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civil rights
Trump’s New Order: Making DC Safe, and Beautiful, and Compliant
The executive order’s timing, scope, and ambiguity suggest that the federal government is not preparing for peaceful civic engagement on April 5, but rather girding itself for defiance.
Apr 03, 2025
"We've seen encampments cleared, phones tapped, and permits held up—but this? This feels like they're preparing for war," said Marisol Jennings, a D.C.-based organizer who has coordinated protests since 2017.
Just days before thousands of Americans are expected to gather in Washington, D.C. to protest the Trump administration's policies, a sweeping new executive order threatens to transform the nation's capital into a showcase for authoritarian policing.
Signed on March 27, the order—Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful—appears less concerned with beautification than with containment. Its provisions call for surging federal law enforcement, accelerating immigration crackdowns, and strictly enforcing vague "quality-of-life" directives for the city. And its timing, just a week before what organizers are calling the most consequential day of protest since President Donald Trump's return to office, is raising alarm from civil rights lawyers, city officials, and veteran demonstrators.
April 5 could become a barometer for how far Americans are willing to go to resist encroaching authoritarianism—and how far their government is willing to go to stop them.
This aggressive reordering of public space arrives at a politically volatile moment. On April 5, demonstrators from across the country will convene under the banner "Hands Off!"—a coordinated protest against Project 2025, growing executive overreach, and the erosion of democratic norms. But these protests will unfold on ground that has just been legally redefined. The executive order establishes a federal task force with sweeping discretion to enforce federal statutes, remove homeless encampments, and sanitize public areas—rhetoric that critics fear is coded language for suppressing civil dissent. One of the EO's most striking directives calls for expanding the presence of federal law enforcement in Washington, D.C., and increasing enforcement of so-called "quality-of-life" regulations in public spaces, including parks and federal landmarks.
Civil liberties advocates point to the EO's targeting of "unpermitted" demonstrations and disruptive gatherings as a thinly veiled attempt to preempt large-scale mobilization. In a city where the right to protest has long been protected even under strain, the threat of being forcibly removed or detained for a sign, a chant, or an unauthorized step into the street carries profound implications. "You don't need to ban protests if you can criminalize every protester," one ACLU attorney told me. "Public noise ordinances, anti-loitering laws, unauthorized signage—those become the new tools of political suppression."
The fear is not hypothetical. Activists organizing the April 5 protests have already reported increased surveillance and delays in permitting. Groups representing immigrants and unhoused communities are reconsidering participation altogether. The EO directs federal agencies to maximize "enforcement of Federal immigration law" and redirect available "law enforcement resources to apprehend and deport illegal aliens in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area," a mandate that has already created a chilling effect among undocumented residents, some of whom now fear that attending a peaceful march could result in deportation. In response, the National Homelessness Law Center warned that the order "will worsen homelessness in D.C., violate rights, and waste resources," especially with the federal push to "promptly remove and clean up all homeless encampments."
Then there is the question of firearms. Nestled within the order is a provision directing local entities to expedite and reduce the cost of concealed carry licenses in the District of Columbia. In a city with some of the country's strictest gun laws, this shift could radically alter the atmosphere of a mass protest. Armed counterprotesters, legally carrying under the new directive, may now appear in greater numbers—creating conditions ripe for intimidation or escalation. Police, too, may respond with heightened aggression, assuming the risk of firearms in the crowd. As one security analyst from Georgetown University put it, "You're introducing legal ambiguity and lethal potential into an already volatile situation."
But the risk of physical violence is just one dimension of the broader threat.
For many organizers, the stakes are not just physical—they're existential. "This is a test run," said Rami Kareem, a civil rights attorney affiliated with the Brennan Center for Justice. "What they're doing in D.C. could easily be replicated in Atlanta, Phoenix, or Milwaukee if it succeeds. If people stop showing up out of fear, the right to protest dies quietly, without a single law being passed."
Legal analysts point out that the EO contains intentionally broad language, such as directing agencies to deploy a "more robust Federal law enforcement presence" to ensure "that all applicable quality of life, nuisance, and public-safety laws are strictly enforced." Additionally, the EO mandates "prompt removal and cleanup of all homeless or vagrant encampments and graffiti on Federal land." These directives could grant law enforcement considerable discretion to interpret and potentially suppress protest gatherings, signage, and activities under the guise of enforcing public safety and beautification measures.
Even before the order, Project 2025 had stirred significant public anxiety about the centralization of federal authority and the erosion of institutional norms. But this EO provides an immediate, tangible mechanism to contain dissent—not just in D.C., but in any city with significant federal presence. As national attention turns toward the capital on April 5, many movement leaders see it as a galvanizing moment: either a line is held in defense of civil resistance, or a line is crossed in the normalization of political suppression. "If people stay home out of fear, it tells them this worked. If we show up in mass, it tells them we still have power," Jennings said. "That choice is still ours."
What's at stake goes far beyond the fate of one demonstration. April 5 could become a barometer for how far Americans are willing to go to resist encroaching authoritarianism—and how far their government is willing to go to stop them. If the demonstrators are met with violence, surveillance, or mass arrests, it may radicalize a new generation of resistance. If they succeed in holding ground peacefully, it may mark the resurgence of a national movement grounded in visibility and defiance.
Either way, this is not just a march—it is a test. Of power, of will, and of what kind of country this is becoming. Washington, D.C. is not only a geographic location; it is the symbolic heart of American democracy. If peaceful protests in the capital can be stifled under a vague mandate of "beautification," it sets a precedent that ripples outward. Critics argue this beauty is being defined in opposition to presence, protest, and poverty. The message is clear: Public dissent may now be treated as public disorder. That message is not lost on organizers, some of whom now fear their demonstration may be remembered not for its power—but for its suppression.
City leaders are in a bind. Mayor Muriel Bowser has offered cautious criticism of the order, noting that her administration already addresses crime and homelessness through existing programs. But the new federal task force was created without local input, and its presence sharply curtails D.C.'s home rule. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton warned that the order strips power from D.C. residents under the guise of national pride. In her statement, she added the order was "thoroughly anti-home rule" and "insulting to the 700,000 D.C. residents who live in close proximity to a federal government, which continues to deny them the same rights afforded to other Americans." Yet legally, city officials may have little recourse. On federal land, the task force's authority is unchecked.
As April 5 approaches, the atmosphere in Washington is one of deep unease. The executive order's timing, scope, and ambiguity suggest that the federal government is not preparing for peaceful civic engagement, but rather girding itself for defiance. If protesters are met not with the protections of the Constitution but with barricades, surveillance, and selective enforcement, then this spring may be remembered not as the moment democracy was defended in the streets—but the moment it was quietly roped off, one barricade at a time.
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Will Black Trump Supporters Speak Out Against His Racist and Authoritarian Government?
The silence of Black MAGA supporters in the face of Trump and Vance’s bigotry during the campaign has carried over to the second Trump era.
Mar 30, 2025
During the 2024 election campaign, candidate Donald Trump’s most controversial rally occurred at New York’s Madison Square Garden. A comedian on the program referred to the island of Puerto Rico—and by implication Puerto Ricans—as garbage. He and the Trump campaign were rightfully pilloried and called out for his disgusting bigotry.
Little notice was given, however, to another noxious racist moment at the same event. On Trump’s playlist for the rally was the Confederate and white nationalist anthem “Dixie.” Notably, that song was played as Trump loyalist and harsh defender Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) was coming on stage. Donalds is African American and perhaps Trump’s most visible Black sycophant. While Black social media and journalists crucified Trump and Donalds over the incident, for Black MAGA supporters, the episode was simply put in the memory hole.
They were muted as well when Trump and vice-presidential candidate JD Vance spread racist falsehoods about Haitians supposedly eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. They seemed to be the only people in the country who didn’t hear what everyone else had heard—a fabrication of stunning proportions.
Trump and MAGA’s White Nationalist Rampage
The silence of Black MAGA supporters in the face of Trump and Vance’s bigotry during the campaign has carried over to the second Trump era. Now that he’s president again, their voices are being quelled as his white-power, autocratic government takes shape.
The president has spent almost every day of his second term in office so far raging against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); issuing executive orders of a white nationalist flavor; attacking a federal workforce that’s disproportionately people of color; and making it clear that rolling back civil rights and Black social and education advances is one of his top priorities. Nearly every move of his has involved nods to racist themes and aims. That includes his effort to defy the Constitution and try to eliminate birthright citizenship, his mass firings and funding freezes while he vanishes DEI programs across the federal government, his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants (of color), and even his take on the wildfires in Los Angeles and the Washington area airplane-helicopter disaster.
Trump thinks of his racialized and racist perspective on such events as “common sense.” Consider that a shield for his bias against and antipathy to science and evidence, as well as his visceral inability to see Black people and other people of color in any position of authority and expertise outside of sports and entertainment.
Racism should really be considered the central characteristic of Trump 2.0.
His vitriol against the world’s most marginalized and poor has led him to try to completely shut the door on illegal (and even legal) immigration—with a single exception. Recently, he spread his arms and opened America’s visa gates to Afrikaners, the whites whom he (along with Elon Musk) has determined are an oppressed minority in South Africa. Falsely claiming that their lands have been seized by the South African government and that they face genocide, in an executive order he called them “victims of unjust racial discrimination.” He also wrote on social media, “Any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship.” Perhaps it’s a coincidence that Elon Musk, Trump’s co-president, who traffics in racist themes about race and intelligence online, is South African apartheid-era born.
It must be strongly emphasized that Trump’s executive order and his multiple social posts on the subject are not only blatant lies but align with the work of South African and American white supremacists who have falsely charged that a “genocide” is indeed occurring there. And speaking of white supremacists, add to that list his decision to release the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who were among the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (with, of course, Trump’s blessing and encouragement). With the stroke of a pen, he absolved violent and white nationalist criminals who had carried signs supporting the Holocaust and yelled racist epithets at Black Capitol police officers.
His war against Black agency has been happily joined by his MAGA allies in Congress. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), for example, threatened to cut off millions of dollars in aid to the District of Columbia unless Mayor Muriel Bowser removed street art that read “Black Lives Matter” and renamed the area adjacent to it (previously known as Black Lives Matter Plaza) Liberty Plaza. Clyde claimed that the art was a “divisive slogan.” It went unmentioned that, if he genuinely wanted to get rid of divisive racial symbols, he could start at home. According to the Equal Justice Institute, Clyde’s state of Georgia is host to “more than 160 monuments honoring the Confederacy.”
Silence Is Not Golden
All of this is part of Trump’s lawless and corrupt war on democracy and the strategic divisiveness that is both his brand and his currency. The convicted-felon-in-chief’s usurpation of power has been as shameless as it is brazen, as he attempts to impose a government that could be characterized as racially authoritarian. In fact, racism should really be considered the central characteristic of Trump 2.0.
And what has been the response of Black Republican members of Congress to such behavior? Where is the pushback from his (once upon a time) only Black cabinet member, former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson? Has there been any reaction from Snoop Dogg, Nelly, or other pro-Trump rappers who claim affinity with the Black grassroots? The answer, of course, is not a peep. Most have run for cover, pretending that Trump is not who he has always been: a serial racist attempting to reshape the nation into a far-right, anti-democratic, white, Christian nationalist stronghold.
Some of his prominent Black acolytes have, in fact, gone on the record opposing “equity” and DEI in general. Byron Donalds, for example, says he has issues with “equity” because it puts a person’s demographic ahead of his “actual qualifications.” It should be noted that, during the 2024 campaign, Donalds, whom Trump was then supposedly considering as a vice-presidential candidate, stated that the Jim Crow segregation era hadn’t actually been so bad because “the Black family was together” and “Black people voted conservatively.”
But qualifications or even competency are not really the issue. As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote, “Donald Trump does not care about merit.” It couldn’t be plainer or simpler than that. In late February, with the encouragement and full support of Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump fired Gen. CQ Brown Jr. from his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There is little doubt that Trump got rid of him because he was Black and had been outspoken on issues of race and inclusion. Hegseth accused him of having a “woke agenda.” Brown, a four-star general, is to be replaced by Dan Caine, who, you undoubtedly won’t be shocked to learn, is white and a three-star general.
On the rare occasions when Black MAGA denizens have actually addressed the president’s pathological drive to resegregate the country, it has been to protect him and his policies from criticism. The Black Conservative Federation (BCF), for example, issued a statement, riven with White House talking points, defending Trump’s (probably illegal) federal funding freeze, even as it was being condemned broadly by so many, including some of his Republican allies. Echoing Trump, it stated without evidence that the freeze would do no harm to programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicare, and Social Security while ignoring the massive negative impact it was going to have on Head Start, Medicaid, and other programs. To the BCF’s embarrassment, the president was forced to rescind the order 48 hours after it was issued.
Their one-sided loyalty to Trump knows no bounds. Last year, BCF created and presented him with the “Champion of Black America” award at their gala. And that was no joke. He gleefully accepted the award while making awkward racial remarks to the mostly white crowd. The BCF also held an inauguration event for him with tickets ranging in price from $5,000 to $100,000 dollars, which, according to the group, was soon sold out.
The BCF declared on its Facebook page that it is proud to celebrate Black History Month (BHM) and encourages everyone to “celebrate the rich tapestry of contributions made by African Americans throughout history.” Yet there was not one word addressing the cancellation of BHM events at numerous departments across the federal government following the orders of the nation’s white-supremacist-in-chief to quash DEI and any programs that seemed related to it. The Defense Department issued a memo declaring “identity months dead,” while the Transportation Department gleefully announced that it “will no longer participate in celebrations based on immutable traits or any other identity-based observances.”
Far-right political scientist and Trump booster Carol Swain, best known for the Islamophobic rant that forced her to leave her tenured position at Vanderbilt University, wrote a mumble-jumble article hailing his attack on DEI. Although like some other Black conservatives she benefited from affirmative action, she now wants to pretend that DEI is an evil distortion of civil rights. She advocates for the neutral language of “nondiscrimination,” “equal opportunity,” and “integration,” suggesting that they are acceptable conservative values unlike “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion.” She seems pathetically unaware that Trump has no love for civil rights, voting rights, or affirmative action.
Out of Touch with the Black Majority
It must be noted that Black MAGA is overwhelmingly out of sync with the Black community in general. In large numbers, African Americans support DEI, affirmative action, and other hard-won programs that provide opportunities historically denied thanks to racial prejudice and discrimination. Black opposition to Trump is not just due to the racist slander and bile he now aims at people of color, but also to a well-documented history of bigotry. His long record of housing discrimination and advocacy for voting suppression flies in the face of the Fair Housing Act and the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s, signature victories for the civil rights and Black power movements that Trump and his Black supporters now disparage.
Trump garnered only single-digit support from Blacks in his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Despite an effort to scam Black voters with Trump-created Black groups and false claims of surging Black support, he won only 6% of the Black vote in 2016 and 8% in 2020.
Unless there is organized and mobilized political resistance, President Trump will continue to throw racist tantrums and engage in dangerous, even potentially disastrous, racist policies for the next three years and 10 months while Republicans, including Black MAGA types, stand by in a distinctly cowardly fashion.
In the 2024 election, Trump won between 13% and 16% of the Black vote. This was a rise from, but not a great leap above, that 8% (documented by the Pew Research Center) in his 2020 loss to former President Joe Biden.
More recent data shows Trump rapidly losing whatever Black support he had. A YouGov and the Economist poll in February found that only 24% of Black Americans approved of Trump’s job performance so far, while about 69% disapproved. In that poll, white approval was 57% and Hispanic approval 40%.
Denied a Role in Trump’s New Administration
In the new Trump administration, Black Republicans have essentially no perch from which to speak out (even if they wanted to). Trump has one African American in his cabinet, HUD Secretary Scott Turner, as was true with Ben Carson in his first term. Both were ghettoized at HUD. And Turner has recently bent the knee and essentially surrendered HUD to Elon Musk’s rampaging “Department” of Government Efficiency. Turner, in fact, even formed a DOGE Task Force that will certainly lead to staff cuts at HUD (but no guarantee whatsoever of any savings). In the meantime, HUD canceled $4 million in DEI contracts.
Trump also nominated former football star and disastrous Senate candidate Herschel Walker to be ambassador to the Bahamas. Walker, who had to be chaperoned to interviews during his 2020 Senate campaign by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and others due to his striking inability to make it through an interview without numerous gaffes, has no qualifications whatsoever to be an ambassador.
While some of Trump’s Black supporters have grumbled privately about being ostracized and marginalized, they dare not speak out publicly or demonstrate anything less than 100% fealty. And they are hardly the only Blacks suffering job losses because of Trump.
His goal to get rid of tens of thousands of federal workers will have an immediate impact on the economic and social health of the Black community. After all, African Americans constitute a disproportionate number of federal workers, a key area of employment that helped build the Black middle class. While African Americans constitute about 12.5% of the population, they are about 19% of the federal workforce. And being central to DEI, they are essentially guaranteed to be first on the chopping black.
Yet Black MAGA gathered for a Trump-led Black History Month celebration at the White House, clearly unphased by the irony of such a grim Saturday Night Live-style moment. Like his previous BHM events, it was, of course, mostly about Trump. Some of his favorite old and new Black sycophants were there, including far-right Christian activist and niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., Alveda King; golfer Tiger Woods (rumored to be dating Trump’s ex-daughter-in-law); HUD Secretary Scott Turner; Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.); and Trump youth organizer C.J. Pearson.
In an interview, Pearson stated that “President Trump’s anti-DEI policies aren’t promoting racism but what they are doing is manifesting the dream of the great Martin Luther King Jr.: a nation where one isn’t judged by the color of their skin but instead by the content of their character.” Pearson was making this claim while, across the federal government, departments and agencies were canceling Black History Month celebrations and “identity” events.
As the crowd drank wine and ate snacks, neither Trump nor any of the attendees mentioned the elephant in the room: the president’s savage anti-DEI campaign.
Unless there is organized and mobilized political resistance, President Trump will continue to throw racist tantrums and engage in dangerous, even potentially disastrous, racist policies for the next three years and 10 months while Republicans, including Black MAGA types, stand by in a distinctly cowardly fashion. And count on one thing, as is likely to be true of so many other aspects of Donald Trump’s policies: Their capitulation will not age well.
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Trump’s War on History Is Another Slouch Toward Authoritarianism
One of the hallmarks of fascist rule is the indoctrination of the public to believe in the “glorification of the nation.”
Mar 25, 2025
Significant attention and concern have been generated by U.S. President Donald Trump’s early Executive Orders and actions. There has been extensive coverage of the president’s: empowering of Elon Musk’s orders to gut the federal workforce; shuttering USAID; plans to deport massive numbers of migrants and refugees, including those seeking asylum; on-again, off-again imposition of tariffs; flaunting the will of Congress by withholding appropriated funding; banning “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs; restrictions on treatment of transgender young people; and defying court-ordered injunctions by claiming that the powers of the presidency can’t be restrained by the judiciary.
Buried in the flurry of President Trump’s Executive Orders is one that has been largely ignored, despite being potentially the most far-reaching of these presidential acts. Titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” this diktat lays bare Trump’s intention to roll back the gains that have been made over the last half century by historians working to present a more accurate portrait of American and world history. Trump calls these efforts “anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false,” and demands instead that schools devote themselves to “patriotic education” that will “instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation”—in other words, to teach the kind of history we learned three generations ago.
As late as the early 1960s when American schools taught “World History,” it was Eurocentric. It started with Stone Age man (in Europe), then passed onto the Greek and Roman Empires, the Holy Roman Empire, the “Dark Ages,” the emergence of the nation states of Europe, the discovery of the New World, the birth pangs that accompanied the first centuries of the United States (i.e., “fighting Indians” and a civil war over “states’ rights”), the Industrial Revolution, the two World Wars that sandwiched the Great Depression, and the challenges posed by the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
The celebrated American author Sinclair Lewis once predicted that “fascism would come to America wrapped in a flag, carrying a cross.” With these cautionary words in mind, attention must be paid to President Trump’s Executive Order.
In this narrative, the U.S. was depicted as the fulfillment of history, the conveyor of the values of freedom and democracy, and, as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was fond of saying, “the indispensable nation.”
There was no mention of African history or Islamic civilization. There were just four paragraphs devoted to China, which we were told was “opened up to the West” by Marco Polo. And the only mention of Arabs was in a short section on the ways nomadic peoples were forced to adapt to living under harsh conditions, including a few paragraphs each on the Arab bedouin of the desert and the Laplanders of the frozen tundra of Northern Europe.
American history was distorted and romanticized. Slavery was given short shrift as was the genocide and land theft committed against the Indigenous peoples of North America. This is what we were taught.
Things changed in the 1960s as a result of the cultural revolution in America that was prompted by the civil rights and then anti-Vietnam War movements. In their wake, there was the blossoming of other social and political movements, including women’s liberation and concern for the environment. The expanding consciousness inspired by this period of challenge and change led to a reexamination of American history and our place in the world. And with this came a focus on Black history, Native American history, women’s history, and an expansion of the writing and teaching of world history to include the perspectives and stories of peoples who had previously been ignored. This was not an effort to create multiple separate histories, but to ensure that future generations would benefit from learning a more complete and integrated human history.
Of course, there was pushback by conservatives who wanted to restore the mythologies of the past. It will be recalled that President Trump fired his opening salvo in this war on history during his first term when he denounced The New York Times’ stunning “1619 Project.” That massive undertaking put in focus the role of the conquering European settlers in America as they committed crimes of genocide against the Indigenous peoples they encountered and then introduced the massive and enormously destructive enterprise of slavery in the New World and its enduring legacy. Trump countered this effort with his “1776 Project” that sought to do nothing more than to restate the myth of America, shorn of its dark underside.
Trump’s new Executive Order is the latest iteration of this war on history. After decrying the “radical, anti-Americanism” that he claims teaches that the United States is “fundamentally racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory,” he calls for “an accurate, honest, unifying, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding” and “a celebration of America’s greatness and history.”
Trump goes further by calling for “Reestablishing the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission and Promoting Patriotic Education” that will be charged with sponsoring programs to encourage patriotic learning and glorification of America’s battles and war heroes. The order further requires that all educational institutions receiving federal funds must hold specific patriotic educational programs, and that “relevant agencies of government” shall monitor compliance with this requirement. In other words, do what we demand or lose your funding.
None of this is benign. One of the hallmarks of fascist authoritarian rule is the indoctrination of the public to believe in the “glorification of the nation.” The celebrated American author Sinclair Lewis once predicted that “fascism would come to America wrapped in a flag, carrying a cross.” With these cautionary words in mind, attention must be paid to President Trump’s Executive Order. It is a worrisome step down this dangerous path.
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