Report: One Year in, Trump Administration Remains Unconstitutionally Racist
Jan. 18, 2018
Report: One Year in, Trump Administration Remains Unconstitutionally Racist
Analysis Looks at Administration’s History of Discrimination, Voter Suppression, Civil Rights Rollbacks and Sabotaging of Social Programs
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In just one year in office, President Donald Trump and his administration have compiled a consistent record of discrimination, voter suppression, rolling back of civil rights and sabotaging of social programs, Public Citizen said today in a new report.
The report, “One Year of America’s First White President,” notes that the Trump resistance movement has been successful in blocking some of the administration’s agenda, but the evidence still stands – Trump campaigned, and is governing, on a platform of white supremacy:
• The Muslim Ban. Days after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order denying visas to people from seven overwhelmingly Muslim countries.
• Suppressing the Votes of People of Color. Trump created the Pence-Kobach Commission on Election Integrity – now disbanded thanks to pressure and lawsuits – to intimidate voters of color and develop a national system of voter suppression.
• Criminal Justice Anti-Reform. Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the U.S. Justice Department is reversing modest measures to stop the criminalization of young people of color.
• Crushing the Dream. Last fall, Sessions announced the administration would end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which curbed enforcement of laws against undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.
• Tax Policy is Race Policy. The tax scam legislation effectively constituted a trillion-and-a-half-dollar gift to the superrich, with the largest tax cuts going to corporations, which one way or another will pass almost all of their savings on to shareholders – who are majority white.
• Budgetary Cruelty. The Trump administration’s budgetary proposal called for the gutting of an array of programs to benefit poor people and people of color.
The resistance has been successful in some key instances, leading to the defeat of the first two Muslim bans and the disbanding of the Pence-Kobach Commission, among other wins. But there is much more to fight, Public Citizen maintains.
“It matters when the president says hateful and racist and bigoted things, but it matters even more when the president and his administration take racist and bigoted actions,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “From unconstitutionally discriminating against immigrants to working to suppress the vote of people of color, from rolling back civil rights to transferring wealth to the white superrich, President Trump truly has governed, in the words of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, as America’s First White President.”
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