
Politics
Trump – The Sequel: What We Know And How We Resist
Welp, the first two weeks of the new administration have been a shock to our collective nervous systems. Inauguration kicked off with some casual Nazi salutes and a smorgasbord of adoring tech bros ready to usher in the oligarchy era. (Shout out to Michelle Obama for sitting this one out.) The administration’s real party began as dozens of executive orders flooded the news and our social media timelines – intent on brutally assaulting our minds and spirits. Journalists, advocates, elected officials have since been scrambling to process the legality and impact of the Project 2025 playbook in action.
First and foremost, know that executive orders are NOT law. They detail how the president wants the government to be managed and give instructions for federal agencies. They are also used for political posturing. Orders do not need congressional approval and although Congress cannot overturn orders, they (and the courts) can block or implement barriers to executing them. Hence why judges have blocked banning birthright citizenship, and other orders (like the “federal freeze”) were rescinded or toned down. It’s why questions of legality have dominated the discourse. Individuals and organizations do not have to prematurely succumb to these orders; churches and schools are refusing to cooperate with ICE agents.
Also note that using propaganda and trolling the American public is a foundational part of their strategy. Exhibit A: using disproportionately massive military planes for their deportation flights to create photo ops for their xenophobic base. The administration called this executive order rollout “shock and awe” and “flooding the zone,” intentionally designed to create chaos and despair. Remember this so we can protect ourselves when the news feels overwhelming and infuriating.
As a whole, these orders are a clear crusade against anyone who is not a cis-het, able-bodied, rich white man. The attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) have been a core part of the GOP’s messaging for years, stirring up racist rhetoric to lay the groundwork for policy attacks. The orders support a larger segregationist agenda of dismantling civil rights and codifying white nationalism. Naming anything associated with Black people as DEI is an explicit strategy to push us into the margins and subservient roles. It is to put targets on our backs to be scrutinized and diminish the strides we have made particularly since the Civil Rights Era. Creating an anti-DEI “tip line” is an updated version of slave patrols, encouraging white vigilantism. The gag is that white women are the largest beneficiaries of DEI programs.
Along with their anti-DEI (read: anti-Black, anti-woman, anti-disabled) fixation, Trump has been relentlessly signing discriminatory anti-trans executive orders. He wants to ban gender-affirming care for young people, ban trans people from the military, withhold federal funding to schools that teach “gender ideology,” and persecute educators that affirm a student’s gender identity. The aim is to stoke hatred against a small and marginalized group so that the broader public will implicitly co-sign criminalizing them. By bringing cases that challenge gender identity and undermine trans rights, conservatives can use those legal precedents in other cases to dismantle civil and reproductive rights. In The Atlantic, Adam Serwer points out, “Anyone naive enough to think that the government can deny fundamental rights to one group without putting another’s at risk is in for some nasty surprises…As Frederick Douglass once said, ‘Slavery lives in this country not because of any paper Constitution, but in the moral blindness of the American people, who persuade themselves that they are safe, though the rights of others may be struck down.’” Black trans people are squarely in the crosshairs of this administration.
To building on his anti-immigrant fearmongering, he signed these day one executive orders which: attack birthright citizenship (which is protected by the Constitution), declare a “national emergency” at the southern border to access to unlimited funds to build a border wall, and designate cartels as terrorist organizations so that he can deport foreign nationals without due process. He also deployed ICE agents in sanctuary cities like Chicago and Newark to feed right-wing news outlets and hype up his base. It’s textbook racial profiling, as American citizens including veterans and Puerto Rican families were swept up and treated as criminals. In response, immigrant rights groups have been doing online and in-person “Know Your Rights” education as the administration challenges the sanctity and safety of churches, schools and hospitals. It’s working. “Border Czar” Tom Homan lamented on CNN that the people of Chicago are “well educated” about their rights so ICE can’t round up as many people as they’d hoped.
“The attacks we’re seeing aren’t just about control—they’re about breaking our spirit, making us feel disconnected. But, history tells a different story,” said Sade Dumas, Program Director at the Borealis Foundation. “Every time they try to silence us, we organize louder. Every time they try to isolate us, we build deeper relationships. Resistance isn’t just about fighting back. It’s about leaning in, creating networks of care, and refusing to let fear dictate our future.”
It’s too much to know all of the details of all of the executive orders but it’s crucial we understand their long game of using the courts to give Trump “inherent constitutional authority” – meaning he can make laws without Congressional buy-in. The order freezing federal grants is a prime example. It threatened Medicaid access, Meals on Wheels for seniors, veteran housing assistance, non-profit organization funding, scientific research for AIDS or cancer treatment, domestic violence shelters, and an infinite list of fundamental social services. Supposedly the administration wants to investigate how much of the $3 trillion budget is being spent on DEI, “woke gender ideology” or “Green New Deal” clean energy programs.
However the next day, a federal judge blocked the order; a non-profit organization called Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit; and the media, elected officials and thousands of Americans made noise in defiance. Thus the administration backtracked and rescinded the memo less than 48 hours after it was announced (to save face) but not the order itself, meaning many non-profit organizations and social services are still in a state of flux. The GOP’s strategy to keep it nebulous is meant to discourage people who need these services from accessing them, while setting the stage to challenge a Nixon-era law that restricts a president from refusing to spend funds authorized by Congress. Their goal, as with most of these orders, is to waste time in the courts, ideally culminating in the Supreme Court where Trump’s cronies are likely to rule in his favor. Meanwhile, this order affects the services that we and our families currently utilize, and many of our livelihoods as non-profit professionals, researchers, public health experts, and service providers.
To top it off, Trump is appointing unqualified loyalists and billionaires who want to privatize government agencies, i.e. offering contracts to friends so they can all get rich while our systems fall apart. We saw the shifty attempt to purge federal agencies of their workforce, encouraging federal workers to resign and purportedly receive eight months of severance pay. About 19% of the federal workforce is Black, and it’s been a way for us to build our middle class so they want us replaced. They are doing what they said they would – attempting to gut the government.
With tech bros in Donald’s pocket, social platforms and the algorithms are making space for misinformation, disinformation and violent rhetoric. The GOP will continue to use traditional and social media outlets to stoke division and stir up hate for marginalized groups like Black people, women, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants, disabled people and all of the intersections. “It is important to understand that this is the capture of our tech and media systems by billionaire elites to align their capital and power to advance a fascist agenda that is antiBlack and antiFeminist,” said Tia Oso, Senior Director of Media 2070. “They are doing this to control and intervene on the narrative power of our movements, especially the ways that we used the democracy of technology to organize in digital spaces.”
To try to make sense of some of the orders, I spoke with some experts who can give some insight on the potential impacts.
Health:
Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK, Jr.)., is a completely unqualified grifter and nepo baby who doesn’t know what Medicaid is, believes that “African AIDS” is different from “Western AIDS,” and that COVID was biologically engineered to spare Ashkenasi Jews and Chinese people. He has zero public health or medical experience but built his career touting anti-vaccine conspiracies; going so far as saying he’d revoke the polio vaccine. He would be responsible for public health during a pandemic; and we currently have a growing bird flu outbreak in all 50 states affecting birds, cows, and humans. RFK, Jr. also spewed anti-abortion views during his confirmation hearing, meaning he could ban mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortion, giving another blow to abortion access especially in states with restrictive bans.
The United States also withdrew from the World Health Organization and froze National Institute of Health research grants. This has devastating consequences to global health and public health in the United States. Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Northridge, notes that these orders combined with anti-DEI orders will have a disproportionate effect on Black disabled communities, increasing the “prevalence of medical racism and institutional racism within the medical communities.” He told AfroPunk that “these executive orders, in essence, make plain that white people are the “default” form of humanity and all other people are not worth considering in a research or medical context. Moreover, given that Black disabled people are already underrepresented in medical research on disabilities, this will further deepen the lack of research on the presentation and experience of disability in the Black experience.”
Education:
The administration is doubling down on its erasure of Black history (you know, American history), and its attacks on transgender students through the “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 School” executive order. It would investigate and criminalize teachers who use gender-affirming language with trans or nonbinary students, and re-institute Trump’s “1776 Commission” for “patriotic education” which is exactly what it sounds like – a whitewashed version of history. “The same folks who want to create a national ban on anything Black and/or queer in schools profess to not believe in the federal role of education,” said Dr. Jose Vilson, Professor of Sociology and founder of EduColor. “The chilling effect is pointed towards a two-fold process: the decimation of the workforce for teachers of color, particularly Black and Latinx teachers and the pushback against any white teachers even attempting to teach towards a shared humanity.”
It’s also unclear how HBCUs could be impacted by the federal freeze and also because teaching Black history is a core tenant of the curriculum. Any loss of our institutions would have a devastating impact on our ability to access higher education, and is a direct attack on the legacy we’ve built during segregation and that has been a solace for us after integration.
Criminalization:
Trump ordered the expansion of Guantanamo Bay as a detention center for 30,000 migrants; and reversed Biden’s order prohibiting contracts between the Department of Justice and private detention centers. The more people they lock up, the more money private prison companies make. Private prison stocks soared post-election, and according to the Brennan Center for Justice, private prison’s most significant contracts are with ICE. This desire to fill these beds and get money puts our communities at risk for even greater police harassment, violence and surveillance.
This is all dismaying but do not despair. We can already see the cracks – their incompetence and miscalculation that the American public is willing to accept impending authoritarianism. We do not have to comply and accept these orders as law. Individuals, institutions and organizations are fighting back and rejecting Trump’s destructive agenda. When it was announced that funding for life-saving HIV medications would be frozen, individuals and organizations pushed back and made a fuss about it in the media. The administration walked back saying HIV medications will still be funded. Uproar works! People are spamming the email address set up for people to snitch on DEI programs by sending recipes, scientology quotes and movie scripts to clog it up.
This work of looking for each other, knowing our rights and making good trouble has merit and is one of our best weapons. We also must pressure our elected officials on every level of government from our local city council all the way to our Congressional leaders. This is a time when community care and mutual aid is critical.
“We know our survival depends on the strength of our communities and our collective power,” said Monica Simpson, Executive Director of Sistersong. “We intend to create as many cultural interventions as possible and deepen our local and state based work in Southern states where the threats are constant.”
It’s also a time for us to hold onto whatever brings us peace and keeps us grounded. For me, it’s spirituality and leaning on faith. If that doesn’t work for you, remember our ancestors. In their stories and lives, they have left us the tools and wisdom to make it through.
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