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Today is the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s second inauguration as president of the United States. Yesterday’s national holiday honored civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. And in our lead story for today, scholar Spencer Overton puts these two dates together in an analysis that concludes that over the past year, the Trump administration has had a devastating impact on the nation’s decades of civil rights progress.
“Across dozens of executive orders, agency memos, funding decisions and enforcement changes, the administration has weakened federal civil rights law and the foundations of the country’s racially inclusive democracy,” writes Overton, a legal scholar who has been teaching and writing about civil rights for over two decades.
At the nation’s birth, of course, “the U.S. was not built to include everyone equally,” Overton writes. In the 1960s, though, “after decades of protest and pressure, Congress enacted laws that prohibited discrimination in employment, education, voting, immigration and housing.”
Much of that progress lies in tatters now, and Overton offers 12 distinct examples that add up to “a cumulative retreat from the federal government’s role as an enforcer of civil rights law.”
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Naomi Schalit
Senior Editor, Politics + Democracy
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The second Trump administration has weakened federal civil rights law and is shredding the foundations of America’s racially inclusive democracy.
imagedepotpro, iStock/Getty Images Plus
Spencer Overton, George Washington University
At its one-year mark, the Trump administration is dismantling the systems that once helped the US move toward a more open and equal democracy.
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Science + Technology
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Alessandra Buccella, University at Albany, State University of New York
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Environment + Energy
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Jenni Shearston, University of Colorado Boulder
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Laura Toran, Temple University
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Education
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Pardis Mahdavi, University of La Verne; University of California, Berkeley
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Carrie Leach, Wayne State University
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Ethics + Religion
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Joanne M. Pierce, College of the Holy Cross
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Politics + Society
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Donald Heflin, Tufts University
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Arts + Culture
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Christos Makridis, Arizona State University; Institute for Humane Studies
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International
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Geoff Childs, Washington University in St. Louis
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Tassiana Moura de Oliveira, University at Albany, State University of New York
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Carlos Gutiérrez Hita, Universidad Miguel Hernández
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