The Republican Party has declared war on “woke,” and now Donald Trump has just dropped a bomb.
The president released a memo that placed all federal diversity, equity and inclusion employees on administrative leave as DEI organizations prepare to shut-down by order of the Trump administration. It also tasked these agencies to create a written plan to fire all of these employees by the end of January. The memo comes on the heels of an executive order issued by Trump that ended DEI programs across all branches of government.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described the decision as a bid to “[return]America to a merit based society where people are hired based on their skills, not for the color of their skin.” The Internet said that the orders carried a more sinister intention: “make America as racist as possible.”
One user writes that Trump’s decision to end DEI initiatives is another manifestation of the president’s personal history of racism. In the 1970’s, Trump was sued by the federal government for denying housing to black apartment seekers. He was again accused of racism in the 1980’s when he ran took out a full page newspaper ad that called for the reinstatement of the death penalty at the same time as the arrest of the Central Park Five—five Black teenagers who were falsely convicted of rape.
Racism has been a mainstay of the Trump political machine. While campaigning for the 2024 presidency, Trump used increasingly violent and xenophobic rhetoric in order to radicalize his base against undocumented migrants. The president called immigrants “animals” and accused them of “poisoning the blood” of the country. In attempt to make good on his campaign promise of “mass deportation,” Trump issued a raft of executive orders that sought to end birthright citizenship, send military personnel to the southern border, halt refugee admissions and take legal action against sanctuary cities, among other draconian anti-migrant measures.
While Trump has issued sweeping deportation orders, pardoned over a thousand January 6th rioters, rolled back trans rights, and halted DEI initiatives across the nation, his policies have done little to aid the dire financial straights that many Americans find themselves in – his voters included. Trump promised that his economic plans would lower the cost of groceries, but has since walked back those promises claiming that reducing food prices will “very hard” to do. “Can we just get a carton of eggs for a reasonable price” asked one X user. Egg prices are surging towards an all time high, and while Trump touts his plans to oppress minorities, he’s been silent on what Americans actually need: cheap food.
As this user suggests, Trump is aiming to make Americans equal by giving them all an equal slice of nothing.
In order to rally his base around the “Make America Great Again” cause, Trump has resorted to a classic political maneuver straight of the authoritarian playbook: shift the blame. Trump spent his campaign promising voters that he would save America from “decline,” and attributes the cause of that decline to the “vermin” that he claims infest the country. Migrants, queer people, “radical left thugs,” these are the groups that Trump blames for America’s troubles, and he has managed to convince his base that if these groups are rooted out of American society, the United States will become great. It’s similar rhetoric to one of the most infamous autocrats in history, and when paired with Elon Musk’s disturbing hand gesture at the Inauguration, the Trump campaign’s embrace of authoritarianism appears to be by deliberate design.
Published: Jan 23, 2025 03:51 am