From south Minneapolis to the DOJ, Trump's vision of a post-civil rights America is becoming real
South Minneapolis along East Lake Street is a thriving immigrant neighborhood with block after block of family-run restaurants, churches and more businesses than you can shake a stick at, ordinarily serving a bustling foot traffic.
As Sahan Journal reported not long after inauguration day, employees there are now scared to come to work. Customers are afraid to walk in the door. ICE raids and the threat of them frighten an entire populace witless, wreaking economic havoc.
Undocumented immigrants already had to worry about being exploited by unscrupulous employers.
In President Trump's America, those who need protection are instead being targeted; the outrageous, mistaken deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador is just one example we know about.
The U.S. Department of Justice, which not long ago prided itself on its independence, has now become a key lever in Trump's effort to reverse the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. The first step was freezing the work of the Civil Rights Division, as the Washington Post first reported, 'halting much of its investigative activity dating from the Biden administration and not pursuing new indictments, cases or settlements, according to a memo sent to the temporary head of the division.'
That means stopping cases enforcing important civil rights statutes, like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Here in Minnesota the changes are affecting federal oversight of the Minneapolis Police Department and its long history of unconstitutional policing, including off-the-charts levels of racial profiling as revealed in the 2023 DOJ report.
What was catalogued in that report, former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said, 'made what happened to George Floyd possible.' After Floyd's murder and days of ensuing carnage, it took nearly five years to put the federal police reform agreement in place.
But Trump's DOJ seems uncommitted to getting final approval. DOJ attorneys recently won a second 30-day stay on the pending consent decree case between Minneapolis and the federal government.
Trump's right-wing pals are even pressuring him to pardon Derek Chauvin for his federal crimes. Thankfully, Trump can't pardon the state murder charge. But still, expect all hell to break loose on Minneapolis streets should he issue the pardon for the federal civil rights charge.
Even if Trump holds off on the pardon, the prospects of a federal consent decree to oversee MPD aren't great. The head of the once-proud DOJ Civil Rights Division is Harmeet Dhillon. As NBC News reported, Dhillon has 'alleged fraud in the 2020 election, accused Google of discriminating against white men and spoken out against state laws to protect doctors who perform gender-affirming surgery for transgender minors.'
Luckily, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights already put its own agreement with the city of Minneapolis in place, but federal oversight would be good belt-and-suspenders insurance.
Trump, who was once accused by the federal government of refusing to rent to Black tenants, issued an executive order 'ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity,' which is double-talk, the effect of which is de facto legalized discrimination.
'Federal civil-rights laws protect individual Americans from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, [protections supporting] equality of opportunity for all Americans. As President, I have a solemn duty to ensure that these laws are enforced for the benefit of all Americans,' he wrote.
He is, to be crass about it, taking a leak on our heads and calling it rain.
This gravely impacts women, racial and ethnic and religious minorities, lesbians and gays, not to mention the now frequently targeted transgender community. Everyone who isn't a white heterosexual male and counts on established civil rights legislation is straight out of luck. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division was created to protect citizens from the actions of bigots after the Civil War, enforcing the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. They expanded that brief to protect other vulnerable folks. Now, contrary to Trump-speak, the DOJ is about the business of doing exactly the opposite.
A key area is the workplace, where women, Black and immigrant workers have made strides thanks to enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and, yes, diversity efforts by both the federal government and corporations. With Trump turning the clock back, Meta, Ford, McDonald's, Walmart and Target all got in line.
It took public outrage to restore recognition of the likes of the late Colin Powell, Jackie Robinson and other prominent Black veterans after Trump's order to scrub government websites of 'DEI,' i.e., Black achievement.
Sadly, a prevailing reality is that some people of color like Justice Clarence Thomas — a disgrace to Thurgood Marshall's legacy — will pull the ladder up after them. Where the clarion call once was 'We shall overcome,' their credo is 'I have overcome.'
Erec Smith of the Koch-funded Cato Institute endorsed Trump's sweeping edict, saying 'the Trump administration isn't getting rid of the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion as they are typically understood. He's getting rid of the critical social justice version, which is inherently divisive.'
A Trump executive order asserts, 'The purpose of this order is to ensure that it does so by ending illegal preferences and discrimination.'
If you buy that, the proverbial bridge in Brooklyn is still available.
Welcome to a post-civil rights America.
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