trump, with lies and hatred? Very odd.
BrentJ says
Thank you for the article, Spencer and FL. The patterns are not difficult to spot and they are increasingly difficult to defend. This administration seems laser-focused on the narrative that life is a zero-sum game. Anything for “them” must be, by default, against “us”. When cabinet members are chosen by degree of loyalty rather than on merit, governing policy rule by executive order becomes unchallenged and fluid. The division between “in” and “out” groups becomes more clear, but still chaotic and messy as the whims of the moment shift the focus of one “out” group to another. One week, LGBTQ+ communities and the poor (or women, or migrants, or homeless, or disabled, or unemployed, or ethnicity, or heritage, or …) the next. Through day in and day out despair, I still find hope in humanity and in the fact that the oppressed outnumber the oppressors.
What Else Is New says
Great article. Bless your heart, Jimbo and Al. You never fail to miss the entire point of an article about the current president who has proven to be unfit for the job. As well, the article quite clearly explains the ineptness and vindictiveness displayed by the GOP elected president who for cabinet members chose loyal incompetents to visit horror upon the United States of America. Those of us who are old, having experienced many wonderful changes in our country, now feel democracy will not return in our lifetime due to the untold damage done by Donald Trump. I know many young people who feel a sense of shame for our country and who also worry about the return of democracy.
Sherry says
Completely Embarrassing! trump’s message to the President of Norway. . . who, BTW has told trump over and over that he does NOT control who gets the ” Nobel Peace Prize”:
Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT
Skibum says
If only the consolidated Native American tribes could compose such a letter directed to the convicted felon in the WH based upon the above missive to Norway’s head of government:
Dear Chief, we sincerely apologize for not fabricating some type of peace pipe to present to you for all you have “done” for the Native Americans living in this great land, because we understand how to get your undivided attention. However, there is the pressing matter of our land that we feel we must bring to your attention. We have met and it is the consensus of all Native American tribes that we have to think about what is good and proper for this country’s Americans… us. Your American government has never protected our land. In fact it has forcibly and systematically removed us from most of it starting when the first boats from Europe unloaded it’s invaders onto our shores hundreds of years ago, and has continued ever since.
Why have these European invaders claimed an everlasting “right of ownership” to our American land anyway? There are no written documents. Only many boat loads of people who came here hundreds of years ago to take from us what was once ours. Your people have taken nearly everything we have, and have given nothing but heartache back to our people. It is time your government did something for the Native American people besides corralling us on distant reservations. With all the internal fighting that is going on in your cities, we are very concerned about the security of America. We believe this vast nation will not be secure unless we, the Native American consolidated tribes have Complete and Total control over American lands once again.
Thank you! The Native American people
R.S. says
Beautiful! On target! Exactly!
Laurel says
“Books about racism and civil rights were removed from military libraries, while books praising Nazi ideas or claiming racial intelligence differences were left untouched.”
And there you are. It’s not about a level field, it’s about the Nazi view of white supremacy. To watch people in Trump’s crowd applaud this mentality is just so sad that there are that many nasty, bigoted people still in this country. I bet Steven Miller loves it! I know Trump does.
Go ahead, tell me how Robert F. Kennedy is educated in nutrition, and therefore competent to lead a nation on health. Where are his credentials? Tell me how Pete Hegseth was hired on “merit” while Four Star Generals were fired…this I want to hear. Tell me how Kristi Noem’s experience, beyond posing in picture settings, is competent and hired on merit. Where is the merit, expertise, education, experience and competence in his cabinet? Please explain.
How are you proud of this? I’d like to know that as well.
Skibum says
There may have been one white individual in drumph’s orbit who had to first pass muster, have certain qualifications and pass an examination before getting the nod for the job. Melania… she is known to have modeled nude.
Sherry says
@ Skibum. . . The very same people who constantly bit#$ (er. . complain) about DEI hiring have NO problem with voting to put a “convicted felon/sexual abuser ” in the “white house”! They also have absolutely NO problem with trump filling his administration with dangerous “UNQUALIFIED/INEXPERIENCED/INCOMPETENT “trump Loyalist” . . . yet they don’t see the complete hypocrisy/stupidity in that (non) thinking!
Laurel says
“Merit” means white. They all know it, too.
R.S. says
Laurel, the NAZIs learned from the US; they admired Jim Crowe USA and tried to emulate it.
Laurel says
Yep, and the same mentality is back. Many people need a pecking order to feel good about themselves.
Atwp says
As an older African American man, I’m not surprised Trump is doing what he is doing. To be fair millions voted for him, this is what we have. African American people voted for him, there for him is hurting them and the whole world. We live through what we have and vote in a better candidate in 28. The whole world is hurt by this man. As an African man we lived through we can surely live out his term. White men are struggling from Trump. My people have had it hard so long this is nothing new for us, we learn how to survive.
Laurel says
Atwp: This time, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I believe you to be correct.
Ray W. says
On more than one occasion, Winston Churchill spoke of his seven questions that comprise a test of the public health and soundness of a political democracy.
What follows comes from Churchill’s address to the legislative body of the Netherlands, the States-General Assembly on May 8, 1946, one year after the unconditional surrender documents were signed by German government and military officials:
“Does the Government in any country rest upon a free, constitutional basis, assuring the people the right to vote according to their will, for whatever candidates they choose?
“Is there a right of free expression of opinion, free support, free opposition, free advocacy and free criticism of the Government of the day?
“Are there Courts of Justice free from interference by the Executive or from threats of mob violence, and free from all association with particular political parties?
“Will these Courts administer public and well-established laws associated in the human mind with the broad principles of fair play and justice?
“Will there be fair play for the poor as well as for the rich?
“Will there be fair play for private persons as well as for Government officials?
“Will the rights of the individual, subject to his duties to the State, be maintained, asserted and exalted?”
Make of this what you will.
Dennis C Rathsam says
SUPER WONDERFULL, The more a read your statements, the bigger my grin gets! TRUMPS gotten inside your head. DTS! Your hatred of this man shows how shallow, & miserable you Dems are. TRUMPS a true leader, one you jackasses cant stop. Before the election he promised to clean up America, & make America a great international power again. He has succeeded ! The world leaders call him DADDY. As TRUMPS team at HHS continues to deport all the illegals, Stopping the FRAUDE, perpetuated by Obamas Solami,s with there day care, the transportation, & business practices. I’m sure with a little digging HHS will find FRAUDE of this type in many states run by Democrats. Mr & Mrs CLINTON, feel they are above the law. Refuse to testify ….seems the bloom has died on the Clinton rose…. Seems the DEMS have a lot of explaining to do….. Im all EARS!