As Trump wars with King’s legacy, America must embrace it

 Given the Trump administration’s war on the legacy of the civil rights movement, I was curious about what the White House will say about the holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.  

After all, President Trump has given a high-level job to Paul Ingrassia, who in 2024 used a racial slur in saying the King holiday should be “eviscerated” and “tossed into the seventh circle of Hell.” Trump’s team dropped MLK Day and Juneteenth from the holidays offering Americans free entry to our national parks.

Trump also complained recently that the civil rights movement led to white people being “very badly treated.” That was in line with Trump’s record of stoking racial resentment among white people who feel threatened by the nation’s increasing diversity. Vice President JD Vance follows the same playbook. He recently called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives a “deliberate program of discrimination primarily against white men.”  

It’s more than rhetoric. The Justice Department has banned disparate impact analysis, one of the most important tools for documenting racial discrimination. The department is abandoning its historic mission to investigate police brutality, such as the recent ICE killing of a protester in Minneapolis. The department’s civil rights division is carrying out Project 2025’s call to punish state and local governments, nonprofits, universities and businesses that have or support diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.  

Attacks on the legacy of the civil rights movement have included library purges and demands for censorship in college classrooms, national parks and monuments and museums. The Smithsonian Institution is being pressured to whitewash U.S. history by Trump administration officials, with help from white Christian nationalists.  

Meanwhile, Stephen Miller is using his power to turn longstanding bigotries into policy, urging ever-more aggressive action against immigrant communities and their supporters. The consequences are deadly.  

ICE and Border Patrol agents, emboldened by White House support for lawless behavior and a green light from the Supreme Court majority, engage in blatant racial profiling, targeting citizens and noncitizens alike.