As Republican lawmakers continue to introduce bills that roll back diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the United States, advisers for President Joe Biden’s campaign are sounding the alarm that a Donald Trump victory in 2024 would only accelerate that process.
Key Trump’s allies, led by former White House adviser Stephen Miller, are working to use civil rights-era laws to combat “anti-white racism,” and they’re targeting programs that provide economic opportunities for communities of color, DEI initiatives created as a result of 2020’s “racial reckoning,” and even sports leagues like the NFL, according to a report from Axios earlier this week
Their intentions aren’t exactly a secret. Government programs that attempt to redress decades of racist policies would be eliminated should Trump be elected to a second term. “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated,” Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told the news outlet.
A top Biden campaign official said Black voters needed to pay close attention to Trump’s plans.
Trump is “making it clear that if he wins in November, he’ll turn his racist record into official government policy, gutting programs that give communities of color economic opportunities and making the lives of Black and brown folks harder,” said former Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), one of the co-chairs of the Biden campaign. “It’s up to us to stop him.”
The warning comes as polling shows Biden’s level of support from Black voters has slipped. Democratic strategists have some fear about GOP plans to target Black men in the coming election. And they have major fears Black voters could stay home or vote for third-party candidates. Highlighting Trump and Miller’s plans could raise the stakes of the election for Black voters.
Miller, who pushed white nationalism and xenophobia in leaked emails, is at the heart of the effort. America First Legal, the right-wing nonprofit group Miller founded, has filed over a hundred lawsuits against “woke” corporations — like Disney, Mattel and Nike — that it alleges discriminate against white men. These complaints — many of which cite the 1964 Civil Rights Act — are laying the legal framework for Trump’s Justice Department to eliminate programs designed to counter racism, Axios notes.
Jasmine Harris, director of Black media for the Biden-Harris campaign, said the report should worry Black Americans.
“This report, in addition to all of the recent examples of shameless racism by Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans, serves as a warning to Black America: Donald Trump is a selfish and vindictive man who doesn’t give a damn about Black people,” Harris told HuffPost. “He will make our lives worse by using the very laws that the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement fought for, against us.”
Miller’s group is not alone in the effort to roll back DEI initiatives.
The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation crafted Project 2025, a sweeping playbook that lists policies and initiatives for the next conservative administration. The initiative is open about its goal to reshape the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. One of the mandates within the playbook is to “reorganize and refocus the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to serve as the vanguard for this return to lawfulness.”
Trump has affirmed to supporters that he aims make good on his promise to eliminate DEI. “We will terminate every diversity, equity and inclusion program across the entire federal government,” he told a crowd in Rochester, New Hampshire, in January.