https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-executive-orders-dei/
Politics
Trump’s Attacks on DEI Are a Green Light for the Government to Discriminate
Politics
Trump’s Attacks on DEI Are a Green Light for the Government to Discriminate
Under the guise of eliminating racial discrimination against white men, the Trump administration is launching a frontal assault on the country’s civil rights infrastructure.
by Elie Mystal
January 24, 2025
The Nation
Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office on January 23, 2025. (Yuri Gripas / Abaca / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The federal government is the largest employer in the United States. It is the largest employer in every single state. But the federal government is no longer an “equal opportunity employer,” thanks to a series of executive orders and directives passed by the white-supremacist Trump administration that collectively allow for racial discrimination by claiming to eliminate racial discrimination against the poor, downtrodden white man—you know, the guy who’s never been able to get a fair shake in this country.
Trump signed the first of these orders, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” within hours of taking the oath of office on Monday. The order describes diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs as “illegal and immoral discrimination” as well as sources of “immense public waste.” The well-known conceit here is that people who get their government jobs through DEI are not “deserving” of their positions, while every white man who works for the government is allegedly there on his “merits” and nothing more.
This conceit was made even more explicit with a second executive order called “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” This order proclaims: “These illegal DEI and DEIA policies also threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination when selecting people for jobs and services in key sectors of American society, including all levels of government, and the medical, aviation, and law-enforcement communities.” The fact that a twice-impeached convicted felon and fail-son king of bankruptcy is lecturing the country on individual “merit” and “aptitude” is a joke that can only be brought to us by white America.
DEI programs, of course, do not do what Trump imagines. If anything, the country is beset by mediocre white men who got their positions through an old-boys’ network of family, friends, connections, and frat buddies who now gum up and dumb down the system at every level. If you have the option of getting a Black doctor, for instance, I encourage you to take it. They’ve likely worked harder to get there, and a Black doctor’s seemingly preternatural ability to treat all patients with care and professionalism regardless of their race is apparently a very rare asset in the medical profession. If you want a doctor who sees your maladies before your skin color, always bet on Black.
But I digress. I’m not going to relitigate the utility of DEI programs here. That debate has raged, and a majority of white people, both men and women, decided to install a white supremacist president to defend the white male patriarchy. I will simply stipulate that mediocre white men need government jobs, and taking those jobs away from racial minorities and women makes the white guys feel better about themselves while they’re waiting for their mommies to wash their sheets before they head out to their little rallies.
All that said, it is more or less legal, and constitutional, to end DEI programs. I want to be very clear about that, because there is legal nuance here that often gets flattened when talking about them. DEI is just a policy, and while that policy is supported by the 14th Amendment (at least it was before MAGA took over the courts), it is not required by the 14th Amendment. The Constitution just wants whites with hiring authority to stop being racist assholes; it doesn’t care how they do it.
February 2025 Issue
What is illegal and unconstitutional is discrimination against non-whites and women in hiring. And that’s the problem with the executive orders. They assume that every single person hired through a diversity program is undeserving of their position, that their qualifications are lesser and that their literal work ethic and talent are suspect. They treat people hired under these programs as if they’re one distinct class of people (apparently, we all look the same to the Trump administration), and instead of looking on a case-by-case basis at who was hired for “diversity” and who was hired simply because they were the best applicant for the job (which is often the exact same person), they cast the whole lot out. And, they effectively warn people not to hire anybody except white guys, because they suggest that anybody who isn’t might be a “diversity” hire which will trigger a lawsuit.
The memo on how to execute Trump’s order shutting down DEIA programs —which was issued by the Office of Personnel Management to all the heads of departments and agencies—illustrates the inherent discriminatory problems with these policies. One section of the memo, for instance, informs the agency heads that all employees of “DEIA offices” must be placed on administrative leave, immediately. But what defines a DEIA office? The memo doesn’t say. Instead, it says that some allegedly DEIA offices are “disguised” with “coded or imprecise language.”
What that means, effectively, is that anybody who is in a DEIA office or looks like they might be can immediately be placed on administrative leave without due process or any other legal determination. That is straight-up employment discrimination. The government itself is saying that it can’t say exactly who it’s going after, but it will know that person when it sees them. It creates two different classes of government employees: one group that the white supremacist government deems worthy, and another group that is deemed suspect, based on as little as an eye test.
Maybe some DEIA employees can “pass” as worthy government employees, while others only get three-fifths of their employee rights. Who can say? Among other things, the order almost certainly violates the Administrative Procedures Act, because you cannot design a policy that’s more arbitrary, capricious, and unconstitutionally vague than this one is.
And that’s for people who are already employed who, arguably, have actual work records that can attest to their value. For people not yet hired, the situation is even more bleak. Trump’s executive orders create a profound disincentive to hire people who are not white, not men, or have disabilities, because the person doing the hiring could then be accused of engaging in DEIA.
The OPM memo also creates a hostile work environment in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It does so by effectively instructing white people to snitch on colleagues they think might be part of a DEIA program. Here’s the language from memos that went out all through the government this week:
If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances to DEIAtruth@opm.gov within 10 days.
There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.
What is a “similar ideology”? The memo doesn’t say. Instead, the memo gives some people the ability to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against colleagues suspected of being DEIA, whatever the hell that means.
As of this moment, the entire federal government should be considered in violation of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and sued appropriately—not because the government has ended DEIA programs, but because the government is discriminating against employees based on those employees’ “race, religion, gender, national origin, disability, age, or genetics,” to use the language from the Civil Rights Act. People are not simply being targeted because they are part of a DEIA program; they’re being targeted because they look like they might be. That is a violation of the law and the Constitution.
But because white people have installed white supremacists not only in the White House but at and throughout all levels and branches of government, these legal and constitutional violations will go unaddressed and unpunished.
That’s because Trump has neutered the agency that is supposed to sue employers for unconstitutional discrimination: the Department of Justice. Specifically, Trump ordered a “freeze” on all new cases and investigations by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
I imagine that the NAACP and other private groups are working up lawsuits right now against the Trump administration for its violations of the Civil Rights Act, but they’re going to run into a problem once their cases get to court. Chief Justice John Roberts, and his white judicial friends, probably don’t really believe that the Civil Rights Act should be a thing in the first place.
Remember, Roberts has spent his career arguing against and eviscerating the Voting Rights Act. I keep trying to get white Democrats and moderates to understand that Roberts is and always has been an enemy of racial equality in this country. In this case, I don’t expect Roberts (or his Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court) to take the Civil Rights Act seriously and enforce it against the Trump administration.
It’s possible, of course, that some of these executive orders and directives may be knocked down by the Roberts court on some other basis; again, they’re unconstitutionally vague and arbitrary and capricious. But that will just be Roberts’s way of giving Trump (and his apparently still terrible legal team) a second (or third, or fourth) bite at the apple, just like Roberts did with Trump’s Muslim ban. Roberts will keep giving Trump chances to violate the 14th Amendment in ways that are not arbitrary and not vague, until he gets it right. He will never call the whole thing off under the Civil Rights Act, because white people like Roberts never want to use the Civil Rights Act to stop white people like Trump from having their way.
I keep telling folks: This is what white people want. This is what they voted for, and not just in the most recent election. Majorities of white folks have steadfastly elected, appointed, and supported whites who don’t think the Civil Rights Act should be a thing. White media has promoted and normalized the idea that hiring non-white people and women is a benevolent gesture from white employers, not constitutionally required nondiscrimination under 14th Amendment. And now that those powerful whites don’t feel so generous anymore, they can stop pretending to have ever cared about following the law. Trump is simply allowing white folks to behave like some of them have always wanted to, and Trump’s courts will back them up.
That behavior is disgusting, of course. But it almost always is. Remember, Black people and women did not invent DEI; white people invented it to try to comply with the law and the Constitution. White people invented it, because they could not trust themselves to treat potential employees equally and fairly as the Constitution requires.
DEI was a solution to deal with white men and their shitty behavior and hiring practices. That solution is now gone, but the white male problem very much remains. I wonder what solution for their own crapulence white folks will come up with next.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elie Mystal
Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and the host of its legal podcast, Contempt of Court. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. His first book is the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution, published by The New Press. Elie can be followed @ElieNYC.
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-laid-groundwork-for-muslim-ban-2-0-heres-how-organizers-are-bracing/
News Analysis
Racial Justice
by Elie Mystal
January 24, 2025
The Nation
Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office on January 23, 2025. (Yuri Gripas / Abaca / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The federal government is the largest employer in the United States. It is the largest employer in every single state. But the federal government is no longer an “equal opportunity employer,” thanks to a series of executive orders and directives passed by the white-supremacist Trump administration that collectively allow for racial discrimination by claiming to eliminate racial discrimination against the poor, downtrodden white man—you know, the guy who’s never been able to get a fair shake in this country.
Trump signed the first of these orders, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” within hours of taking the oath of office on Monday. The order describes diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs as “illegal and immoral discrimination” as well as sources of “immense public waste.” The well-known conceit here is that people who get their government jobs through DEI are not “deserving” of their positions, while every white man who works for the government is allegedly there on his “merits” and nothing more.
This conceit was made even more explicit with a second executive order called “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” This order proclaims: “These illegal DEI and DEIA policies also threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination when selecting people for jobs and services in key sectors of American society, including all levels of government, and the medical, aviation, and law-enforcement communities.” The fact that a twice-impeached convicted felon and fail-son king of bankruptcy is lecturing the country on individual “merit” and “aptitude” is a joke that can only be brought to us by white America.
DEI programs, of course, do not do what Trump imagines. If anything, the country is beset by mediocre white men who got their positions through an old-boys’ network of family, friends, connections, and frat buddies who now gum up and dumb down the system at every level. If you have the option of getting a Black doctor, for instance, I encourage you to take it. They’ve likely worked harder to get there, and a Black doctor’s seemingly preternatural ability to treat all patients with care and professionalism regardless of their race is apparently a very rare asset in the medical profession. If you want a doctor who sees your maladies before your skin color, always bet on Black.
But I digress. I’m not going to relitigate the utility of DEI programs here. That debate has raged, and a majority of white people, both men and women, decided to install a white supremacist president to defend the white male patriarchy. I will simply stipulate that mediocre white men need government jobs, and taking those jobs away from racial minorities and women makes the white guys feel better about themselves while they’re waiting for their mommies to wash their sheets before they head out to their little rallies.
All that said, it is more or less legal, and constitutional, to end DEI programs. I want to be very clear about that, because there is legal nuance here that often gets flattened when talking about them. DEI is just a policy, and while that policy is supported by the 14th Amendment (at least it was before MAGA took over the courts), it is not required by the 14th Amendment. The Constitution just wants whites with hiring authority to stop being racist assholes; it doesn’t care how they do it.
February 2025 Issue
What is illegal and unconstitutional is discrimination against non-whites and women in hiring. And that’s the problem with the executive orders. They assume that every single person hired through a diversity program is undeserving of their position, that their qualifications are lesser and that their literal work ethic and talent are suspect. They treat people hired under these programs as if they’re one distinct class of people (apparently, we all look the same to the Trump administration), and instead of looking on a case-by-case basis at who was hired for “diversity” and who was hired simply because they were the best applicant for the job (which is often the exact same person), they cast the whole lot out. And, they effectively warn people not to hire anybody except white guys, because they suggest that anybody who isn’t might be a “diversity” hire which will trigger a lawsuit.
The memo on how to execute Trump’s order shutting down DEIA programs —which was issued by the Office of Personnel Management to all the heads of departments and agencies—illustrates the inherent discriminatory problems with these policies. One section of the memo, for instance, informs the agency heads that all employees of “DEIA offices” must be placed on administrative leave, immediately. But what defines a DEIA office? The memo doesn’t say. Instead, it says that some allegedly DEIA offices are “disguised” with “coded or imprecise language.”
What that means, effectively, is that anybody who is in a DEIA office or looks like they might be can immediately be placed on administrative leave without due process or any other legal determination. That is straight-up employment discrimination. The government itself is saying that it can’t say exactly who it’s going after, but it will know that person when it sees them. It creates two different classes of government employees: one group that the white supremacist government deems worthy, and another group that is deemed suspect, based on as little as an eye test.
Maybe some DEIA employees can “pass” as worthy government employees, while others only get three-fifths of their employee rights. Who can say? Among other things, the order almost certainly violates the Administrative Procedures Act, because you cannot design a policy that’s more arbitrary, capricious, and unconstitutionally vague than this one is.
And that’s for people who are already employed who, arguably, have actual work records that can attest to their value. For people not yet hired, the situation is even more bleak. Trump’s executive orders create a profound disincentive to hire people who are not white, not men, or have disabilities, because the person doing the hiring could then be accused of engaging in DEIA.
The OPM memo also creates a hostile work environment in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It does so by effectively instructing white people to snitch on colleagues they think might be part of a DEIA program. Here’s the language from memos that went out all through the government this week:
If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances to DEIAtruth@opm.gov within 10 days.
There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.
What is a “similar ideology”? The memo doesn’t say. Instead, the memo gives some people the ability to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against colleagues suspected of being DEIA, whatever the hell that means.
As of this moment, the entire federal government should be considered in violation of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and sued appropriately—not because the government has ended DEIA programs, but because the government is discriminating against employees based on those employees’ “race, religion, gender, national origin, disability, age, or genetics,” to use the language from the Civil Rights Act. People are not simply being targeted because they are part of a DEIA program; they’re being targeted because they look like they might be. That is a violation of the law and the Constitution.
But because white people have installed white supremacists not only in the White House but at and throughout all levels and branches of government, these legal and constitutional violations will go unaddressed and unpunished.
That’s because Trump has neutered the agency that is supposed to sue employers for unconstitutional discrimination: the Department of Justice. Specifically, Trump ordered a “freeze” on all new cases and investigations by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
I imagine that the NAACP and other private groups are working up lawsuits right now against the Trump administration for its violations of the Civil Rights Act, but they’re going to run into a problem once their cases get to court. Chief Justice John Roberts, and his white judicial friends, probably don’t really believe that the Civil Rights Act should be a thing in the first place.
Remember, Roberts has spent his career arguing against and eviscerating the Voting Rights Act. I keep trying to get white Democrats and moderates to understand that Roberts is and always has been an enemy of racial equality in this country. In this case, I don’t expect Roberts (or his Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court) to take the Civil Rights Act seriously and enforce it against the Trump administration.
It’s possible, of course, that some of these executive orders and directives may be knocked down by the Roberts court on some other basis; again, they’re unconstitutionally vague and arbitrary and capricious. But that will just be Roberts’s way of giving Trump (and his apparently still terrible legal team) a second (or third, or fourth) bite at the apple, just like Roberts did with Trump’s Muslim ban. Roberts will keep giving Trump chances to violate the 14th Amendment in ways that are not arbitrary and not vague, until he gets it right. He will never call the whole thing off under the Civil Rights Act, because white people like Roberts never want to use the Civil Rights Act to stop white people like Trump from having their way.
I keep telling folks: This is what white people want. This is what they voted for, and not just in the most recent election. Majorities of white folks have steadfastly elected, appointed, and supported whites who don’t think the Civil Rights Act should be a thing. White media has promoted and normalized the idea that hiring non-white people and women is a benevolent gesture from white employers, not constitutionally required nondiscrimination under 14th Amendment. And now that those powerful whites don’t feel so generous anymore, they can stop pretending to have ever cared about following the law. Trump is simply allowing white folks to behave like some of them have always wanted to, and Trump’s courts will back them up.
That behavior is disgusting, of course. But it almost always is. Remember, Black people and women did not invent DEI; white people invented it to try to comply with the law and the Constitution. White people invented it, because they could not trust themselves to treat potential employees equally and fairly as the Constitution requires.
DEI was a solution to deal with white men and their shitty behavior and hiring practices. That solution is now gone, but the white male problem very much remains. I wonder what solution for their own crapulence white folks will come up with next.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elie Mystal
Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and the host of its legal podcast, Contempt of Court. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. His first book is the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution, published by The New Press. Elie can be followed @ElieNYC.
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-laid-groundwork-for-muslim-ban-2-0-heres-how-organizers-are-bracing/
News Analysis
Racial Justice
Trump Laid Groundwork for “Muslim Ban 2.0.” Here’s How Organizers Are Bracing.
Muslim organizers warn that an executive order signed by Trump on January 20 sets the stage for an updated travel ban.
by Maha Hilal
January 25, 2025
Truthout
In the early hours of New Year’s Day, an individual in New Orleans killed 15 people and wounded dozens of others on the city’s famed Bourbon Street. When reports emerged that the alleged attacker was a Muslim American by the name of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, then President-elect Donald Trump quickly turned the tragedy into fodder for his Islamophobic, racist and xenophobic rhetoric. In the days after the attack, Trump took to social media to condemn the violence caused by “Radical Islamic Terrorism,” which he blamed on Biden’s “Open Border Policy.”
Further reports soon revealed that Jabbar was not, in fact, an immigrant and was a veteran of the U.S. military. Neither of these facts, however, mattered to Trump and the narrative he has sought to cement, framing Muslims as foreign outsiders and claiming that Islam — not for example, Jabbar’s participation in one of the most violent militaries in the world — could have played a part in this violent transgression.
While none of this rhetoric is new, an emboldened Trump promised to unleash even more hateful rhetoric, along with criminalizing and demonizing policies during his term, making these anti-Muslim narratives an important part of his arsenal.
Less than three weeks later, in his inauguration speech, Trump delivered on precisely this promise. Coupled with the over two dozen executive orders that he signed on his first day in office alone — including an order that clearly lays the groundwork for an updated “Muslim ban” — Trump made it clear that when it comes to expanding repression and state violence against Muslims and other marginalized communities, he intends to do so at lightning speed.
In the face of this ongoing precarity — made worse by the violence waged by the Biden administration, Muslim Americans across the country have been bracing for the impact of his second administration. Most importantly, they have been and are continuing to organize their communities to survive and resist his agenda.
Related Story:
News
Politics & Elections
GOP Senator Tells Arab American Witness to “Hide Your Head in a Bag” at Hearing
The Republican repeatedly spoke over the Arab American expert to badger her with Islamophobic and racist tropes.
News
Politics & Elections
GOP Senator Tells Arab American Witness to “Hide Your Head in a Bag” at Hearing
The Republican repeatedly spoke over the Arab American expert to badger her with Islamophobic and racist tropes.
by Sharon Zhang
Truthout
When Demonizing Rhetoric Becomes Policy
In a speech that Trump gave to Muslim and Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia in 2017, during his first administration, his then national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, reportedly encouraged him to use the phrase “Islamist extremist” instead of the term “radical Islamic extremism” to avoid demonizing Islam as a faith altogether. Though his written remarks included the theoretically less offensive phrase, his delivery of the speech did not.
When Trump denounced the New Orleans attacker using the same terms, less than three weeks ahead of his inauguration, he once again demonstrated his ideological commitment to synonymizing Islam and terrorism. When condemning the attack, Trump also lamented that “Radical Islamic Terrorism and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe. That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.” By preemptively blaming Muslims and immigrants for any increase in crime, Trump further laid the groundwork for criminalizing policies, even before assuming the presidency.
Unsurprisingly, a rise in anti-Islam sentiment followed the New Orleans attack. For Trump’s purposes, this was probably a welcome signal to show support for policies and laws in the pipeline designed to target Muslims — which he didn’t waste any time putting into place.
Moreover, if Trump’s last tenure as president is instructive, the impact of this demonizing rhetoric will be felt in Muslim communities across the United States. For example, in 2017, as a result of Trump’s rhetoric, 23 bills banning Sharia law were introduced in 18 states. Though the bills are nonsensical because American law clearly supersedes Sharia law, they serve to promote the idea of Muslims as enemy outsiders whose religious practices are inherently opposed to the values of the United States. Elsadig Elsheikh, director of the global justice program at the Haas Institute, which conducts research on the anti-Sharia movement noted in an article at The Guardian that even if the bills don’t succeed in becoming law, “they help to subject Muslims to surveillance and other forms of exclusion and discrimination.”
The “Nonprofit Killer” Bill
In November 2024, the House passed the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, also known as the “Nonprofit Killer” bill. The legislation is based on the false notion that the measures currently available to restrict or shut down organizations supporting “terrorism” were weak. Most dangerously, the bill provides the Treasury secretary the power to revoke the tax status of a nonprofit they unilaterally deem to be “terrorist supporting” through “material support or resources.” With the stigma of a “terrorist-supporting” label, domestic organizations could also lose their ability to function, since banks would be unlikely to maintain any ties with those designated as such.
Marwa, a law student, said many Muslims are “still feeling residual PTSD from 9/11. We’re still scared, we don’t express ourselves.”
Critics of the bill rightfully fear it will give Trump, via his handpicked Treasury secretary, the power to shut down any organization that challenges him without due process. Muslim organizations, including nonprofits and mosques who have long faced intense scrutiny, especially post-9/11, have sounded the alarm in anticipation of the possible weaponization of this bill against their communities. While shutting down organizations remains the most direct consequence of the bill, it would undoubtedly also silence Muslim communities and cultivate more fear of participating in civic life. Given the timing of the bill, it is clearly also a tool to repress activism aimed at challenging Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide of Palestinians.
For many, this renewed environment of repression reinforces the trauma inflicted on Muslim communities after 9/11. Marwa, a law student, who requested that her last name be omitted, said many Muslims are “still feeling residual PTSD from 9/11. We’re still scared, we don’t express ourselves. Even seeing everything that’s happening now — it’s completely ludicrous. We keep our mouths shut because we don’t want to rock the boat. We don’t want to end up in Gitmo. We’re not trying to end up in Florence [an infamous supermax prison in Colorado] for the rest of our lives.” For Marwa, the continuity of this targeting makes her question what might be specific to Trump, and what’s a repackaging of the same violence Muslims faced under Obama, Bush, Clinton or Reagan. “If anything, I think it is validating for a lot of Muslim organizers to know that our work is more important now than ever before.”
The Muslim Ban and Immigration
At a September 2024 campaign event themed around “fighting antisemitism,” Trump emphatically promoted his planned Islamophobic immigration policies, saying his administration wouldn’t accept refugees from “terror infested areas,” that he would reinstate the Muslim travel ban, and that his administration would “deport the foreign Jihad sympathizers and Hamas supporters from our midst.”
A year earlier, shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent genocidal onslaught against Palestinians, the Trump campaign announced what they called their plan to keep “Jihadists and their sympathizers” out of the United States. Among the strategies included was the implementation of “strong ideological screening” for anyone seeking to immigrate to the United States. Those with sympathies for “Jihadists, Hamas, or Hamas ideology,” according to the plan, would be automatically disqualified from immigrating.
On Monday, January 20, Trump made good on this promise by signing an executive order that lays the groundwork for a “Muslim Ban 2.0” but that is officially titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.” The executive order references “aliens” who “espouse hateful ideology,” adding a new provision that recommends “any actions necessary to protect the American people from the actions of foreign nationals who have undermined or seek to undermine the fundamental constitutional rights of the American people, including, but not limited to, our Citizens’ rights to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment, who preach or call for sectarian violence, the overthrow or replacement of the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands, or who provide aid, advocacy, or support for foreign terrorists.”
Considering how the United States has long constructed Muslims as adhering to a religion that’s antithetical to democracy (including most recently in the “war on terror”) and how U.S. discourse often construes Muslims as generally hating the United States for “our freedoms,” this provision opens the door for further targeting Muslims.
“Community members who’ve never organized before are showing up consistently, and asking what they can do, while growing their skills around organizing,”
While the signed executive order does not include specific countries as of yet, it reflects Trump’s stated desire to reinstate what he once called his “wonderful ban” include its expansion to encompass additional Muslim majority countries. “Trump has privately discussed adding more countries, including Afghanistan, to the list of majority-Muslim countries whose citizens he’s seeking to ban from the United States,” Rolling Stone notes.
Ramah Kudaimi, campaign director of the Crescendo Project at the Action Center on Race and the Economy, emphasized the importance of learning from resistance under the first Trump administration to refine organizing strategies under a possible reinstatement of the ban. Kudaimi believes that mass mobilizations such as the widespread airport actions that followed the institution of the first travel ban, “were essential to continue a regular, visible resistance to Trump’s agenda, and also helped impacted communities be able to see that they weren’t alone in these moments — an important component to fighting against state violence.”
Meanwhile Trump’s promise to empower local police with the authority to conduct deportations is already prompting preemptive rollbacks in the protection of immigrants locally. For example, in Chicago, rather than strengthening the city’s existing “welcoming city ordinance,” two local politicians are instead advocating for coordination between the police and federal immigration officials in cases involving arrests or convictions of undocumented residents related to particular gang or drug crimes. Given how much scrutiny and pressure sanctuary cities faced under the first Trump administration, other localities may soon follow in the footsteps of Chicago.
Consider the fact that even before Trump’s inauguration, the organization America First Legal, led by none other than Stephen Miller, sent out letters to 249 state and municipal jurisdictions in addition to NGO’s warning of the consequences of continuing to fail to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Those receiving letters, according to America Legal First, including mayors in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Boston, among others, are cities that the organization claims have broken the law. The letter in part, sternly states that, “Your jurisdiction’s sanctuary laws or policies therefore make a mockery of American democracy and demonstrate a shocking disrespect for the rule of law. For these reasons alone, you should abandon them.”
Fatema Ahmad, the executive director of Muslim Justice League, stressed how important deep solidarity building is for resisting this type of crackdown. One of the crucial pieces of this work, according to Ahmad, is “helping people understand how the infrastructure that is targeting Muslims actually goes on to impact all communities.” In this vein, Kudaimi also asserted that “it just isn’t going to be enough for the demands of our movements to be achieved if all that is happening is protests. We need to be building local campaigns, bringing in even more people into our organizing spaces, and disrupting business as usual on a regular basis. And we need to think about all the actors benefitting from our oppression — particularly corporations.”
Enter Project 2025
Project 2025, a right-wing policy blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation and produced with the support of at least 140 individuals who were previously part of the Trump administration, advises in favor of making “irregular warfare a cornerstone of security strategy.” This includes countering threats from “Islamist terrorism” and “transnational terrorism, from the Middle East.” Coupled with the increased defense spending that Project 2025 advises, it’s clear that the so-called war on terror will continue full speed ahead, with increasing death and destruction in many Muslim-majority countries. This, of course, also has repercussions on communities in the United States who hail from these countries — including demonization and pain from the pillaging of their nations of origin.
While Project 2025 promotes continued support for Israel, Trump has already made his commitment to the settler-colonial state clear, saying that “all hell will break out,” if the Israeli hostages held by Hamas were not released by the time he entered office.
Then, days before Trump was inaugurated, a ceasefire was announced between Israel and Hamas. Trump, who initially took credit for helping to push the ceasefire agreement through, when asked after his inauguration whether he thought the agreement would stay in place in the long-term stated, “That’s not our war; it’s their war. But I’m not confident.” This was in conjunction with his removal of sanctions directed at settlers. While clearly not an about face moment, what Trump was signaling like his predecessors, was that Israel would continue to be given free rein to continue their brutal campaign of apartheid and genocide on Palestinians.
Project Esther, another strategy guide by the Heritage Foundation, was released on October 7, 2024, marking the one-year anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel. According to the guide, its goal is to provide “a blueprint to counter antisemitism in the United States and ensure the security and prosperity of all Americans.” What the guide actually focuses on, however, is criminalizing anti-Zionism, silencing any critique of Israel, and dismantling what it calls the “Hamas Support Network” — a euphemism for the Palestine solidarity movement — which it asserts is creating internal pressure to change U.S. policy toward Israel.
While this blueprint for repression threatens Muslim and activist communities, it also speaks to the threat our organizing poses. Saqib Ali, co-founder and executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy, told Truthout, “As a community we have organized great protests and marches and we have run really smart campaigns to put economic pressure on corporate targets like war profiteers and corporations profiting from Israeli apartheid and genocide.” What we need to do now, according to Ali, is “to organize our people into grassroots organizations and build close alliances with other organized communities so our other tactics have enduring impact that our targets can’t ignore.”
Bracing for and Resisting Trump
While Muslims and Muslim Americans are bracing for the second Trump presidency with fear and trepidation, leaders within the community aren’t backing down from challenging state violence. For example, Rashida James-Saadiya, executive director of the Muslim Power Building Project, told Truthout that “Muslims/Muslim organizers aren’t just preparing to resist — they’re proactively building power,” and that they are “evolving from reactive resistance to proactive community-building.”
This, according to James-Saadiya, means developing independent institutions that are focused on long-term solutions rather than short-term survival, including independent media platforms, organizing and leadership development programs, economic cooperation networks, rapid response systems and mutual aid networks. Importantly, James-Saadiya also noted that the focus on long-term proactive mechanisms and community protection means these efforts will continue irrespective of who occupies the White House. Similarly noting the continuity of violence between administrations, Ahmad stated that Muslim communities have “become so much more outspoken about the fact that Islamophobia is bipartisan and that every administration has perpetrated similar policies.”
While there is “a lot to come under the Trump administration,” Ahmad emphasized that “folks now know that organizing and getting organized and building power is the answer to all of that.” To Ahmad, building power goes beyond our own communities to include the solidarity that has emerged from anti-genocide organizing and other groups under threat. In a hopeful tone, Ahmad also reflected on the presence of community: “Community members who’ve never organized before are showing up consistently, and asking what they can do, while growing their skills around organizing,” she said, “I think there’s been so much growth in the past year, and people taking on roles that they maybe never saw themselves doing before. And so, I think that has made us stronger than before.”
“We are not just planning to endure — but building the foundation to thrive and protect each other regardless of political headwinds,” James-Saadiya said.
“This isn’t just about resisting one administration or policy,” James-Saadiya added. “It’s about transforming resistance into lasting power, ensuring Muslim communities have the tools to rebuild the social-political table that for too often has neglected their lived reality and the voices of so many others impacted both systemic and generational oppression.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Maha Hilal
Dr. Maha Hilal has a Ph.D. in justice, law and society, and the focus of her research and expertise is on Muslim Americans’ responses in the context of national security post-9/11. She is the co-director of Justice for Muslims Collective and an organizer with Witness Against Torture. She has written and spoken extensively on the topic of institutionalized Islamophobia in the war on terror, with a focus on the Guantánamo Bay prison and torture.
