Trump Executive Orders Erasing Protections For Underclass

This is the first week of Black History Month, and we at the Law and Disorder show are eager to celebrate it. But that's not what's happening in the Trump administration. The Defense Department under the headline "Identity Months Dead at DoD" has eliminated various Heritage Months, including Black History Month. Meanwhile, the Defense Intelligence Agency has "paused" the recognition of Black History Month.

Even more alarming is Trump’s Executive Order eliminating the use of D.E.I., that is “diversity, equity and inclusion”, as factors to be considered by all federal agencies when hiring their employees. Trump claims the elimination of DEI will result in America becoming a “colorblind and merit-based society.” However, DEI programs do not hire less qualified applicants for jobs, they simply require governmental agencies to seek out well-qualified minority and women candidates for all job openings. That is, to remove any discriminatory barriers that result in hiring fewer well-qualified women and minorities, and the disabled, in their work force. Margareet Huang, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s president and chief executive got it right when she said, “His (Trump’s) attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion---are just a sanitized substitute for the racist comments that can no longer be spoken openly.”

Meanwhile, and closely related to Trump's attack on DEI, are his multifaceted attacks on immigrants and in particular those who join in public protests against his policies, such as his policies on Israel and Palestine.

For many years, and especially after October 7, 2023, as a way to stifle demands for Palestinian human rights and sovereignty, there has been a concerted effort to conflate criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism. Now Trump has upped the ante. On January 29, he pledged to deport non-citizen college students, and others, who take part in pro-Palestinian protests, and promising "immediate action" by his Justice Department to prosecute such protesters. He issued a warning to all the resident immigrants who join in what he called “the pro-jihadist protests,” warning that “we will find you, and we will deport you." He threatened to cancel the foreign student visas of what he labeled “Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before."

To implement these sweeping threats, Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.” Among other things, the order reaffirms Executive Order 13899 that Trump issued on December 11, 2019, during his first term. It required all executive departments and agencies charged with enforcing anti-discrimination laws to consider the highly controversial “working definition” of anti-Semitism adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), including eleven “Examples of Anti-Semitism.”

On May 1, 2024, the House of Representatives on a 320-91 bipartisan vote, passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act. It would enshrine the very same flawed IHRA “working definition” in federal law. It now goes before the Senate. On January 21, without even waiting for the Act to become law, Harvard University set a dangerous precedent by agreeing to adopt the IHRA definition as part of a settlement of two federal lawsuits that had accused the school of failing to do enough to prevent antisemitic discrimination.

Guest - Stephen Rohde is a civil rights activist, author, and constitutional scholar. He currently serves as chair of the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (aka ICUJP), and he is also a past President of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, and past Chair of Death Penalty Focus and Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice.

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