Discourse that allows us to express a wide range of ideas, opinions, and analysis that can be used as an opportunity to critically examine and observe what our experience means to us beyond the given social/cultural contexts and norms that are provided us.
The Trump administration has suspended refugee resettlement for most of the world, but welcomed 59 white South African Afrikaners Monday who were granted refugee status. President Trump claims Afrikaners face racial discrimination — even though South Africa’s white minority still own the vast majority of farmland decades after the end of apartheid — and claims they are escaping “genocide.” This accusation “is a conspiracy theory and a myth that has been floating around echo chambers of right-wing populists and white nationalists for many decades now,” says Andile Zulu, political essayist and researcher at the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town. We also speak with Herman Wasserman, a South African professor of journalism at Stellenbosch University, who says the Trump administration is using Afrikaners as “pawns, as props in a campaign that purports to promote whiteness.”
[White genocide conspiracy theory]:
“The white genocide, white extinction, or white replacement conspiracy theory is a white nationalist conspiracy theory that claims there is a deliberate plot to cause the extinction of white people through forced assimilation, mass immigration, or violent genocide.”
—Wikipedia
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.
Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, was arrested and detained by masked federal immigration police Friday when he joined three Democratic congressmembers set to tour a newly reopened 1,000-bed Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail run by GEO Group, which advocates say lacks proper permits. Baraka says he was asked to leave the premises and left the secure area to join a group of protesters in a public area outside the gate — when he was seized by officers in a chaotic scene. “This is completely insane, and it’s a scary moment in the history of this country as we watch democracy slip between our fingers,” Baraka tells Democracy Now!
Transcript:
AMY GOODMAN:
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, the mayor of the largest city in New Jersey, was arrested Friday and detained by masked federal immigration police when he went to a newly reopened, private, 1,000-bed Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail called Delaney Hall. He says he was there to support three congressmembers set to tour the facility: Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez. Newark Mayor Baraka says he was asked to leave the premises, and did so. He had gone to the other side of the fence, the Newark public property side, away from the congress members, was on a public street, when he was seized by officers in a chaotic scene.
AMY GOODMAN: As the ICE agents handcuffed Mayor Baraka, the three Democratic congressmembers — Menendez, McIver and Coleman — tried to wrap their arms around him to protect him. After he was arrested, a crowd of hundreds gathered, demanding he be released. He was charged with trespassing and later released and addressed supporters.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: I didn’t know that this morning when I woke up that I’d be in this detention facility here, that I would end up incarcerated for something that I believe is my democratic right, to show up and speak out against what I think was happening there, a violation of city and state laws and a lack of transparency.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson accused the New Jersey congressmembers at the scene of assaulting ICE officers, warned they still may face arrest.
We’ll speak with 80-year-old Congressmember Bonnie Watson Coleman in a few minutes, but we begin with Newark mayor, gubernatorial candidate Ras Baraka.
Welcome to Democracy Now! I’m glad I’m not speaking to you behind bars, but where you are in Newark, Mayor. If you can start off by talking about why you were there, outside Delaney Hall, what this place is, and what happened?
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Well, I actually go there every day, every morning. I would have been there this morning. I go at 7 a.m. with fire code officials, UCC officials, health inspectors, to get in, as it is our right to inspect the facility for them to apply for a certificate of occupancy. We’re in court with GEO right now, because they’re defying city ordinances.
I went back that afternoon because I was invited to participate in a conference that the congresspeople were going to have after they toured the facility themselves. I went there for that purpose. You know, we waited there over an hour, almost an hour and a half, with no incident, without any incident whatsoever. I was allowed to come inside and stand there by the gate without incident for over an hour, waiting for the congresspeople to come out.
When the special agent in charge, Patel, showed up, he escalated the situation. There, the congresspeople tried to reason with him, you know, surrounded me inside, and finally got him to agree for me to leave. I left, on the other side of the fence. They may — I guess they reversed that decision and made a decision to come around and, in fact, arrest me.
And so they did. They arrested me, and the congresspeople and other bystanders tried to shield me from being arrested. But, you know, I did. And I think it was better that that happened, because it would have probably gotten worse than it was getting while I was out there.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, we heard that — well, you went to the Newark side, and you represent Newark. You were on the public property side. Someone got a call next to you, right? One of the officials got a call. Now —
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Right, right.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s be clear: The U.S. attorney for New Jersey there is Alina Habba, the former private lawyer for President Trump. If you can explain what you understand took place? Because that seemed to escalate things, when that agent was on the phone.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. You could see that it was resolved, that I was leaving. I left. I was on the other side. When he got the call, I was already on the other side of the fence. He, in turn, got a phone call. Right after the phone call, they proceeded to come after me. When they first came, they came right up to me anyway. And this idea that other people got arrested is not true. I was the only one arrested there, and so they targeted me specifically. So, after the phone call, it did escalate.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba said on X that you, quote, “ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove” — well, she said, “to remove himself,” unquote, from the detention center, again, which, as you point out, is run by the GEO Group. She added, quote, “No one is above the law.” Please respond, Mayor.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Yeah, she’s right: No is above the law. Neither are they. Neither is the GEO — the GEO Group is not above the law, the president or any of these people.
We have a dispute with GEO because they’re violating city laws, and we are fighting with them in court. And ICE is interfering and interceding in that, unfortunately, without the judge’s — you know, whatever the judge says, they are doing the opposite of that.
You know, I sat on that — sat inside of that fence there for over an hour, and nobody told me to move. Nobody told me to get out. Nobody questioned me. Nobody came up to me and said anything to me. I sat there for a very long time before that agent showed up there. And so, it was clearly their intention to escalate it and to focus everything on me and to target me, and that’s exactly what happened.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, I wanted to clarify something, Mayor Baraka. A lot of the news reported that you were arrested during a protest.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: But, in fact, you weren’t protesting. Can you explain the history of this GEO facility, which wasn’t always owned by GEO, and why you say they don’t have the proper documentation to hold a thousand prisoners?
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Right, yeah, I was not protesting, actually. And I could be protesting. I speak to the protesters when I get there. But at the end of the day, the GEO Group — the facility used to be a drug rehab center and a halfway house for people that were incarcerated that were coming home, and this was a transition for them to — from there, to come home, so short, very short periods of time that they spent there to transition home.
They converted it, or are in the process of trying to convert it, into this kind of detention facility, over a thousand beds in a detention facility. They had a certificate of occupancy 20 years ago. And according to city ordinance, they need an updated certificate of occupancy. In fact, they need annual updates of certificates of occupancy, not 20 years later. We challenged him on that.
Our folks showed up. Before I even came there, we sent our people there. They refused to let them in. So I needed to see that for myself. I came down there, one, with our folks and watched them turn them away and turn me away at the same time.
We went to court summarily after that. The courts had us in conversation, forced them to make them have an initial inspection. We did an initial inspection and found a few violations. After we find violations, we have to come back and check those violations. And we told them that they needed to apply for a certificate of occupancy. They refused to do that.
So, this is a dispute, a dispute that has to be settled in court, not by Alina Habba, not by, you know, the ICE or by the president, but by a court. A court settles these disputes, and it has not settled it yet. We’re still in court now.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, the detention facility, the largest on the East Coast, a thousand beds, is near Newark Airport. I mean, maybe the only hope for the detainees is that there have been so many outages at Newark that they wouldn’t be able to fly them out. But I wanted to ask you about the history. In 2021, advocates helped enact a law prohibiting New Jersey from renewing or signing detention contracts with ICE in New Jersey. Now, a federal district judge struck down parts of that in 2023 after private prison operators, like CoreCivic, which operates another immigration jail in the state, sued. “The state attorney general is appealing the ruling, invoking the 10th Amendment that stops the federal government from commandeering state resources for its purposes.” That is — I’m reading from The Washington Post. Can you respond to what you still are asking for? In a moment, we’re going to speak with one of the congressmembers who are still threatened with arrest, who did tour the facility. But what you’re demanding ICE give you now in terms of documentation? What you’re concerned about is happening to the detainees inside?
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Well, we want them to start filling out the application for the certificate of occupancy that allows us to come in and do full inspections, health inspection, fire inspection, make sure they have the proper, you know, procedures that are happening. They have women in there, have children in there. We need to know how many people are in there, how many beds that they have there, if the sprinkler system works, if the gas system is hooked up correctly, the electrical system is hooked up, if the elevators are working properly. All of these things are a part of what a certificate of occupancy allows us to do. If they’re using the property for the stated use, or if they’re using it for anything else, do they need to go through the zoning board or planning board? And this is what happens for every facility, even a new home that you build and open. Everybody has to have a CO or temporary certificate of occupancy. And they have neither. And so, we’re in dispute about this.
I do think that the state should go further here and demand or write a law that says that we can’t have private prisons in New Jersey in the first place. I think we should go as far as that in the state.
AMY GOODMAN: I know you have to go, but I want to just get you to respond to a very ominous moment right before you were arrested — it was on Friday — with the White House official Stephen Miller saying he’s looking into, that the Trump administration is looking into suspending habeas corpus, which protects people from unlawful detentions. This is what he said.
STEPHEN MILLER: Well, the Constitution is clear — and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So, it’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not. The end of the day, Congress passed a body of law, known as the Immigration and Nationality Act, which stripped Article III courts — that’s the judicial branch — of jurisdiction over immigration cases. So, Congress actually passed — it’s called jurisdiction-stripping legislation. It passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren’t even allowed to be involved in immigration cases.
AMY GOODMAN: So, if you, finally, can respond, just hours before you were arrested, to Stephen Miller saying they’re weighing stripping habeas corpus, they’re weighing doing away with it, because while it may not be wartime, we are in the midst of an invasion.
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: This is completely insane, and it’s a scary moment in the history of this country as we watch democracy slip between our fingers. I think that because Trump was elected and there’s still a process, we still have this separation of powers, that people believe that the separation of powers is going to fix this. This is not being fixed. People are watching this take place as authoritarianism becomes the rule of the land here in this country.
And we need more voices and more people to stand up against this. Suspending habeas corpus is something that happens in a time of war. You know, to relate this to war is definitely, definitely scary. It means that we’re in an existential threat here, and we need to stand up and do something about this immediately.
AMY GOODMAN: When do you have to go to court?
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: May 15, I go back to court for my preliminary hearing in the city of Newark, and hopefully the supporters will be out there supporting me.
AMY GOODMAN: Soon afterwards, there’s the primary for governor, is that right? June 10th?
MAYOR RAS BARAKA: Yes, June 10th, absolutely. Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Ras Baraka, I want to thank you for being with us, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, the largest city in New Jersey, yes, a Democratic candidate for governor in the state’s gubernatorial election this year. On Friday, the mayor was arrested by 20 armed, many masked, federal agents, standing on public property in his city of Newark. He was released after five hours.
On March 17, the Trump administration kidnapped Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri as he was on his way home. In just four days, he was transferred between five different facilities across three states, where he was refused food or water to break his fast, forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded cells surrounded by blaring television, and lights on for hours on end, with his family left reeling in his absence. On Monday, at Zeteo’s anniversary event in DC, his wife, Mapheze Saleh, joined Zeteo’s political correspondent Prem Thakker in front of an audience to tell us about who Badar Khan Suri is as a person, the conditions he faced in ICE detention, and how deeply this has affected her family. Saleh’s first extended interview in English media came right before a pivotal Wednesday hearing for Dr. Khan Suri’s release on bond. NOTE: This interview was originally published earlier on Zeteo.com. As of Wednesday, a federal judge ordered for Dr. Khan Suri to be freed. For exclusive, early access to hard-hitting interviews like this one, subscribe to Zeteo’s Substack here: https://zeteo.com/subscribe READ PREM’S
LATEST COVERAGE OF THE STORY HERE:
https://zeteo.com/p/breaking-georgeto... “I want you to imagine with me, imagine that you are on your way back to home, you will find a masked federal agent waiting for you to come home and then they're going to arrest you and then transfer you from a detention facility to another. And it ends up with you 1,500 miles from your family. Imagine that your day and night are the same because they will never switch off the lights in the detention center…”
PLEASE NOTE: Event Introductions and programming begins @ 10:52 and Dr. West's begins speaking @ 34:31
On 25 April 2025, the Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies (CCMS) at SFU inaugurated the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture with an Keynote Speech from and conversation iconic philosopher, civil rights activist, theologian, and public intellectual Dr. Cornel West at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. The lecture entitled "Where Do We Go From Here? On the Future of Justice and Solidarity" addressed the legacy of late Palestinian-American literary critic and public intellectual Edward Said, black liberation, Palestine activism, and hope through love in the age of rampant fascism and global crises. Moderated by Dr. Adel Iskandar, Associate Professor of Communication and Director of CCMS at SFU, opening remarks were offered by anti-racism activist Mamadou Ba, and closing remarks were delivered by Dr. Peter Hudson, Associate Professor of Geography at UBC. Musical performance was delivered by Syrian oud virtuoso Mouhannad El-E'ek. This event was cosponsored by BC Black History Awareness Society, SFU's Department of Indigenous Studies, SFU's School of Communication, SFU's Institute for the Humanities, SFU's Department of English, SFU's Cassidy Centre for Educational Justice, SFU's Department of Geography, SFU's School for Contemporary Arts, SFU's School for International Studies, SFU's Department of History, UBC's Department of Geography, SFU's Institute for Black and African Diaspora Research and Engagement, SFU's School for Public Policy, and Anti-Racism Coalition Vancouver
In this powerful interview for ‘Mehdi Unfiltered,’ Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley tells Mehdi how the Trump administration has completely ignored due process, and explains just how dire the implications are of cases like Rümeysa Öztürk. “This is laying the ground foundationally and will be a threat to everyone. This means that this could be you tomorrow for suffering a miscarriage, because in Trump's America, that's been criminalized. This means this could be you tomorrow for reading a banned book,” Pressley says. “With this dictator in chief, simply because you have a dissenting opinion from his worldview, you could find yourself incarcerated.” Mehdi asks Pressley about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days of his second term, as well as the state of the Democratic party. “I do not believe, Mehdi, that this is about weathering the next four years. I believe this will dictate the next 100,” Pressley says to Mehdi.
*This interview was published earlier for paid subscribers on zeteo.com. If you enjoyed watching this and would like early and exclusive access to more content like this, head over to our substack and become a paid subscriber. It costs less than your monthly coffee and goes a long way to support our mission to bring independent, fearless journalism to you.
LiveUpdated New York Times May 12, 2025 ET16 minutes ago
Trump Administration Live Updates: U.S. Welcomes White South Africans Given Refugee Status
I Christopher Landau, deputy secretary of state, and Troy Edgar, right, the deputy homeland security secretary, greeted dozens of Afrikaners at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Monday. Credit: Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Where Things Stand
Afrikaner refugees: Dozens of white South Africans landed in the United States after receiving refugee status from the Trump administration. President Trump has essentially halted refugee admissions but created a pathway for Afrikaners, a white minority that ruled South Africa during apartheid, and made the unsupported claim they are victims of “genocide.”
Afrikaners Refugees, from South Africa, checking in on Sunday for their flight to the United States at O.R. Tambo Airport in Johannesburg. Credit: Ilan Godfrey for The New York Times
The first plane carrying white South Africans who received refugee status from the Trump administration landed at Washington Dulles International Airport on Monday morning, according to a flight tracking website.
The arrival marks a drastic reversal in the United States’ refugee policies, which have long focused on helping people fleeing war, famine and genocide. President Trump essentially halted all refugee admissions programs on his first day in office before creating a pathway for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that ruled during apartheid in South Africa, to resettle in the United States.
The group that arrived Monday on a U.S.-funded Omni Air International charter flight say they have been discriminated against, denied job opportunities and have been subject to violence because of their race. Forty-nine Afrikaners boarded the flight on Sunday, according to a spokesman for South Africa’s airport authority, after more than 8,000 people expressed interest in the program. There are scant details available about the individuals who arrived in the United States.
The South Africans who reached the United States on Monday had received expedited processing by the Trump administration — waiting no more than three months. Refugee resettlement before the first Trump administration took an average of 18 to 24 months, according to the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group for immigrants.
Mr. Trump said on Monday that the United States was extending citizenship to these individuals, who he said were victims of a genocide.
“Farmers are being killed,” he told reporters. “They happen to be white. Whether they are white or Black makes no difference to me. White farmers are being brutally killed and the land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
Police data does not support the narrative of mass murder. From April 2020 to March 2024, 225 people were killed on farms in South Africa, according to the police. But most of the victims — 101 — were current or former workers living on farms, who are mostly Black. Fifty-three of the victims were farmers, who are usually white.
The refugee program has exacerbated tensions between the United States and South Africa, whose government has rejected the Trump administration’s claim that the Afrikaners are eligible for refugee status.
“It is most regrettable that it appears that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy,” Chrispin Phiri, a spokesman for South Africa’s foreign ministry, said in a statement.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff who has overseen the administration’s immigration policy, said the situation in South Africa “fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created.”
“This is persecution based on a protected characteristic — in this case, race,” he said, “This is race-based persecution.”
In February, Mr. Trump signed an executive order suspending all foreign assistance to South Africa and announced his administration would work to resettle “Afrikaner refugees” because of the South African government’s actions that “racially disfavored landowners.”
Mr. Trump was referring to a law, known as the Expropriation Act, which allows the government in some cases to acquire privately held land in the public interest without paying compensation. But that step can be done only after a justification process subject to judicial review.
Ronald Lamola, South Africa’s foreign minister, has likened the law to eminent domain in the United States. Analysts say the law has many checks and balances to prevent abuse. The most likely application, analysts say, will be to take land that is not in use.
The Trump administration has also criticized the South African government for its condemnation of Israel over the war in Gaza and its close relationship with Iran. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Hamed Aleaziz and Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.
President Trump boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews for a trip to the Middle East on Monday. Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Trump angrily brushed off ethical concerns about accepting a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar to be used as a new Air Force One, saying only someone “stupid” would turn down such an offer.
Mr. Trump said that the gift from Qatar will be to the U.S. Department of Defense — and not him personally — and he said he would not use it after he left office. The plane is to be decommissioned from military use and then turned over to his eventual presidential library, Mr. Trump said.
"Here we are...The Trump administration is clearly pursuing a white nationalist agenda. That agenda stands alongside other efforts, including his grift. And I want you to always remember that at the heart of this problem is the toxic combination of greed, selfishness, and hatred. And we can combine those policy initiatives and outcomes with other policy initiatives and outcomes to show that this ain't about [the price of] eggs yall. It never was..."
--Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr.
Weekly Wrap Up by Eddie Glaude,Jr. May 9, 2025 Substack
In this week’s recap, Eddie discusses various pressing issues, including the selection of Pope Leo XIV, the humanitarian crisis in Israel and Gaza, U.S. immigration policies, economic challenges under the Trump administration, and the implications of recent executive orders on civil rights. He emphasizes the need for consistent critique of policies regardless of political affiliation and calls for a more imaginative approach to activism in the face of systemic injustices.
'The line has been crossed': Eddie Glaude Jr. responds to Mayor Baraka's arrest
MSNBC political analyst and Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. responds to the arrest of Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka at an ICE detention center he'd been protesting. "The line has been crossed. The state has evidenced its willingness to exercise power in this coercive way, and it doesn't matter if you're an elected official or a woman holding your child."
For more context and news coverage of the most important stories of our day click here: https://www.msnbc.com/
The Latest on the Trump Administration:
Legal Tool Key to Civil Rights Enforcement: President Trump has ordered federal agencies to halt their use of “disparate-impact liability,” which has been used to assess whether policies discriminate against different groups.
Trump and the G.O.P. Money World: The president is harnessing the Republican Party’s all-encompassing deference to him to exert even greater control over the G.O.P. big-money world, which had long been one of the party’s final remaining redoubts of Trump skepticism.
White Afrikaners as Refugees: Although the president halted virtually all other refugee admissions shortly after he took office, the Trump administration is planning to bring the first group of white South Africans it has classified as refugees to the United States, according to officials briefed on the plans and documents obtained by the Times.
Holocaust Museum and Trump Firings: Board members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum argued over email after a Biden appointee sent a scathing letter invoking the Holocaust as he denounced the museum’s silence on Trump’s firings of board members.
Trump Seeks to Strip Away Legal Tool Key to Civil Rights Enforcement
President Trump has ordered federal agencies to halt their use of “disparate-impact liability,” which has been used to assess whether policies discriminate against different groups.
President Trump has undertaken an aggressive effort to purge the consideration of diversity, equity and inclusion from the federal government and every facet of American life. Credit: Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
by Erica L. Green Reporting from Washington May 9, 2025 New York Times
President Trump has ordered federal agencies to abandon the use of a longstanding legal tool used to root out discrimination against minorities, a move that could defang the nation’s bedrock civil rights law.
In an expansive executive order, Mr. Trump directed the federal government to curtail the use of “disparate-impact liability,” a core tenet used for decades to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by determining whether policies disproportionately disadvantage certain groups.
The little-noticed order, issued last month with a spate of others targeting equity policies, was the latest effort in Mr. Trump’s aggressive push to purge the consideration of diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., from the federal government and every facet of American life.
The directive underscores how Mr. Trump’s crusade to stamp out D.E.I. — a catchall term increasingly used to describe policies that benefit anyone who is not white and male — is now focused not just on targeting programs and policies that may assist historically marginalized groups, but also on the very law created to protect them.
“This order aims to destroy the foundation of civil rights protections in this country, and it will have a devastating effect on equity for Black people and other communities of color,” said Dariely Rodriguez, the acting co-chief counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, an advocacy group. Dariely Rodriguez, the acting co-chief counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Civil rights advocates say Mr. Trump is trying to effectively gut anti-discrimination laws by fiat.Credit...Joy Asico-Smith/AP Images for Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights
The disparate-impact test has been crucial to enforcing key portions of the landmark Civil Rights Act, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on race, color or national origin. For decades, it has been relied upon by the government and attorneys to root out discrimination in areas of employment, housing, policing, education and more.
Civil rights prosecutors say the disparate-impact test is one of their most important tools for uncovering discrimination because it shows how a seemingly neutral policy or law has different outcomes for different demographic groups, revealing inequities.
Lawyers say the test has been crucial in showing how criminal background and credit checks affect employment of Black people, how physical capacity tests inhibit employment opportunities for women, how zoning regulations could violate fair housing laws, and how schools have meted out overly harsh discipline to minority students and children with disabilities.
Over the last decade, major businesses and organizations have settled cases in which the disparate-impact test was applied, resulting in significant policy changes.
One of the largest settlements involved Walmart, which in 2020 agreed to a $20 million settlement in a case brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that claimed the company’s practice of giving physical ability tests to applicants for certain grocery warehouse jobs made it more difficult for women to get the positions.
The use of the disparate-impact rule, however, has also long been a target of conservatives who say that employers and other entities should not be scrutinized and penalized for the mere implication of discrimination, based largely on statistics. Instead, they argue that such scrutiny should be directed at the explicit and intentional discrimination prohibited by the Civil Rights Act.
Opponents say that that disparate-impact rule has been used to unfairly discriminate against white people. In 2009, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who claimed reverse discrimination when the city threw out a promotional examination on which they had scored better than Black firefighters.
The new order, titled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” echoes arguments that Mr. Trump has adopted from far-right conservatives, who say that the country has become too focused on its racist history, and that protections from the civil rights era have led to reverse racism against nonminority groups.
Disparate-impact liability is part of “a pernicious movement” that seeks to “transform America’s promise of equal opportunity into a divisive pursuit of results preordained by irrelevant immutable characteristics, regardless of individual strengths, effort or achievement,” the order stated.
The president ordered federal agencies to “eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible,” under the law and Constitution, and required that agencies “deprioritize enforcement of all statutes and regulations to the extent they include disparate-impact liability.”
That means that no new cases are likely to rely on the theory in civil rights enforcement — and existing ones will not be enforced.
His order also instructs agencies to evaluate existing consent judgments and permanent injunctions that rely on the legal theory, which means that cases and agreements in which discrimination has been proved could be abandoned.
The order takes aim directly at the use of the test in enforcing the Civil Rights Act, requiring Attorney General Pam Bondi to begin repealing and amending any regulations that apply disparate-impact liability to implement the 1964 law.
Attorney General Pam Bondi will be required to begin repealing and amending any regulations that apply disparate-impact liability to the enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Credit: Pete Marovich for The New York Times
One of the most glaring examples in history of how seemingly race-neutral policies could disenfranchise certain groups are Jim Crow-era literacy tests, which some states set as a condition to vote after Black people secured rights during Reconstruction.
The literacy tests did not ask about race, but were highly subjective in how they were written and administered by white proctors. They disproportionately prevented Black people from casting ballots, including many who had received an inferior education in segregated schools, and were eventually outlawed with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In 1971, the Supreme Court established the disparate-impact test in a case that centered on a North Carolina power plant that required job applicants to have a high school diploma and pass an intelligence test to be hired or transferred to a higher-paying department. The court ruled unanimously that the company’s requirements violated the Civil Rights Act because they limited the promotion of minorities and did not measure job capabilities.
Mr. Trump’s executive order, which is likely to face legal challenges, falsely claimed that the disparate-impact test was “unlawful” and violated the Constitution. In fact, the measure was codified by Congress in 1991, upheld by the Supreme Court as recently as 2015 as a vital tool in the work of protecting civil rights, and cited in a December 2024 dissent by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said the disparate impact theory “wrongly equates unequal outcomes with discrimination and actually requires discrimination to rebalance outcomes.”
”The Trump administration is dedicated to advancing equality, combating discrimination and promoting merit-based decisions, upholding the rule of law as outlined in the U.S. Constitution,” Mr. Fields said.
GianCarlo Canaparo, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has argued that eliminating disparate impact would be the final blow to D.E.I., noted that Mr. Trump would need the help of Congress to fully eradicate the rule.
But he said the president’s order would still have a “salutary” impact on the American public by helping people understand that racial animus and disparate outcomes “are not the same things, and they shouldn’t be treated the same way in law.”
“These claims that racial discrimination is the sole cause of racial disparities in this country is just empirically false,” Mr. Canaparo said. “The problem with disparate-impact liability is that it presumes that falsehood is true, and accordingly distorts civil rights.”
Mr. Trump’s order contends that businesses and employers face an “insurmountable” task of proving they did not intend to discriminate when there are different outcomes for different groups, and that disparate impact forced them to ”engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability.”
Catherine E. Lhamon, who served as the head of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., disputed that. Her office conducted several disparate-impact investigations that found no intentional wrongdoing, she said.
“It’s a rigorous test,” Ms. Lhamon said, “and sometimes it proves discrimination and sometimes it doesn’t.”
In one case, the office examined large disparities in the rates of Native American students being disciplined, particularly for truancy, compared with their white peers in the Rapid City Area Schools in South Dakota. In the course of the investigation, the school superintendent attributed the tardiness of Native American students to “Indian Time,” the Education Department report stated. The superintendent later apologized and was fired.
Last year, the school district agreed to make changes to its practices as part of a voluntary resolution agreement with the Education Department. The Trump administration abruptly ended that agreement in April, citing the president’s directives to eliminate race-conscious policies.
The Justice Department has also long relied on the theory to identify patterns of police misconduct and other discrimination pervasive in communities of color. In 2018, the department helped secure a settlement and a consent decree with the City of Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Fire Department after finding that Black firefighters were blocked from promotions because of a test that did not prove necessary for the fire department’s operations.
Now the Justice Department’s embattled civil rights division has halted the use of disparate-impact investigations altogether, officials said.
In an interview last month, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, praised the executive order for rolling back what she called “a very discredited” theory that “should be overruled.”
“We’re not in that business anymore, pursuant to the executive order,” she told the conservative podcast host Glenn Beck.
She went on to suggest that the level of discrimination that spurred civil rights laws no longer existed. “It’s 2025, today,” she said, “and the idea that some police department or some big employer can be sued because of statistics, which can be manipulated, is ludicrous and it is unfair.” Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, praised Mr. Trump’s executive order for rolling back what she called “a very discredited" theory. Credit: Ken Cedeno/Reuters
Civil rights advocates say Mr. Trump is trying to effectively gut anti-discrimination laws by fiat.
Ms. Rodriguez, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said disparate impact had become a crucial guardrail for “ensuring that there are no artificial barriers that are limiting equal access to economic opportunity in every facet of our daily life.” The test helps root out discrimination that many people may not realize is constraining their opportunities, she added.
“The impact of this,” Ms. Rodriguez said of Mr. Trump’s order, “cannot be overstated.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent, covering President Trump and his administration.
A version of this article appears in print on May 11, 2025, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Curtails Legal Tool That Enforces Civil Rights. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. A bedrock principle of the United States is that all citizens are treated equally under the law. This principle guarantees equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes. It promises that people are treated as individuals, not components of a particular race or group. It encourages meritocracy and a colorblind society, not race- or sex-based favoritism. Adherence to this principle is essential to creating opportunity, encouraging achievement, and sustaining the American Dream. But a pernicious movement endangers this foundational principle, seeking to transform America’s promise of equal opportunity into a divisive pursuit of results preordained by irrelevant immutable characteristics, regardless of individual strengths, effort, or achievement. A key tool of this movement is disparate-impact liability, which holds that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Disparate-impact liability all but requires individuals and businesses to consider race and engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability. It not only undermines our national values, but also runs contrary to equal protection under the law and, therefore, violates our Constitution.
On a practical level, disparate-impact liability has hindered businesses from making hiring and other employment decisions based on merit and skill, their needs, or the needs of their customers because of the specter that such a process might lead to disparate outcomes, and thus disparate-impact lawsuits. This has made it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for employers to use bona fide job-oriented evaluations when recruiting, which prevents job seekers from being paired with jobs to which their skills are most suited — in other words, it deprives them of opportunities for success. Because of disparate-impact liability, employers cannot act in the best interests of the job applicant, the employer, and the American public. Disparate-impact liability imperils the effectiveness of civil rights laws by mandating, rather than proscribing, discrimination. As the Supreme Court put it, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Disparate-impact liability is wholly inconsistent with the Constitution and threatens the commitment to merit and equality of opportunity that forms the foundation of the American Dream. Under my Administration, citizens will be treated equally before the law and as individuals, not consigned to a certain fate based on their immutable characteristics.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible to avoid violating the Constitution, Federal civil rights laws, and basic American ideals.
Sec 3. Revoking Certain Presidential Actions. The following Presidential approvals of the regulations promulgated under 42 U.S.C. 2000d-1 are hereby revoked: (a) the Presidential approval of July 25, 1966, of the Department of Justice Title VI regulations (31 Fed. Reg. 10269), as applied to 28 C.F.R. 42.104(b)(2) in full; and (b) the Presidential approval of July 5, 1973, of the Department of Justice Title VI regulations (38 Fed. Reg. 17955, FR Doc. 73-13407), as applied to the words “or effect” in both places they appear in 28 C.F.R. 42.104(b)(3), and as applied to 28 C.F.R. 42.104(b)(6)(ii) and 28 C.F.R. 42.104(c)(2) in full.
Sec. 4. Enforcement Discretion to Ensure Lawful Governance. Given the limited enforcement resources of executive departments and agencies (agencies), the unlawfulness of disparate-impact liability, and the policy of this order, all agencies shall deprioritize enforcement of all statutes and regulations to the extent they include disparate-impact liability, including but not limited to 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2, 28 C.F.R. 42.104(b)(2)–(3), 28 C.F.R. 42.104(b)(6)(ii), and 28 C.F.R. 42.104(c)(2).
Sec. 5. Existing Regulations. (a) As delegated by Executive Order 12250 of November 2, 1980 (Leadership and Coordination of Nondiscrimination Laws), the Attorney General shall initiate appropriate action to repeal or amend the implementing regulations for Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for all agencies to the extent they contemplate disparate-impact liability. (b) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General, in coordination with the heads of all other agencies, shall report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy: (i) all existing regulations, guidance, rules, or orders that impose disparate-impact liability or similar requirements, and detail agency steps for their amendment or repeal, as appropriate under applicable law; and (ii) other laws or decisions, including at the State level, that impose disparate-impact liability and any appropriate measures to address any constitutional or other legal infirmities.
Sec. 6. Review of Current Matters. (a) Within 45 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission shall assess all pending investigations, civil suits, or positions taken in ongoing matters under every Federal civil rights law within their respective jurisdictions, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that rely on a theory of disparate-impact liability, and shall take appropriate action with respect to such matters consistent with the policy of this order. (b) Within 45 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and the heads of other agencies responsible for enforcement of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (Public Law 93-495), Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the Fair Housing Act (Public Law 90-284, as amended)), or laws prohibiting unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices shall evaluate all pending proceedings that rely on theories of disparate-impact liability and take appropriate action with respect to such matters consistent with the policy of this order. (c) Within 90 days of the date of this order, all agencies shall evaluate existing consent judgments and permanent injunctions that rely on theories of disparate-impact liability and take appropriate action with respect to such matters consistent with the policy of this order.
Sec. 7. Future Agency Action. (a) In coordination with other agencies, the Attorney General shall determine whether any Federal authorities preempt State laws, regulations, policies, or practices that impose disparate-impact liability based on a federally protected characteristic such as race, sex, or age, or whether such laws, regulations, policies, or practices have constitutional infirmities that warrant Federal action, and shall take appropriate measures consistent with the policy of this order. (b) The Attorney General and the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission shall jointly formulate and issue guidance or technical assistance to employers regarding appropriate methods to promote equal access to employment regardless of whether an applicant has a college education, where appropriate.
Sec. 8. Severability. If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any individual or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its other provisions to any other individuals or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.
Sec. 9. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: (i) the authority granted by law to an executive department, agency, or the head thereof; or (ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals. (b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations. (c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person. DONALD J. TRUMP THE WHITE HOUSE April 23, 2025
Fired Librarian of Congress on losing history during Trump 2.0:
Just days before she was fired by President Trump, Carla Hayden -the first woman and the first African American to serve as the Librarian of Congress - warned about the risk of losing important parts of U.S. history. Hayden and Noelle Trent, the head of Boston's Museum of African American History, spoke with GBH News Rooted Host Paris Alston about their efforts to preserve Black history. 00:00 What's at risk? Loss of more complete picture of people of this country; blind to context and what can happen in future 2:00 Hayden's historic term and finishing it out 8:00 Removing exhibits? 9:00 How much museums actually display 1100 Museums reassessing how business is done 13:50 Preserving history Learn more here:https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-...
It is no coincidence that since taking office on Martin Luther King Day, the Trump administration’s most aggressive actions have targeted historically marginalized groups. In fact, the many blatantly illegal, unconstitutional, and bizarre actions we saw during the first month of Trump 2.0 — during which we also observed National Black History Month — are specifically harmful to Black Americans. Attempts by Trump to freeze federal funding, close federal agencies, curb the rights of workers, and dismiss federal workers, through illegal means and by Republicans using budget reconciliation to cut federal funding for Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food assistance, and public education, continue a shameful tradition in American history of systematically dehumanizing, disenfranchising, and stealing from Black Americans.
Why are Trump and his allies doing this? To further consolidate their wealth and might by dividing our collective power. This carefully planned spectacle is designed to shock, overwhelm, and divert our attention away from the extreme greed of the wealthy and powerful few, who are attempting to loot the banking and payment systems that fund public spending with our tax dollars.
In states across the country, the far-right is suppressing the real history of structural racism and Black progress at the same time that the new Trump regime is preparing to copy from that history directly — particularly its most violent chapters: Slavery, post-Reconstruction and racial segregation of the Jim Crow era, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, voter suppression, redlining, and police killings of Black Americans. In these periods, white Americans launched a hostile backlash against Black American progress. But the current administration’s aggression also harkens back to other violent and anti-democratic actions that the U.S. government and military have perpetrated on Indigenous people in North America and colonized people in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
A key feature of how this narrative operates is through cognitive dissonance and psychological terror. The ruling class, and the holders of the most wealth and property, have always been overwhelmingly disproportionately white, cisgender, Christian males — as are most CEOs, shareholders, and boards of directors — and it is this same small cohort who are attempting to further consolidate wealth and power. But while the full powers of structural violence and an authoritarian state are being unleashed against minorities and Black Americans, officials in the highest levels of the government are posting about Nazis and promoting the racist narrative that white, Christian males are the victims of a “woke” agenda and have been disenfranchised by diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
Trump built his political career with racist lies like these, beginning with allegations that President Obama was not born in the United States before spending several campaigns (and his presidency) disparaging Black Americans and their communities. Decades before that, in 1973, the federal government filed suit and won a case against Trump and his father, Fred Trump, for housing discrimination against Black tenants. Later in 1989, Trump also took out a full-page ad in multiple newspapers calling for the execution of Black and Latino teenagers who were under investigation for a crime for which they were wrongfully accused and exonerated. Now, Trump is attacking the modest gains made through affirmative action and purging workers from the federal workforce, who are disproportionately people of color.
Trump’s movement was fueled by very real discontent, but he scapegoated historically excluded groups instead of fixing any actual problems. While his wealthy supporters are getting exactly what they knowingly voted for, others were misled into misplacing their anger, fear, and resentment at groups facing similar systemic barriers rather than directing it to the wealthy classes who are directly responsible for it. These are tactics used by authoritarian and oppressive leaders and governments throughout modern history, from European fascism, to the Jim Crow South, to the authoritarian and autocratic regimes we see today in places like Russia, Hungary, and Belarus.
This is why Trump spent years disputing the outcome of the 2020 election and ginning up panic about election safety: to pave the way for policies that will further suppress and disenfranchise his political opponents, particularly Black voters and voters of color, who make up an increasingly large percentage of the electorate. Suppressing the collective political power of the Black community poses an immediate, dire risk for Black Americans, and the consequences will be felt by everyone in the working and middle classes.
The history of the environmental justice movement illustrates precisely how anti-Black racism is central to undermining American democracy. Decades ago, Black leaders and civil rights activists fought to stop truckloads of pollution from being dumped in their community of Warren County, North Carolina, kicking off what we now know as the environmental justice movement. The protections born from this movement benefit countless American communities — but especially Black Americans and communities of color — and have gone on to inform the climate justice movement that is attempting to save our planet.
But the Trump administration is reversing course on these gains and turbocharging resource extraction, fast-tracking dangerous pipelines and risky projects that predominantly go through rural, low-wealth, and/or communities of color. Many go through Black communities in the Gulf South, which are already overburdened with air pollution, cancer, and other diseases caused by the fossil fuel industry. A series of executive orders and initiatives denies Black communities from accessing public funding to participate in and benefit from the clean energy transition.
These orders — and others like them — cannot change laws or congressional spending, but they signal terrifying intentions to cut air and water protections, gut critical social services, lay off millions, and push more expenses onto already cost-burdened Black Americans, who already pay a larger share of their income on essentials like housing and utilities and are more likely than white Americans to be low-income renters. This is especially concerning in an era of increased climate-induced disasters, which disproportionately affect low-income and Black communities. Threats from the Trump administration to cut back federal resources for relief and recovery could likely mean that more Black households and communities will be displaced and lose generational wealth.
The throughline is a deliberate strategy to concentrate power and wealth by dismantling protections that took decades of hard-fought civil rights battles to achieve. From expanding fossil fuel projects in Black communities to rolling back protections for environmental justice communities, these efforts aim to protect and expand corporate interests at the expense of public health and safety. The administration’s deceitful fearmongering pits marginalized communities against one another in the hopes that we ignore an economic system that extracts resources from below and concentrates wealth at the top. For this system to work, its proponents must divide, distract, and disempower.
Standing up for justice and equity means calling out these injustices and continuing the fight for an inclusive, fair, and sustainable future for all Americans.
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