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The Trump Administration Record on Racism - Democracy in Color

This report by Democracy in Color documents over 200 instances of racism attributed to President Trump and his administration from January 2017 to August 2018. It highlights key events, appointments, and policies that reflect racial hostility, including the appointment of individuals with histories of racism and the promotion of xenophobic rhetoric. The report also critiques Trump's immigration policies and public statements that perpetuate stereotypes about crime and race.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
9 views59 pages

The Trump Administration Record on Racism - Democracy in Color

This report by Democracy in Color documents over 200 instances of racism attributed to President Trump and his administration from January 2017 to August 2018. It highlights key events, appointments, and policies that reflect racial hostility, including the appointment of individuals with histories of racism and the promotion of xenophobic rhetoric. The report also critiques Trump's immigration policies and public statements that perpetuate stereotypes about crime and race.

Uploaded by

Lulu Praline
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 59

The Trump Administration's Record of

Racism
Part 1
Update: Part 2 of our Record of Racism report was released on 8/25/2020.

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”
— President Donald Trump, January 12, 2018

About this Report


This report, compiled by Democracy in Color researchers, catalogs the first 200+
documented examples of racism by Trump and his administration from January 2017-
August 2018.

Table of Contents
1. First Appointments, Nominations
2. Inaugural Address
3. First 100 Days in Office
1. January 2017, Generally
2. Crime
3. Muslim Ban
4. Immigration Threatening White Culture
5. February 2017, Generally
6. March & April 2017
4. Summer 2017
1. Before Charlottesville
2. Charlottesville
3. After Charlottesville
5. Terminations of Temporary Protective Status
6. 2017 NFL Anthem Protests
7. October 2017, Generally
8. November 2017, Generally
9. December 2017, Generally
10. January 2018, Generally
11. February 2018, Generally
12. March 2018, Generally
13. April 2018, Generally
14. May 2018, Generally
15. June 2018, Generally
16. July 2018, Generally
17. Family Separations
1. Family Separations Under Discussion
2. Family Separations Escalate
3. Criticism of Family Separations Mounting
4. Administration Haltingly Backpedals From Family Separations
18. August 2018, Generally

First Appointments, Nominations


Following Donald Trump’s Election Day victory in 2016, and a corresponding spike in hate
crimes, Trump stocked his administration with staff who had personal and professional track
records of hostility toward people of color.

Trump selected Steve Bannon to serve in his White House as Chief Strategist in the week
following Election Day. Bannon’s rich history of racist statements and positions
complemented his role in making Breitbart News “a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill,”
according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Trump elevated Stephen Miller to the White House as Senior Advisor to the President for
Policy. Like Bannon and Jeff Sessions, in whose senatorial office he worked, Miller boasts an
extensive history of racist statements and positions. Miller has since proceeded to play a
leading role in much of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, including family
separations of asylum seekers crossing the southern border.

Then, as one of his first acts as president, Trump nominated early supporter and Miller’s
former boss Sessions as Attorney General. This was Sessions’ second shot at Senate
confirmation, following his rejection for a federal judgeship by the Senate in 1986. The
hostility to civil rights and racial animosity shown to a subordinate which made Sessions unfit
for the judiciary over 30 years prior posed little obstacle to Sessions’ confirmation as the
country’s top law enforcement officer, by a largely party-line vote, in 2018. Like Miller,
Sessions would also go on to serve as a bulldog for some of the Trump administration’s
harshest immigration policies, largely targeting people of color.

Inaugural Address
Continuing with the themes that helped him secure a 58-to-37 percent margin over Hillary
Clinton among white voters, President Trump leaned heavily on fear, dystopia, and racial dog
whistles in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017.

On border security and trade:

We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products,
stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.

On crime and gangs, which Trump often inaccurately ties to immigration:


At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction, that a nation exists to serve its citizens.
Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and
good jobs for themselves. These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a
righteous public.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in
poverty in our inner cities; rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the
landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young
and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs
that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

And, after making a Muslim ban a cornerstone of his campaign, Trump offered this in his
inaugural address’ sole reference to Islam or Muslims:

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against
radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate from the face of the Earth.

These tropes, as with much of Trump’s campaign rhetoric, could be summarized using the
President’s own words, albeit borrowed from past American xenophobes and nativists:

From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it's going
to be only America first, America first.

First 100 Days in Office


The Trump administration wasted little time delivering on promises made on the campaign
trail and in President Trump’s inaugural address, through their words, their deed, and as
demonstrated in the team they built.

January 2017, Generally


Julia Hahn, a Bannon protege, immigration hardliner, and writer for the white nationalist
website Breitbart News, was reportedly hired by the Trump White House on Jan. 22, 2017.
According to Wikipedia, the digitally reclusive Hahn continues to work in the White House as
of August 2018.

Native Americans first came into President Trump’s crosshairs on Jan. 24, 2017 when he
reversed holds President Obama had placed on two oil pipelines, including one through the
Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. That latter pipeline’s construction was opposed by over
200 Indian nations from across North America.

Also on Jan. 24, 2017, reports surfaced that Trump would appoint an Islamophobe with prior
ties to pro-Nazi groups in Hungary as well as the white nationalist website Breitbart News.
Sebastian Gorka served in the Trump White House as deputy assistant to the president, where
he reliably defended hardline immigration policies. Since fired by the White House after
feuding with more moderate members of the administration, Gorka regularly appears on Fox
News now as a mouthpiece for the administration.
Among his first acts as president, on Jan. 25, 2017, Trump removed a Norman Rockwell
painting of the Statue of Liberty from the Oval Office. A symbol of the United States as a
diverse country of immigrants, the Statue of Liberty bears the words of Emma Lazarus, from
her sonnet “The New Colossus”:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Trump replaced the painting of this symbol of America’s multiculturalism with a portrait of a
populist demagogue who owned slaves and is often held up as among the foremost ethnic
cleansers in U.S. history. Where a beacon to immigrants once stood, Trump’s Oval Office
now presents an image of President Andrew Jackson, so recently cast in disgrace with plans
for his removal from the $20 bill. (Those plans for replacing Jackson with escaped slave and
Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman were recently shelved by Trump’s Treasury
Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Aug. 31, 2017.)

Also on Jan. 25, 2017, Trump also issued two relevant executive orders. In one, Trump called
for the construction of a wall along the border with Mexico, a key component of Trump’s
platform as a presidential candidate. Under this executive order, additional detention facilities
were set to be built near the border to house individuals residing in or entering the U.S.
without legal permission. Trump doubled down on his calls for a southern border wall two
days later on a call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

In another executive order issued on Jan. 25, 2017, Trump prioritized the deportation of
individuals who “pose a risk to public safety or national security.” This directive applied not
only to non-citizens found guilty of a criminal offense, but also those who have been charged
with, but not convicted, of a crime. This order also reinstituted “Secure Communities,” a
deportation program discontinued under the Obama administration which uses local law
enforcement arrest data to identify individuals residing in the U.S. without legal permission.

Jan. 27, 2017 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the administration issued a
related statement calling for honoring the memories of “victims, survivors, [and] heroes” of
the Holocaust, but making no mention of Jewish people, specifically, or the ideology of anti-
Semitism. The omissions were criticized by Jewish advocacy groups, including the Anti-
Defamation League and the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.

Also on Jan. 27, 2017, the administration floated the appointment of Jon D. Feere to an
“immigration-related position” within the Department of Homeland Security. Feere is an
opponent of birthright citizenship and previously served as a legal analyst with the Center for
Immigration Studies, which regularly circulates writings of white nationalists and Holocaust
deniers and is designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
On Jan. 31, 2017, legal counsel for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under
Chairman Ajit Pai filed a legal brief indicating that they would no longer defend caps on
phone rates for prisoners, disproportionately affecting people of color. Mignon Clyburn, the
sole Democratic commissioner, has been the leading champion of prison phone rate
restrictions. She has called the soaring cost of prison phone rates a civil rights issue,
preventing inmates from being able to call the 2.7 million children in America with at least
one incarcerated parent. Trump elevated Pai to FCC chair just days prior to this legal filing
and then nominated him to serve a second term on the FCC in March 2017.

Crime
Following up on a related tweet about “carnage” in Chicago the prior day, Trump said in a
Jan. 25 interview with David Muir of ABC News:

When President Obama was [in Chicago] two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech.
Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can't have that ... . They weren't shot
at the speech. But they were shot in the city of Chicago during his speech.

This quote continues a trio of threads Trump sustains on the topic of crime. First, he lays into
the United States’ first black president, implying that Barack Obama failed to deliver in his
job — a stereotype against black people which Trump reportedly embraced in the past.

Second, Trump’s quote also raised the specter of crime — especially in Obama’s hometown
of Chicago — a consistent crutch of Trump’s rhetoric, which he often blames on people of
color. While the Black Lives Matter movement and protests by black athletes — both frequent
Trump punching bags — have highlighted the scourge of police brutality against people of
color in recent years, Trump often invokes police being restrained from doing their jobs as a
cause of crime and violence.

Third, Trump employs a common weapon for him in this quote of grossly misstating or
manufacturing “facts.”

“No one was killed in Chicago during President Barack Obama’s farewell address,” the
Chicago Tribune concluded in fact-checking Trump’s assertion. “The Tribune's crime
database showed no slayings for about 24 hours before and after Obama's speech, which
lasted from 8:02 to 8:53 p.m. Jan. 10. A man was shot about 20 minutes after the speech, but
that victim survived.”

Trump continued this trend of inaccurately reeling off crime statistics at a GOP retreat in
Philadelphia the following day, then again before a meeting of the National Sheriffs
Association at the White House on Feb. 8, 2017.

Trump issued an executive order establishing a task force on crime reduction and public
safety on Feb. 9, 2017. In the order, Trump incorrectly highlights immigrants as a major cause
violent crime. “A focus on law and order and the safety and security of the American people
requires a commitment to enforcing the law and developing policies that comprehensively
address illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and violent crime,” the order reads.

Persisting in misidentifying immigrants as disproportionately responsible for violent crime, on


Feb. 20, 2017, the Trump administration created an office to specifically highlight crimes
committed by immigrants. Housed within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),
then-Director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) John Kelly created the Victims
of Immigration Crime Enforcement (VOICE) office on the basis that "[c]riminal aliens
routinely victimize U.S. citizens and other legal residents." After an April 2017 press release
about VOICE, immigrant advocates were swift to expressly criticize the racism behind the
office’s creation.

The president’s misinformed obsession with crime caused by people of color, immigrants and
overly-aggressive civil rights enforcement continued on March 28, 2017. At a White House
meeting with police union leaders, Trump said:

Sadly, our police are often prevented from doing their jobs. When policing is reduced, the
main victims are the most vulnerable citizens of our society — and you see that all over. In
too many of our communities, violent crime is on the rise, and in too many places, our
citizens have not been safe for a very, very long time.

These are the painful realities many in Washington do not want to talk about. They just don’t
want to hear about it.

...

We will work every day to remove the gang members, drug dealers, and violent criminals
from your communities — and we already are. They’re being moved very quickly. In fact,
[Department of Homeland Security Secretary] General Kelly, as you know, has done a
fantastic job on the border. Down 61 percent since inauguration. People coming in down 61
percent, which is a tremendous number.

President Trump continued his obsession with crime — which he often blames on people of
color, immigrants, and civil rights — with a June 30, 2017 tweet, saying, "Crime and killings
in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714
shootings in Chicago this year!"

Late July 2017 saw the Trump administration’s obsession with crime continue, beginning
with Attorney General Sessions’ remarks to law enforcement officers in Philadelphia on July
24. "Here in Philadelphia the murder has been steady — I mean — just terribly increasing,"
Sessions said in remarks rated mostly false by Politifact. "Preliminary data show murders are
up 20 percent from last year. It will put the murder rate at the highest this decade in the city.”

Trump continued the trope in a Youngstown, Ohio rally on July 26, 2017, saying: “This
month in Chicago, there have been more than two homicide victims per day. What the hell is
going on in Chicago? Better tell that mayor to get tough because it’s not working what they’re
doing."

He persisted in a speech on MS-13 at Suffolk County Community College on July, 28, 2017,
saying: "So, Chicago is having this unbelievable violence. People being killed — four, five,
six in a weekend and I'm saying, What is going on?"

On Oct. 11, 2017, Trump returned to his habit of fabricating facts about crime in an apparent
effort to blame people of color, immigrants and civil rights restraining local law enforcement
for violent crime.
"I'll never forget. I was in Chicago and a police officer. There was a motorcycle detail to the
plane and I was talking to the police, I was taking a picture,” Trump said during an interview
with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “I said, 'How do you stop this?' 'We could stop it immediately,
sir.' I said 'What do you mean you could stop it immediately?' 'If they let us do our job, we
could stop it immediately.' Now at some point you're gonna have to let them do their job. And
they want to do their job. That's the incredible thing."

On Oct. 20, 2017, President Trump tweeted, “Just out report: ‘United Kingdom crime rises
13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.’ not good, we must keep America safe!”
While the 13% increase in crime was factually accurate, there is no basis for assigning it to
anything related to "Radical Islamic terror."

During an Oct. 24, 2017 interview with WJLA, former White House aide Seb Gorka picked
up the president’s obsession with urban crime and questionable grasp of facts and ran with it:

Our big issue is black African gun crime against black Africans. It is a tragedy. Go to
Chicago. Go to the cities run by Democrats for 40 years. Black young men are murdering
each other by the bushel. This is a social issue. Allow the police to do their jobs and rebuild
those societies. Legislation will not save lives.

President Trump sounded similar themes in arguments for his border wall from the East
Room of the White House on Oct. 26, 2017, saying, "An astonishing 90 percent of the heroin
in America comes from south of the border, where we will be building a wall which will
greatly help in this problem. It will have a great impact."

“A wall … would largely be an irrelevance to the trade [of heroin],” the Economist reported.
“Most heroin that comes across the Mexican border is transported by vehicle and smuggled
through official entry points because it is a low-volume, high-value commodity.”

Speaking to reporters in Seoul, South Korea asking about gun control on Nov. 7, 2017,
following the Nov. 5 mass shooting in Sunderland Springs, Texas, President Trump
incorrectly said, "Look at the city with the strongest gun laws in our nation -- Chicago.
Chicago is a disaster, a total disaster. If this man did not have a gun or rifle it would have
been a much worse situation in the great state of Texas."

At a Dec. 8, 2017 rally in Pensacola, Fla., Trump returned to the subject of urban crime,
making comments without regard for facts and somehow finding a way to scapegoat
immigrants:

The city of Chicago. What the hell is going on in Chicago? There are those who say that
Afghanistan is safer than Chicago, okay? What is going on? You know what's wrong with
Chicago? Weak, ineffective politicians. Democrats that don't want to force restrictions and
don't, and by the way, Chicago, -- for those of you that are gonna say, 'Guns, guns' --
Chicago has the toughest gun laws in the United States, okay? Just in case you were thinking
about it. You know they immediately say, 'Oh, you're gonna take away.' Well, Chicago has the
toughest gun laws in the United States. So we're asking Democrats in Congress to cease their
obstruction and do the right thing -- end sanctuary cities.

At the Dec. 15, 2017 FBI graduation ceremony in Quantico, Va., President Trump returned to
the issue of urban crime, saying:
When you look at what's going on in Chicago. What the hell is going on in Chicago? What
the hell is happening there? For the second year in a row, a person was shot in Chicago
every three hours. You don't think the people in this room can stop that? They'd stop it.
They'd stop it.

On Jan. 19, 2018, President Trump again inaccurately connected immigration and crime,
tweeting:

“Crime in Germany is up 10% plus (officials do not want to report these crimes) since
migrants were accepted. Others countries are even worse. Be smart America!”

On April 18, 2018, President Trump echoed white nationalist talking points, tweeting:

There is a Revolution going on in California. Soooo many Sanctuary areas want OUT of this
ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept. Jerry Brown is trying to back out of the
National Guard at the Border, but the people of the State are not happy. Want Security &
Safety NOW!

President Trump returned to the issue of crime with a May 25, 2018 tweet:

Chicago Police have every right to legally protest against the mayor and an administration
that just won’t let them do their job. The killings are at a record pace and tough police work,
which Chicago will not allow, would bring things back to order fast...the killings must stop!

Muslim Ban
On Jan. 27, 2017, President Trump issued Executive Order 13769, fulfilling his campaign
promise of a “Muslim ban,” the term he initially used to describe the policy. The order
specifically suspended refugee admissions into the United States for 120 days and denied
entry for any reason to citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90
days.

On Jan. 30, 2017, he argued in favor of his Muslim ban, tweeting, “If the ban were announced
with a one week notice, the ‘bad’ would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad
‘dudes’ out there!”

President Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates on Jan. 31, 2017 for refusing to
defend the Muslim ban.

On Feb. 3, 2017 and Feb. 4, 2017, President Trump tweeted additional defenses of his Muslim
ban. He continued on Feb. 6, 2017.

On March 6, 2017, after critical reviews of his first Muslim ban by federal courts, President
Trump issued Executive Order 13870, promulgating his second Muslim ban.

On June 3, 2017, President Trump tweeted:

“We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We
need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”
On June 5, 2017, President Trump tweeted:

1. People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what
we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!
2. The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down,
politically correct version they submitted to S.C.
3. The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban
before the Supreme Court - & seek much tougher version!

4. That's right, we need a TRAVEL BAN for certain DANGEROUS countries, not some
politically correct term that won't help us protect our people!

While his Muslim ban wound through courts, on Aug. 17, 2017, President Trump tweeted a
falsehood that was a common theme at rallies during his presidential campaign:

Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no
more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!

On Aug. 18, 2017, President Trump tweeted:

Homeland Security and law enforcement are on alert & closely watching for any sign of
trouble. Our borders are far tougher than ever before!

The Obstructionist Democrats make Security for our country very difficult. They use the
courts and associated delay at all times. Must stop!

Radical Islamic Terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary! The courts must
give us back our protective rights. Have to be tough!

Following a terrorist attack in London, on Sept. 15, 2017, President Trump tweeted:

Another attack in London by a loser terrorist. These are sick and demented people who were
in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!

The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific-but
stupidly, that would not be politically correct!

The president retweeted his above tweet about the “travel ban” two days later on Sept. 17,
2017.

On Sept. 24, 2017, after additional legal setbacks, President Trump issued his third and final
Muslim ban by executive order.

A Nov. 20, 2017 letter from the DHS Inspector General John Roth detailed how the botched
rollout of President Trump’s first Muslim ban resulted in federal agents violating court orders
by barring certain passengers from boarding U.S.-bound planes.

Following a Nov. 24, 2017 terrorist attack in Egypt, Trump tweeted arguments in favor of
both his Muslim ban and the proposed southern border wall, saying:
Will be calling the President of Egypt in a short while to discuss the tragic terrorist attack,
with so much loss of life. We have to get TOUGHER AND SMARTER than ever before, and
we will. Need the WALL, need the BAN! God bless the people of Egypt.

The DHS Inspector General’s office finalized its report on Jan. 19, 2018 finding that Customs
and Border Patrol (CPB) violated court orders in enforcing Trump’s first Muslim ban.

In a Jan. 28, 2018 interview with Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, White House advisor Rudy
Giuliani explained the reframing of Trump’s Muslim ban, saying:

So when he first announced it, he said “Muslim ban.” He called me up. He said, “Put a
commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.” What we did was we focused
on, instead of religion, danger. It’s based on places where there are substantial evidence that
people are sending terrorists into our country.

On April 30, 2018, after the Department of Justice (DOJ) argued before the Supreme Court
that the Muslim ban was merely a travel ban for national security reasons, a reporter offered
President Trump the opportunity to repudiate his past calls for a Muslim ban in order to
appease the Justices. Trump replied:

I don’t think it it would, No. 1. And there’s no reason to apologize. Our immigration laws in
this country are a total disaster. They’re laughed at all over the world — they’re laughed at
for their stupidity, and we have to have strong immigration laws. So I think if I apologize, it
wouldn’t make 10 cents’ worth of difference to them. There’s nothing to apologize for.

On June 26, 2018, the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s Muslim ban by a five-to-four vote with
Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Justice Neil Gorsuch voting with the majority.

Immigration Threatening White Culture


On Jan. 29, 2017, President Trump tweeted what would become a theme of his rhetoric when
discussing immigration and predominantly white countries. He echoed the white nationalist
talking point that immigration is ruining or even extinguishing the culture of predominantly
white countries. “Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is
happening all over Europe and, indeed, the whole world - a horrible mess!” Trump tweeted.

In a July 6, 2017 speech in Warsaw, Poland, Trump focused his remarks on the white
nationalist theme of western “civilization” and culture being threatened by Islamic countries
and immigration, generally. “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has
the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost?”
Trump said. “Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have
the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert
and destroy it?”

On June 18, 2018, amid the uproar over family separations discussed below, President Trump
tweeted:

The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the
already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over
Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their
culture!

We don’t want what is happening with immigration in Europe to happen with us!

At a July 13, 2018 press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May in London,
President Trump again echoed white nationalist talking points about immigration:

Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame. I think it changed the fabric of
Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was and I don’t mean
that in a positive way.

So I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad. I
think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist
ten or 15 years ago.

February 2017, Generally


President Trump kicked off Black History Month on Feb. 1, 2017 with what he called “our
little breakfast,” during which, he made remarks that appeared to reveal that he did not know
who Frederick Douglass was. His remarks then veered into topics unrelated to the occasion.

On Feb. 8, 2017, Trump appointed Mike Anton as deputy assistant to the president for
strategic communications for the National Security Council. Anton served in that position
until his pro-Trump writings during the 2016 Presidential campaign were discovered in which
he espoused Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic views like those endorsed by the
Trump campaign.

During a White House press conference on Feb. 16, 2017, President Trump took a question
from reporter April Ryan, who is black, about whether he would include the Congressional
Black Caucus — which Ryan identified by its common acronym “the CBC” — in
conversations on his urban agenda.

The exchange was recorded as follows by Vox:

“Am I going to include who?” he asked, [appearing not to know who the CBC was.]

Ryan clarified: “Are you going to include the Congressional Black Caucus and the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus — ”

“Well, I would,” Trump interrupted. “I tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting? Do
you want to set up the meeting?”

“No, no, no, I’m just a reporter,” Ryan said.

“Are they friends of yours?” Trump asked.

Ryan replied, before Trump cut her off again, “I know some of them, but I’m sure they’re
watching right now — ”
“I would love to meet with the Black Caucus,” Trump said. “I think it’s great, the
Congressional Black Caucus, I think it’s great.”

As it turns out, the CBC asked Trump for a meeting weeks ago and never heard back.

Amid an uptick in threats to Jewish centers following Trump’s election, the president clashed
with reporter Jake Turx, who is Jewish, also during the Feb. 16, 2017 press conference at the
White House. CNBC reported:

"I am the least anti-Semitic person that you've ever seen in your entire life," Trump said
Thursday at his first solo White House faceoff with the media since taking office. He added
that he is also the "least racist person."

The president was responding to a question about recent threats to Jewish centers across the
country and rising anti-Semitism.

"What we are concerned about and what we haven't really heard being addressed is an uptick
in anti-Semitism and how the government is planning to take care of it," said the reporter,
Jake Turx of an orthodox Jewish weekly called Ami. "There's been a report out that 48 bomb
threats have been made against Jewish centers all across the country in the last couple of
weeks. There are people committing anti-Semitic acts or threatening to——"

Trump interrupted, saying it was "not a fair question." After Turx tried to interject, Trump
told him to be "quiet." The president later called the question "insulting."

The following day, on Feb. 21, 2017, Attorney General Sessions rescinded a prior DOJ
memorandum declaring the department’s position to disfavor contracts with private prison to
house federal prisoners. Then on Jan. 24, 2018, DOJ’s Assistant Director for Correctional
Programs Frank Lara issued a memo indicating that the department intended to actually
increase population levels in private prisons. According to Government Executive, “The
memo came just days after the bureau held a conference call with facility administrators,
instructing them to prepare for a 12 percent to 14 percent reduction in their authorized staffing
levels.” According to the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General, private prisons run increased
safety risks for both inmates and prison staff. As with all criminal justice policies in the
United States, private prison determinations disproportionately affect people of color.

On Feb. 27, 2017, the DOJ abandoned their argument that a Texas voter identification law
was passed with discriminatory intent, weakening federal protections for voters of color under
the Voting Rights Act.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration spent an entire week refusing to acknowledge a hate
crime in Olathe, Kan., where a white man shouting “Get out of my country” shot two
immigrants from India, killing one. The incident occurred on Feb. 22, 2017. White House
Press Secretary Sean Spicer was first asked about the tragedy on Feb. 24, 2017, but he refused
the link between increased hate crimes and the president’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. The
administration first spoke out against the shooting on March 1, 2017 during Trump’s address
to Congress, calling it “an act of racially motivated hatred” on the same day that the Federal
Bureau of Investigations announced that it was investigating it as a hate crime.
“At some point, embarrassingly late begins to verge on something more disquieting. President
Donald Trump has silently planted himself in that space,” the Kansas City Star editorialized
on Feb. 27, 2017. “[W]ith each passing day, Trump’s silence is even more telling.”

In his first address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28, 2017, President Trump continued
to use the term “radical Islamic terror” over the objections of advisors. The term, disfavored
by past presidents for linking theology with acts of terrorism, has been tweeted by President
Trump eight times since his inauguration, according to trumptwitterarchive.com.

March & April 2017


On March 31, 2017, Attorney General Sessions ordered the review of all DOJ agreements
with local law enforcement agencies requiring reforms, including reductions in use of force
and discriminatory practices. The order led to the suspension of all “consent decrees,”
agreements which are among the most effective tools at exercising federal oversight over law
enforcement agencies with a pattern and practice of police misconduct violating civil rights.
In his memo, Sessions echoed segregationist rhetoric, saying “local control and local
accountability are necessary for effective local policing.” Sessions later defended his order,
claiming that consent decrees lower police morale and lead to increased crime. That claim is
specious.

In another memorandum issued on April 11, 2017, Sessions called for increased criminal
prosecutions of non-citizens to “further reduce illegality.”

“Although federal prosecution for unlawful entry, re-entry, and similar offenses is already at
an all-time high and constitutes more than half of all federal criminal charges, Sessions’
directives threaten to dramatically increase the number of criminal prosecutions for
immigration violations,” the Catholic Legal Reform Network said. “When implemented, it
will affect both undocumented border crossers and immigrants already in the United States.”

On April 27, 2017, then-Trump aide Omarosa Manigault Newman — nominally the White
House’s liaison to black communities — indicated that black people weren’t trying hard
enough to work with the administration.

At a Harrisburg, Pa. rally celebrating his first 100 days in office on April 29, 2017, Trump
recited the poem “The Snake,” a parable he turned to often during his campaign to warn
against the supposed dangers of allowing Syrian refugees into the country. (See Trump’s Feb.
23, 2018 CPAC speech for more.)

Summer 2017
The unprecedented White House support for white supremacist demonstrators in
Charlottesville, Va. loomed large over the summer of 2017. Plenty of unrelated statements
and policies disproportionately targeting people of color came out of the Trump
administration both before and after the events in Charlottesville that summer, however.

Before Charlottesville
Following up on his Black History Month remarks apparently revealing his ignorance of who
Frederick Douglass was, President Trump displayed further lack of historical awareness in
addressing the causes of the Civil War in a May 2, 2017 interview with Salena Zito of the
Washington Examiner:

I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the civil war. He was
a very tough person, but he had a big heart.

He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the civil war. He said,
‘There’s no reason for this.’ People don’t realize, you know, the civil war – if you think about
it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there a civil war? Why could that one
not have been worked out?

“The civil war was fought over slavery – the enslavement in the United States of African
Americans – and related territorial, economic and cultural struggles,” noted the Guardian.
“Many scholars noted that the investigation of the civil war’s roots was one of the richest
veins in all of US historiography.”

On the same day, in an appropriations bill signing statement since removed from the White
House’s website, Trump singled out funding for historically black colleges as potentially
unconstitutional for “allocat[ing] benefits on the basis of race, ethnicity and gender.”

On May 5, 2017, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Army Mark Green withdrew from
consideration, saying, “my Christian beliefs have been mischaracterized and attacked by a
few on the other side of the aisle for political gain.” Those “Christian beliefs” were anti-
immigrant, Islamophobic, and homophobic, including remarks to a local radio station that
“I’m going to protect our state against potential infiltration of the Syrian ISIS people through
our refugee program.” At a Chattanooga Tea Party rally, Green was found to have said that he
would not permit studies of Muslim religious practices while simultaneously
mischaracterizing Muslim beliefs.

Attorney General Sessions continued to pursue harsh, tough-on-crime policies


disproportionately affecting people of color with a May 10, 2017 memo ordering federal
prosecutors to charge the most serious offenses possible in a given case. That directive
reversed an Obama-era determination that prosecutors should exercise discretion to avoid
“unduly harsh sentences and perceived or actual disparities” in criminal justice. The reversed
Obama-era memo observed, “Long sentences for low-level, non-violent drug offenses do not
promote public safety, deterrence, and rehabilitation.”

On May 16, 2017, a White House roundtable on California’s sanctuary state policy, President
Trump appeared to refer to deported immigrants as “animals” in responding to a question
about MS-13.

At the U.S. Coast Guard Academy commencement on May 17, 2017, President Trump said of
an upcoming trip to the Middle East, “I'll speak with Muslim leaders and challenge them to
fight hatred and extremism and embrace a peaceful future for their faith. And they're looking
very much forward to hearing what we, as your representative, we have to say. We have to
stop radical Islamic terrorism.”
In its fiscal year 2018 budget justification, sent to Congress on May 23, 2017, ICE requested
increased funding for a 25-percent increase in immigration detainees driven by “significantly
higher” lengths of stay.

In an internal White House meeting on June 1, 2017, Trump said that Haitians “all have
AIDS.” Of Nigerians, Trump said that they will never “go back to their huts,” once they see
the United States. This meeting reportedly followed President Trump hearing from friends
that he looked like a fool for allowing so many foreigners into the U.S.

To rescind the Obama-era Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent
Residents (DAPA), then-DHS Secretary John Kelly issued a June 15, 2017 memo identifying
eligible parents as “illegal aliens.” If implemented, DAPA would have applied to an estimated
3.7 million undocumented parents of either a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident.
These 3.7 million people did not have criminal records and had continually resided in the U.S.
since before Jan. 1, 2010.

Following the rescission of DAPA, in a Sept. 5, 2017 memo by then-DHS Acting Director
Elaine Duke, the Trump administration ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA). In place for five years, the policy deferred deportations for approximately 800,000
immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. According the the New York Times,
President Trump and Attorney General Sessions announced the program’s termination
together, using “the aggrieved language of anti-immigration activists, arguing that those in the
country illegally are lawbreakers who hurt native-born Americans by usurping their jobs and
pushing down wages.”

On June 17, 2017, Sheriff David Clarke withdrew from consideration for an appointment to
DHS as Assistant Secretary for Partnership and Engagement. Clarke’s appointment was
controversial based on alleged plagiarism of his college thesis and his harsh treatment of
mentally ill people in the Milwaukee jail he once oversaw, where four inmates died during
Clarke’s tenure, including one newborn baby.

Clarke, who is black, also has a history of racism, once saying on his podcast, “Let me tell
you why blacks sell drugs and involve themselves in criminal behavior instead of a more
socially acceptable lifestyle: because they're uneducated, they're lazy and they're morally
bankrupt.” Clarke has since accepted a position with the pro-Trump super PAC America First
Action.

In an apparent effort to force purges of states’ voter files, the DOJ sent a June 28, 2017 letter
to 44 states requesting detailed information for how they maintain those files.

On July 1, 2017, President Trump nominated Sam Clovis for Under Secretary of Agriculture
for Research, Education, and Economics. Clovis was then a White House advisor to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA), previously having served on Trump’s campaign as a
policy advisor, then as national co-chairperson and as a frequent spokesperson. While his
USDA nomination was under consideration, Clovis’ defunct blog was uncovered which called
progressives “liars, race traders and race ‘traitors,’” according to CNN. Clovis’ nomination
was subsequently withdrawn amid scrutiny for his role in Trump campaign connections to
Russia.
Trump’s DOJ declared war on affirmative action admissions policies in universities, deemed
to discriminate against white applicants in an Aug. 1, 2017 internal announcement by the
DOJ’s Office of Civil Rights Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore. The New York
Times reported that the department announced the intention to redirect staff interested in a
new project towards “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based
discrimination in college and university admissions.”

President Trump endorsed a bill on Aug. 2, 2017 that would reduce the number of family
members that American citizens and legal residents could sponsor for eligibility to relocate to
the United States. The bill, co-authored by Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue, would
also slash legal immigration by half and would prioritize English-speaking immigrants as well
as highly skilled workers.

On Aug. 5, 2017, an explosive device was thrown at Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Centre in
Bloomington, Minn. President Trump appears never to have publicly commented on the
attack. Reporters questioned Trump staffer Sebastian Gorka about Trump’s silence on Aug. 9,
to which Gorka replied inaccurately:

We’ve had a series of crimes committed — alleged hate crimes by right-wing individuals in
the last six months — that turned out to actually have been propagated by the left. So let’s
wait and see, let’s allow the local authorities to provide their assessments, and then the White
House will make its comments.

Federal prosecutors eventually charged three white men from rural Illinois in the bombing, as
part of a crime spree that also included the robbery of a victim that the men believed to be a
drug dealer of Latino descent. One of the men charged was the owner of a company that
submitted a bid to build President Trump’s border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Charlottesville
On the night of Friday, Aug. 11, as many as 250 white supremacists marched on the campus
of the University of Virginia. Carrying torches, they chanted, “Blood and soil!” “You will not
replace us!” “Jews will not replace us!” and “White lives matter!”

The march ended in violent clashes with counter-protesters, and continued into the next day,
with violence escalating. That afternoon, white supremacist rallygoer and Nazi sympathizer
James Alex Fields Jr. roared his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing
Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others.

President Trump first spoke of the clashes on Aug. 12, about two hours following the
vehicular attack that killed Heyer.

"We all must be united and condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of
violence in America. Let's come together as one!" Trump said in the only comments by a
national political figure to blame “many sides.” "We condemn, in the strongest possible terms,
this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides."

An unnamed White House official was credited with this statement on Aug. 13 following
Trump’s Aug. 12 comments:
The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of
violence, bigotry, and hatred and of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, nephew-
nazi and all extremist groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans
together.

Trump issued a brief statement to reporters from the White House on Aug. 14, saying:

Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including
KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we
hold dear as Americans.

However, the next day he defended the original rally, stating, “You had people in that group
who were protesting the taking down of what to them is a very, very important statue … .
You're changing history; you're changing culture.”

Trump continued, again placing blame on the counter-protesters:

I think there's blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it. You had a group on one side
that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. No one wants
to say that, but I’ll say it right now: You had a group on the other side that came charging in
without a permit and they were very, very violent.

On Aug. 17, Trump took his self-defense to Twitter, saying:

Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of
our beautiful statues and monuments. You.....

...can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's
next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also...

...the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and
never able to be comparably replaced!

In an Aug. 22 interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show, Vice President Mike Pence
defended Trump and his comments:

I know this president. I know his heart ... . I heard it. I heard him on the day that the
Charlottesville tragedy happened when he denounced hate and violence in all of its forms
from wherever it comes. I heard him on that Monday, and I heard him as well on Tuesday like
millions of Americans did where he condemned the hate and the bigotry that was evidenced
there. He condemned the violence that was there, and we'll continue to do that. We
understand that criticism comes with this job, and this president has the kind of broad
shoulders to be able to take it.

Also on Aug. 22, Trump himself defended his comments at a rally in Phoenix, Ariz.:

Does anybody want George Washington's statue [taken down]? No. Is that sad, is that sad?
To Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt. I see they want to take Teddy Roosevelt's down too. They're
trying to figure out why, they don't know. They're trying to take away our culture, they're
trying to take away our history. And our weak leaders, they do it overnight.
Also at that rally, Trump referenced former CNN contributor Jeffrey Lord, who was fired for
tweeting the Nazi salute “Sieg Heil” at a progressive advocate.

“Poor Jeffrey,” Trump said. “I guess he was getting a little bit fed up and was probably
fighting back too hard and they said, ‘We gotta get out of here.’”

After Charlottesville
Complementing a White House statement, on Aug. 25, 2017, Trump announced via tweet:

I am pleased to inform you that I have just granted a full Pardon to 85 year old American
patriot Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He kept Arizona safe!

Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt for refusing to comply with court orders that
Maricopa County cease its racial profiling practices.

On Aug. 28, 2017, Attorney General Sessions announced the reversal of an Obama-era ban on
transferring military equipment to local police. The restrictions were initiated in 2015
following police use of military-style hardware in confronting protesters over the death of
Mike Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Brown, who was black, was unarmed when a white police
officer shot and killed him.

In announcing the policy change, Sessions said before a Fraternal Order of Police conference
in Nashville, Tenn.:

The executive order the president will sign today will ensure that you can get the lifesaving
gear that you need to do your job and send a strong message that we will not allow criminal
activity, violence and lawlessness to become the new normal.

In a notice published to the Federal Register, DHS Acting Director Elaine Duke determined
that construction of a new southern border wall section in California could bypass 14
environmental regulations in addition to the Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.

On Sept. 15, 2017, Trump kicked off a feud with sports commentator Jemele Hill, who is
black. Seemingly in reaction to Hill’s tweets earlier that week arguing that Trump is “a white
supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists, Trump tweeted,
"ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping
it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth!"

Asked about Hill’s tweets, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “I
think that’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make, and certainly
something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.”

Trump later tweeted: "With Jemele Hill at the mike, it is no wonder ESPN ratings have
‘tanked,’ in fact, tanked so badly it is the talk of the industry!"

Also on Sept. 15, 2017, Attorney General Sessions scaled back on the DOJ’s efforts to reform
local police departments after controversies like officer-involved shootings. “Changes to this
program will fulfill my commitment to respect local control and accountability, while still
delivering important tailored resources to local law enforcement to fight violent crime,”
Sessions said. The announcement came amid protests in St. Louis following the acquittal of
white former police officer Jason Stockley in the shooting death of Anthony Lamar Smith,
who was black. Highly critical reactions to Sessions’ announcement were issued by the
Congressional Black Caucus and criminal justice reform advocates.

On Sept. 26, 2017, President Trump issued a presidential determination that the number of
refugees permitted into the U.S. annually would be capped at 45,000. That number is a new
low, with President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 cap of 67,000 the prior record low. The prior year,
under President Obama, the limit was 110,000.

Behind the scenes, the New York Times reported that immigration hardliner Stephen Miller
was instrumental in the dramatic reduction in refugee admissions, as were fiscal arguments
lacking any evidence:

Mr. Miller and other advocates of reducing refugee admissions had worked for months to
justify doing so, even rejecting internal government research that found that refugees have a
positive impact on the nation’s fiscal condition. Instead, they argued that vetting refugees to
insure they do not pose a terrorism threat and adjudicating their resettlement applications
are too costly and burdensome, and that once in the United States, they become a drain on
American resources that could be better spent assisting persecuted people closer to their
home countries.

Refugee resettlement groups say there is no evidence to support such concerns.

Two weeks after the Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico on Sept. 16, 2017, President Trump
responded to pleading for additional support for the people of Puerto Rico on Twitter from
golf courses in New Jersey and New York City.

On Sept. 30, he tweeted:

The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told
by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.

...Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are
not able to get their workers to help. They....

...want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal
workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.

The following day, Trump tweeted:

We have done a great job with the almost impossible situation in Puerto Rico. Outside of the
Fake News or politically motivated ingrates,...

...people are now starting to recognize the amazing work that has been done by FEMA and
our great Military. All buildings now inspected.....

...for safety. Thank you to the Governor of P.R. and to all of those who are working so closely
with our First Responders. Fantastic job!
Nearly one year later, Puerto Rico had yet to fully recover from Hurricane Maria. As of early
August 2018, 1,000 families still lacked electricity. A study since found a death toll of 2,975
after initial reports only acknowledged just 64 deaths.

Reacting to the dramatically increased official death toll on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018, Press
Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “The president remains proud of all the work the
federal family undertook to help our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico.”

Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, took issue with this response from
the White House, as well as the federal response to Hurricane Maria, generally:

Shame on President Trump for not even once, not even yesterday, just saying, “Look, I grieve
with the people of Puerto Rico.” Shame on him. First of all, he doesn't even take a time of the
day to say, “Look, I'm sorry that you people are grieving, I'm sorry that your people died.”

And secondly, what is there to be proud of? Two thousand nine hundred and seventy-five
dead? Is that what he’s proud of? Is he proud that maybe this is over now, and he thinks it’s
going to go away?

Well it’s not going to go away. We’re going to remember this forever.

This will be a stain in his presidency for as long as he lives. Because rather than coming here
to support us, he came here to throw paper towels at us, and we will never forget and we will
always remember.

Terminations of Temporary Protective


Status
In directives by DHS Acting Secretary Elaine Duke, the Trump administration began
rescinding Temporary Protective Status for an array of refugees of dire circumstances in their
home countries on Sept. 1, 2017, and continuing through at least May 5, 2018:

 Sudanese people: 1,000 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since 1997 amid armed
conflict. (Sept. 1, 2017)
 Nicaraguan people: 2,500 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since a 1999 hurricane.
(Nov. 5, 2017)
 Haitian people: 59,000 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since the 2010 earthquake
in Haiti. (Nov. 20, 2017)
 Salvadoran people: 200,000 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since the 2001
earthquake in El Salvador. (Jan. 10, 2018)
 Nepalese people: 9,000 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since the 2015 earthquake
in Nepal. (April 26, 2018)
 Honduran people: 57,000 allowed to live and work in the U.S. since a 1999 hurricane.
(May 5, 2018)

2017 NFL Anthem Protests


At a rally in Huntsville, Ala. on Sept. 22, 2017, President Trump launched into his feud with
mostly black National Football League (NFL) players protesting racism and police brutality
during the national anthem. Trump said:

Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to
say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!' You know,
some owner is going to do that. He’s going to say, 'That guy that disrespects our flag, he’s
fired.' And that owner, they don’t know it. They don’t know it. They’ll be the most popular
person, for a week. They’ll be the most popular person in this country.

When the NFL ratings are down massively, massively. The NFL ratings are down massively.
Now the number one reason happens to be they like watching what’s happening… with yours
truly. They like what’s happening. Because you know today if you hit too hard —15 yards!
Throw him out of the game! They had that last week. I watched for a couple of minutes. Two
guys, just really beautiful tackle. Boom, 15 yards! The referee gets on television, his wife is
sitting at home, she’s so proud of him. They’re ruining the game! They’re ruining the game.
That’s what they want to do. They want to hit! It is hurting the game.

But you know what’s hurting the game more than that? When people like yourselves turn on
television and you see those people taking the knee when they are playing our great national
anthem. The only thing you could do better is if you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the
stadium, I guarantee things will stop. Things will stop. Just pick up and leave. Pick up and
leave. Not the same game anymore, anyway.

On Sept. 23, 2017, President Trump took his campaign against the NFL and players protesting
racism and police brutality to Twitter, saying:

If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL,or other leagues, he
or she should not be allowed to disrespect....

...our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem. If not,
YOU'RE FIRED. Find something else to do!

Trump continued to criticize players protesting racism and police brutality during an ABC
interview on Sept. 24, 2017, saying of protests, “I think it’s very disrespectful to our flag and
to our country.” That same day on Twitter, Trump said, “... NFL attendance and ratings are
WAY DOWN. Boring games yes, but many stay away because they love our country. League
should back U.S.” There were also three more related tweets and a retweet that day.

The following day, on Sept. 25, 2017, Trump tweeted, "The issue of kneeling has nothing to
do with race. It is about respect for our Country, Flag and National Anthem. NFL must
respect this!" There were four more related tweets by the president that day, along with a
Trump retweet, saying, “NFLplayer PatTillman joined U.S. Army in 2002. He was killed in
action 2004. He fought 4our country/freedom. #StandForOurAnthem #BoycottNFL.”

President Trump continued his campaign against the NFL and players with five different
tweets on Sept. 26, 2018.

Then on Sept. 30, 2017, along with a video of mostly white hockey fans standing during the
national anthem in advance of a National Hockey League game, Trump tweeted, "19,000
RESPECTING our National Anthem! #StandForOurAnthem🇺🇸" He bolstered that with
another attack on NFL players that same day.

On Oct. 1, 2017, President Trump retweeted the since-suspended account @SLandinSoCal as


of Aug. 23, 2018, saying, “When you kneel for our #NationalAnthem, you aren't protesting a
specific issue, you are protesting our Nation and EVERYTH … ,” according to
trumptwitterarchive.com.

Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen briefly attended an NFL game in Indianapolis
on Oct. 9, 2017, which they promptly left when players kneeled during the national anthem.
Pence then tweeted a statement: [emphasis in original]

I left today’s Colts game because President Trump and I will not dignify any event that
disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem. At a time when so many
Americans are inspiring our nation with their courage, resolve, and resilience, now, more
than ever, we should rally around our Flag and everything that unites us. While everyone is
entitled to their own opinions, I don’t think it’s too much to ask NFL players to respect the
Flag and our National Anthem. I stand with President Trump, I stand with our soldiers, and
I will always stand for our Flag and our National Anthem.

Trump then tweeted, “I asked @VP Pence to leave stadium if any players kneeled,
disrespecting our country. I am proud of him and @SecondLady Karen.”

The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. then tweeted, “Amen. After almost a decade it’s great
to have leaders who have pride in our country again.”

That night, President Trump tweeted support for one team owner indicating that he would
punish protesting players.

President Trump continued to tweet attacks directed at the league and NFL players protesting
racism and police brutality on Oct. 10, Oct. 11, Oct. 18 (twice), and Oct. 23.

On Nov. 20, 2017, Trump paired two favorite topics: criticism of black celebrities and
criticism for protesters of racism and police brutality, tweeting:

Marshawn Lynch of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders stands for the Mexican Anthem and sits
down to boos for our National Anthem. Great disrespect! Next time NFL should suspend him
for remainder of season. Attendance and ratings way down.

On Nov. 22 and Nov. 28, 2018, President Trump again attacked the league and NFL players
protesting racism and police brutality on Twitter.

In a May 24, 2018 Fox & Friends interview, President Trump returned to the issue of
predominantly black NFL players protesting racism and police brutality during the pre-game
performances of the national anthem, saying:

You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t
be there. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.
The NFL owners did the right thing," in announcing plans to punish players who protested
police brutality and racism by kneeling during the National Anthem.

On May 30, 2018, reports emerged that, under deposition, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones
said he had received a phone call from President Trump about the NFL player protests during
the national anthem. “This is a very winning, strong issue for me. Tell everybody, you can’t
win this one. This one lifts me,” Jones reported Trump saying on the call.

October 2017, Generally


On Oct. 8, 2017, the White House released a list of hard-line immigration principles to guide
Congress in addressing DREAMers and immigration, effectively scuttling the process for
reform.

“The White House proposals would curb the ability of American citizens to sponsor family
members to join them from abroad, upending decades of immigration policy, and put strict
new limits on asylum claims,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “The list also includes
increased money for border security and mandatory use of the government's E-Verify system
for employers to ensure that workers they hire are legal residents.”

Also that day, in a speech at the Heritage Foundation, Acting Director of ICE Thomas Homan
disclosed that he had ordered his agency to quadruple or quintuple workplace raids.

On Oct. 12, 2017, in a speech at DOJ's Executive Office for Immigration Review, Attorney
General Sessions argued for tightening rules for people seeking asylum:

The system is being gamed. Over the years, smart attorneys have exploited loopholes in the
law, court rulings and lack of resources to substantially undermine the intent of Congress … .
There is no cost or risk for those who make a baseless asylum claim.

On Oct. 18, 2017, Rep. Frederica Wilson said that, on a condolence call she was on between
President Trump and Myesha Johnson, the black widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, a black
U.S. soldier recently killed in Niger, Trump showed “no sympathy,” saying to the widow, “he
knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurt.” Trump denied the accusation, while
Cowanda Jones-Johnson, a family member who raised Johnson and was in the car with
Johnson’s widow during the call, described Wilson’s account as “very accurate.”

On an Oct. 30, 2017 segment with Laura Ingraham of Fox News, now-White House Chief of
Staff John Kelly appeared to valorize Robert E. Lee and minimize the role of slavery in the
Civil War’s roots.

“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man,” Kelly said. “He was a man that
gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than
country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But
the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith
on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”

November 2017, Generally


On Nov. 1, 2017, President Trump signed the repeal of the rule eliminating forced arbitration.
Overturning this rule enables banks, payday lenders and other financial institutions to force
victims of fraud and discrimination into forced arbitration, harming consumers and
undermining civil rights and consumer protection laws. This will render pursuits against fraud
and discrimination financially nonviable where the harm to any one victim is relatively small.

Also on Nov. 1, 2017, President Trump tweeted, “CHAIN MIGRATION must end now!
Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil
NOT ACCEPTABLE!”

On Nov. 14, 2017, yet another Trump nomination was withdrawn from consideration after
racist, sexist and Islamophobic writings came to light.

“Forget for a moment, that this young man from Nigeria purchased his one-way ticket with
cash, had no luggage, or that his father had warned the authorities of his radicalism. He should
have been on anybody’s no-fly list because his name is UMAR FAROUK
ABDULMUTALLAB!” Tim Kelly was found to have written after President Trump tapped
him to head the Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education.
“Zenaphobic? No, I’m being pragmatic … Instead of assuming that all people are interested
in, let alone capable of, blowing up Western, Christian, or Jewish things, let’s assume all
Muslims are.”

The following day, on Nov. 15, 2017, Trump judicial nominee Thomas Farr faced charges of
racism. A witness countered Farr’s testimony that he did not know of a Republican postcard
campaign to suppress black votes in 1990. Farr’s nomination to the Eastern District of North
Carolina has since been returned to the White House by the Senate.

On Nov. 16, 2017, the Republican majority of the FCC voted three-to-two to scale back the
federal Lifeline program that permits low-income households a $9.25 monthly subsidy for
internet or phone service.

“Americans with incomes at or near federal poverty guidelines are eligible for Lifeline.
People in Tribal areas are given greater support, with an additional $25 monthly subsidy that
brings the total to $34.25,” reported Ars Technica. “Tribal residents also got bad news from
the FCC today. The $25 enhanced subsidy can no longer be obtained through resellers … .
The FCC also eliminated the $25 extra subsidy for Tribal residents who live in urban areas.”

On Nov. 17, 2017, appointee Rev. Jamie Johnson of the Department of Homeland Security’s
Center for Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships, resigned after prior derogatory remarks
cames to light. On conservative talk shows, he had identified “radical Islam” as “obedient
Islam,” agreeing with Dinesh D’Souza that “all Islam has given us is oil and dead bodies over
the last millennia and a half.” He was also found to have blamed black people for “slums,” as
a result of their “laziness, drug use and sexual promiscuity.”

On Nov. 19, 2017, President Trump again took to Twitter to attack black athletes, this time
targeting UCLA basketball players and one of their fathers. "Now that the three basketball
players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is
unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left
them in jail!" Trump tweeted.
On Nov. 20, 2017, the DOJ announced millions of dollars in grants as incentives for local law
enforcement to report undocumented immigrants and a cudgel against sanctuary cities.

At a White House event honoring Native American veterans on Nov. 27, 2017, Trump
seemed unable to make a derisive aside about the heritage of Senator Elizabeth Warren,
saying, "You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in
Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas."

On Nov. 29, 2017, President Trump retweeted three Islamophobic videos from a British far-
right account rife with anti-Muslim content. “The videos, posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy
leader of Britain First, a far-right and ultra-nationalist political group, depict purported
Muslims assaulting people and, in one video, smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary,” CNN
reported.

Asked about the videos, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the president’s
tweet, saying, "I'm not talking about the nature of the video. I think you're focusing on the
wrong thing. What he's done is elevate the conversation to talk about a real issue and a real
threat.”

December 2017, Generally


The nation's immigration system "allows far too many dangerous, inadequately vetted people
to access our country," Trump said after an averted Dec. 12, 2017 terrorist attack in New
York City. He added that the family-based method that brought the suspect to the US
"incompatible with national security."

That same day, Trump endorsed Islamophobic and racist Senate candidate in Alabama Roy
Moore, tweeting, "The people of Alabama will do the right thing. Doug Jones is Pro-
Abortion, weak on Crime, Military and Illegal Immigration, Bad for Gun Owners and
Veterans and against the WALL. Jones is a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet. Roy Moore will always
vote with us. VOTE ROY MOORE!"

Moore had referred to Native Americans and Asian Americans as “reds and yellows” at a
September 2017 campaign rally where he also spoke admiringly of the Antebellum South. He
also wrote an op-ed saying that Muslims like Keith Ellison should be barred from Congress.

In a Dec. 12, 2017 letter from Arthur Gary of the DOJ to the head of the Commerce
Department’s Census Bureau, the case is made for a question on the 2020 census about
citizenship. It would be “a move that observers say could depress participation by immigrants
who fear that the government could use the information against them,” according to
ProPublica. “That, in turn, could have potentially large ripple effects for everything the once-
a-decade census determines — from how congressional seats are distributed around the
country to where hundreds of billions of federal dollars are spent.” Commerce Secretary
Wilbur Ross issued a March 26, 2018 memo directing the Census Bureau to include a
citizenship question in the 2020 census.

On Dec. 13, 2017, the DOJ filed a motion to vacate the conviction of Sheriff Joe Arpaio for
contempt of court.
Also on Dec. 13, 2017, judicial nominee Brett Talley withdrew from consideration for the
Middle District of Alabama. Talley was the third judicial nominee in nearly 30 years to
receive a unanimous rating from the American Bar Association of “not qualified.” His
personal blogging includes a piece following the 2016 election in which is scoffs at the notion
of racism playing a role in the election results.

Outgoing White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman, who is black, provided ABC
News’ “Nightline” an interview on Dec. 14, 2017, saying, “It has been very, very challenging
being the only African-American woman in the senior staff.” She continued:

Donald Trump is racial, but he is not a racist. The things that he says, the types of pushback
that he gives, involve people of color. These are racial exchanges. Yes, I will acknowledge
many of the exchanges—particularly in the last six months—have been racially charged. Do
we then just stop and label him as a racist? No.

On Dec. 15, 2018, policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
were told of the list of forbidden words according to an analyst who took part in the 90-
minute briefing, including "diversity."

Also on Dec. 15, 2017, DHS announced plans to revoke work permission for spouses of H1-B
visa holder.

January 2018, Generally


Acting head of ICE Thomas Homan said during a Jan. 2, 2018 interview with Fox News’ Neil
Cavuto that the DOJ needs "to file charges against the sanctuary cities" and "hold back their
funding." Homan went on to say that politicians enforcing sanctuary city policies need to be
held "personally accountable."

"We gotta take [sanctuary cities] to court, and we gotta start charging some of these
politicians with crimes," he said.

On Jan. 4, 2018, Attorney General Sessions rescinded the Obama-era memos that adopted a
policy of non-interference with marijuana-friendly state laws, effectively unleashing federal
prosecutors to crack down on pot-related crimes even where they are legal under state law.
Marijuana offenses are the source of some of the starkest racial disparities in the justice
system.

During a Jan. 7, 2018 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, domestic policy advisor and
reported architect of Trump’s immigration policy Stephen Miller said that people are “getting
slaughtered in sanctuary cities.”

In a Jan. 11, 2018 White House meeting on immigration, Trump said of predominantly black
countries, "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?"

“Trump then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from
countries such as Norway, whose prime minister he met with Wednesday,” the Washington
Post reported. “The president, according to a White House official, also suggested he would
be open to more immigrants from Asian countries because he felt that they help the United
States economically.”

In a Jan. 11, 2018 letter to state Medicaid administrators, Health and Human Services (HHS)
Deputy Administrator and Director for the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Brian Neale
announced new guidelines that allow states to apply for waivers to implement work
requirements to receive Medicaid. The guidelines are anticipated to have a disproportionate
impact on people of color. Approval of Kentucky’s waiver to implement a Medicaid work
requirement by Director of the Center for Medicaid and Medical Services Seema Verma the
very next day exempted the state’s southeastern counties that are over 90 percent white, while
ensuring that the rollout will begin in Kentucky’s predominantly black counties.

At a Jan. 13, 2018 White House intelligence briefing on Pakistan, “Trump asked the analyst
where she was from, to which she said New York City. Trump reportedly pressed, asking
where ‘your people’ were from,” reported the Guardian. “The analyst said her parents were
Korean, leading Trump to ask an adviser why the ‘pretty Korean lady’ was not involved in
negotiations with nuclear-armed North Korea.”

On Jan. 16, 2018, "Senator Patrick Leahy was questioning [DHS Director Kirstjen] Nielsen
about a meeting she attended in the Oval Office last week where President Donald Trump
reportedly labeled Haiti and nations in Africa as ‘shithole’ countries and said the U.S. should
be bringing people from Norway to the U.S. instead,” Newsweek reported. “Leahy asked
Nielsen whether Norway was a predominantly white country.”

“I actually do not know that, sir,” Nielsen said. “But I imagine that is the case.”

Nielsen further explained that the president used Norway because he believes that
Norwegians "work very hard.”. Nielsen said Trump would welcome hard-working immigrants
who “assimilate.”

On Jan. 18, 2018, one week following the president including Haiti in a list of “shithole
countries,” DHS announced that it will block Haitian people from receiving agricultural or
seasonal visas.

On Jan. 23, 2018, the White House welcome a visit by staff of ProEnglish, a hate group as
determined by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group boasted of a second White House
meeting on Feb. 13, 2018 about reducing funding for translation services and making English
the official language of the United States.

Also on Jan. 23, 2018, President Trump nominated Wendy Vitter to U.S. District Court for
the Eastern District of Louisiana. At her confirmation hearing, Vitter refused to say whether
she agreed with the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which required the
desegregation of public schools. Vitter’s nomination is still pending before the Senate.

On Jan. 24, 2018, Attorney General Sessions threatened sanctuary cities with subpoenas. "I
continue to urge all jurisdictions under review to reconsider policies that place the safety of
their communities and their residents at risk," Sessions said a written statement blaming
immigrants for crime. "Protecting criminal aliens from federal immigration authorities defies
common sense and undermines the rule of law."
On Jan. 28, 2018, Trump tweeted, “Somebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my
policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER
RECORDED!”

February 2018, Generally


On Feb. 1, 2018, President Trump nominated Ken Isaacs to run the International Organization
for Migration, the United Nations’ migration agency. Isaacs was then found to have an
extensive history of troubling tweets, including conspiracy theories, racism, Islamophobia,
climate change denial and anti-refugee sentiments. In a rare repudiation of United States
leadership, the United Nations rejected Isaacs’ nomination on June 29, 2018.

Also on Feb. 1, 2018, Acting Director Mick Mulvaney effectively gutted the Office of Fair
Lending and Equal Opportunity at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) by
folding it into the office of the director.

On Feb. 5, 2018, Foreign Policy reported:

A Department of Homeland Security draft report from late January called on authorities to
continuously vet Sunni Muslim immigrants deemed to have “at-risk” demographic profiles.

[The report] looks at 25 terrorist attacks in the United States between October 2001 and
December 2017, concluding there would be “great value for the United States Government in
dedicating resources to continuously evaluate persons of interest” and suggesting that
immigrants to the United States be tracked on a “long-term basis.”

If the report’s recommendations were implemented, it would represent a vast expansion of the
Trump administration’s policies aimed at many Muslim immigrants, extending vetting from
those trying to enter the United States to those already legally in the country, including
permanent residents.

In a Feb. 6, 2018 interview with reporters, Chief of Staff John Kelly was asked about
immigration legislation proposed by President Trump which would create a path to
citizenship for DREAMers in exchange for funding the southern border wall. Kelly said that
some DREAMers are "too lazy to get off their asses" and register for government protections.

On Feb. 8, 2018, the Trump administration proposed changes that would allow the federal
government to take into account use of Medicaid, CHIP, subsidies for Marketplace coverage,
and other health, nutrition, and non-cash programs when making determinations someone’s
immigration status. This policy reinforces the long-held myth that immigrants are a burden on
society, when in fact low-income immigrants with less than a high school education are the
least likely demographic group to receive government benefits. The Kaiser Family
Foundation concluded, “These changes would likely lead to decreased participation in
Medicaid, CHIP, Marketplace coverage, and other programs among legal immigrants and
their citizen children, even though they would remain eligible.”

Also on Feb. 8, 2018, ICE issued its Fiscal Year 2017 Enforcement and Removal Operations
report, showing a dramatic uptick in civil immigration arrests since Trump took office. “ICE
Enforcement and Removal Operations made a total of 143,470 arrests in fiscal 2017, a 30%
rise from fiscal 2016,” the Pew Research Center found. “The surge began after President
Donald Trump took office in late January: From his Jan. 20 inauguration to the end of the
fiscal year on Sept. 30, ICE made 110,568 arrests, 42% more than in the same time period in
2016.” A precursor to the Trump Administration’s policy of family separation at the border,
this policy targeted many individuals with U.S.-born children who were separated from those
children as a result of their detention and deportation.

On Feb. 12, 2018, President Trump's nominee to be Deputy Director of U.S. Census Bureau
Thomas Brunell withdrew from consideration. Brunell’s nomination drew concern from civil
and voting rights advocates due to his history of defending voter suppression and racial
gerrymandering.

On Feb. 14, 2018, the State Department ordered the shuttering of more than 20 offices related
to refugee admissions and cutting operations at more than 40 other related offices. “The slated
closures, which are being reviewed by the State Department for final approval, follow
President Donald Trump’s decision to dramatically reduce the number of refugees that will be
allowed into the United States in 2018,” Reuters reported. “The State Department has said the
drop in refugee numbers, from the 110,000 ceiling set by the Obama administration to 45,000
for 2018, means the country no longer needs all of the 324 resettlement offices that were
operating at the end of 2017. This year’s cap on refugees is the lowest since 1980.”

On Feb. 20, 2018, HHS placed Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Administration Jon
Cordova on administrative leave during an investigation into his social media posts in which
he pushed unfounded conspiracy theories. CNN reported that in one such post, “Cordova
shared a story that asserted without evidence that Khan, who spoke out against Trump at the
2016 Democratic National Convention, was a ‘Muslim Brotherhood agent’ and ‘a Muslim
plant working with the Hillary Clinton campaign.’”

On Feb. 23, 2018, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services updated its mission
statement, striking the phrase "nation of immigrants." Instead, the agency’s new mission
statement emphasizes "safeguarding its integrity" and "securing the homeland."

At the Conservative Political Action Conference, President Trump spoke on Feb. 23, 2018,
Vox reported:

When I walked in today, did anyone ever hear me do the snake during the campaign?
Because I had five people outside say, could you do the snake? I said, well, people have
heard it. Who hasn’t heard the snake? You should read it anyway. Let’s do it anyway. I’ll do
it. Okay. Should we do it?

After reminding the crowd multiple times to think of it in terms of immigration — in case the
subtext might have gotten missed — he recited it to applause:

"I saved you, cried the woman. And you’ve bitten me, heavens why? You know your bite is
poisonous and now I’m going to die. Oh, shut up, silly woman, said the reptile with a grin.
You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in. [ Applause ] And that’s what we’re
doing with our country, folks. We’re letting people in. And it is going to be a lot of trouble. It
is only getting worse."
In that same speech, then the next day on Feb. 24, 2018 in a Fox News interview with Jeanine
Pirro, Trump displayed a misunderstanding about how the diversity visa lottery works, calling
for a system “based on merit.”

March 2018, Generally


On March 1, 2018, President Trump nominated David Otis to the U.S. Sentencing
Commission. The nomination remains pending before the Senate. NPR reported that Otis “has
publicly called to abolish that agency … and has a history of making racially charged remarks
about crime.”

On March 5, 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) changed its
mission statement to remove reference to "inclusive" communities "free from discrimination."

The DOJ filed suit against the state of California on March 6, 2018 over sanctuary policies
that limit the use of state resources to enforce federal immigration laws.

On March 8, President Trump elevated another critic of refugee admissions. Politico reported:

A White House aide close to senior policy adviser Stephen Miller who has advocated strict
limits on immigration into the U.S. has been selected for a top State Department post
overseeing refugee admissions, according to current and former officials.

Andrew Veprek’s appointment as a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Population,


Refugees and Migration (PRM) is alarming pro-immigration activists who fear that President
Donald Trump is trying to effectively end the U.S. refugee resettlement program.

Current and former officials also describe Veprek’s appointment as a blow to an already-
embattled refugee bureau.

From that perch, Veprek sought to gut a United Nations document critical of racism,
nationalism and xenophobia, CNN reported on June 29, 2018.

Up to March 8, 2018, the Trump administration was found to have dramatically reduced the
number of civil rights compliance reviews initiated by the Department of Education. During
that 13-month period, only two such reviews were opened by the Trump administration, both
related to students with disabilities. During the same period of time during the Obama
administration, 15 compliance reviews were opened.

In a March 10, 2018 speech to France’s far-right Front National, former Trump chief
strategist Steve Bannon said:

You fight for your country and they call you racist. But the days when those kind of insults
work is over. The establishment media are the dogs of the system. Every day, we become
stronger and they become weaker. Let them call you racists, xenophobes or whatever else,
wear these like a medal.

On March 12, 2018, Attorney General Sessions announced that the DOJ would prioritize
school safety funding for states welcoming more police officers onto public school grounds,
despite the fact that black students are 37 percent more likely to be arrested by campus police,
fueling the school-to-prison pipeline.

Also on March 12, 2018, the Department of Education proposed the repeal of "Rethinking
Discipline," a 2014 guidance for schools from the Department of Education created to
promote equity in how students experience disciplinary actions and prevent disparities based
on race and ability.

On March 13, 2018, Trump tweeted the following, citing a study from the Center for
Immigration Studies, designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group:

'According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the $18 billion wall will pay for itself by
curbing the importation of crime, drugs and illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal
dole...'

[Quote-tweeting @FoxNews: “Study: Trump’s Border Wall Could Pay for Itself by Cutting
Welfare to Illegal Immigrants http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/03/12/cutting-welfare-illegal-
immigrants-would-pay-trump%E2%80%99s-border-wall-study]

"California’s sanctuary policies are illegal and unconstitutional and put the safety and
security of our entire nation at risk. Thousands of dangerous & violent criminal aliens are
released as a result of sanctuary policies, set free to prey on innocent Americans. THIS
MUST STOP!"

At a March 19, 2018 rally in Manchester, N.H., Trump proposed the expansion of the death
penalty’s application for repeat drug dealers, catching flak from people aware of how
disproportionately people of color are sentenced to death in the United States.

Long a policy on the wishlist of the Center for Immigration Studies, designated a hate group
by the Southern Poverty Law Center, on March 28, 2018, the DHS Agency of U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services proposed denying legal residency to any immigrants
found to have accessed any welfare or public benefit, including popular tax deductions.

April 2018, Generally


On April 4, 2018, former Trump campaign staffer Todd Johnson resigned from an appointed
position at the Department of Defense following media inquiries about past social media posts
endorsing birtherism, claiming that Barack Obama was the Antichrist and stating that
Obama’s “being a Muslim” automatically made him crazy.

At a tax reform event in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., President Trump said of migrant
caravans coming from Central America:

Yesterday, it came out where this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody
has ever seen before. They don't want to mention that, so we have to change our laws.

Remember my [2016 campaign kickoff] opening remarks at Trump Tower … . Everybody


said, 'Oh, he was so tough.' I used the word 'rape.’”
On April 6, a pair of President Trump’s high-profile nominations drew scrutiny for
Islamophobic ties: John Bolton for national security advisor and Mike Pompeo for Secretary
of State. The New York Times reported:

Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo both have ties to individuals and groups promoting a worldview
that regards Islam not so much as a religion, but as a political ideology that is infiltrating the
United States and other Western countries with the goal of imposing Shariah law, the Muslim
legal code. These groups believe that the vehicle for this takeover is the Muslim Brotherhood,
and they allege that American mosques, civic organizations and leaders and even government
officials who are Muslims are suspected of being Muslim Brotherhood operatives.

On April 13, 2018, the Kansas City Star reported on an uptick in on-criminal immigrant
detentions by ICE.

At an April 19, 2018 inter-agency task force address in Key West, Fla., President Trump said:

The drugs are a big factor, but you look at -- human trafficking is worse than it’s ever been in
the history of this world. And who would think in this modern-day age?

“The assertion, which Trump has made previously, prompted criticism from some that he was
ignoring the centuries-old, transatlantic slave trade and his nation’s own history of forcing
hundreds of thousands of people into bondage,” USA Today reported.

On April 23, 2018, CPB was found to have falsified data showing a 73-percent increase in
assaults on its officers in 2016.

At an April 28, 2018 rally in Washington, Mich., Trump asked, “Are there any Hispanics in
the room?” to which the crowd responded with boos. “Not so many?” Trump said. “That’s
okay … and in fairness, Kanye West gets it!”

May 2018, Generally


On May 1, 2018, one-time Acting Director of ICE, then Senior Official Performing the Duties
of the Director of ICE, Thomas Homan announced that he would step down and withdrew
from consideration for the long-term directorship. Homan was nominated on Nov. 14, 2017,
and the nomination was left pending in the Senate, with Democrats raising questions about
whether the administration feared exposing Homan to prodding questions by opponents of his
nomination. Homan stirred controversy with his hardline, anti-immigrant statements and
positions detailed above and oversaw a dramatic increase in immigration arrests during his
tenure. Before he stepped down in June, he participated in a June 5, 2018 National Press Club
event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigrant group designated by
the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.

At a May 1, 2018 rally in Phoenix, Ariz., Vice President Pence hailed Sheriff Joe Arpaio as a
“tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law,” without mentioning Arpaio’s
conviction for contempt.
On May 10, 2018, HUD announced the reconsideration of a 2013 rule that laid out when so-
called disparate impact claims can be brought against lenders, insurers and other major
players in housing under federal fair housing law, Reuters reported:

Disparate impact is a legal tool that has been used for decades to bring bias lawsuits over
actions that have a discriminatory effect even with no evidence of discriminatory intent.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2015 ruling that such claims can be brought under the Fair
Housing Act, a landmark civil rights law prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental and
financing of housing based on race, religion, sex or national origin. Insurance companies in
particular have fought its application to their industry.

On May 11, 2018, President Trump established a presidential commission on election fraud.
Critics like Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, saw racial animus behind
creation of the commission. The commission was disbanded without a single finding of voter
fraud.

During a May 17, 2018 immigration round-table, President Trump called undocumented
immigrants “animals,” answering a sheriff’s complaint about MS-13 gang members:

We have people coming into the country — or trying to come in, we're stopping a lot of them
— but we're taking people out of the country, you wouldn't believe how bad these people are.
These aren't people. These are animals.

On May 18, 2018, HUD Director Ben Carson indefinitely suspended implementation of the
2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule intended to desegregate housing. Then,
claiming that the rule was “suffocating” affordable housing development without providing
any evidence, HUD declared that they would affirmatively rewrite the rule on Aug. 13, 2018.

On May 21, 2018, the White House doubled down on President Trump’s recent comments
about immigrants being “animals,” offered in the context of discussion about MS-13 gang
members, issuing a statement headlined, “What You Need to Know About the Violent
Animals of MS-13.” The release used the word “animals” nine times after the headline.

Also on May 21, 2018, Dara Lind of Vox reported that Attorney General Sessions’ uptick in
referring cases decided by the DOJ’s Board of Immigration Appeals to himself and his office
to overrule and rewrite.

At a May 23, 2018 House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing, Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos demonstrated “astounding ignorance of the law” related to
undocumented students.

“Inside the school,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat asked, “if a principal or a teacher finds out that a
certain child is undocumented, or his or her family members are undocumented, do you feel
that the principal or teacher is responsible to call ICE and to have that family reported?”

“Sir, I think that’s a school decision,” DeVos responded. “That’s a local community decision.
And again, I refer to the fact that we have laws and we also are compassionate, and I urge this
body to do its job and address or clarify where there is confusion around this.”
At a May 23, 2018 roundtable at Morrelly Homeland Security Center, Trump again returned
to his talking point of calling immigrants and/or gang members “animals.” The Washington
Post reported:

“We have the worst immigration laws of any country, anywhere in the world,” Trump said …
. “They exploited the loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien
minors.”

Trump added: “They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.”

Trump again called gang members “animals” during Wednesday’s roundtable.

“I called them animals the other day, and I was met with rebuke,” he said. “They said,
‘They’re people.’ They’re not people. These are animals, and we have to be very, very
tough.”

In a May 23, 2018 BBC interview, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon said:

If you look at the policies of Donald Trump, anybody — Martin Luther King — would be
proud of him, what he's done for the black and Hispanic community for jobs,” Bannon said.
“It’s the lowest unemployment in recorded history. You don't think Martin Luther King would
be proud?

Look at the unemployment rate we had five years ago,” he added. “You don’t think Martin
Luther King would sit there and go: 'You're putting black men and women to work. Lowest
unemployment rate in history, and wages are starting to rise among the working class. And
you're finally stopping the illegal alien labor force that's coming in to compete with them
every day and destroying the schools and destroying the healthcare.' Absolutely.

Also on May 23, 2018, President Trump’s budget proposed eliminating the Office of Federal
Contract Compliance Programs, which enforces labor and civil rights laws amongst federal
contractors by merging it with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has a
distinct mission.

In a May 24, 2018 interview with Fox & Friends, President Trump took issue with the legal
staffing of immigration cases, saying:
How do you hire thousands of people to be a judge? So it's ridiculous, we're going to change
the system. We have no choice for the good of our country.

Other countries have what's called security people. People who stand there and say you can't
come in. We have thousands of judges and they need thousands of more judges. The whole
system is corrupt. It's horrible

Also on May 24, 2018, President Trump signed the new Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief
and Consumer Protection Act, which the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported:

[B]enefits a majority of U.S. banks, which no longer will have to comply with the detailed
reporting requirements outlined in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010.

For those banks, the new law means less regulation and oversight.
But fair-housing advocates — especially in cities like St. Louis with a history of redlining and
other discriminatory lending practices — say less information means it’ll be harder to
identify problems and push for reforms.

...

Research shows that racism in banking practices is still a concern.

Earlier this year, California-based investigative reporting outlet Reveal took a look at Home
Mortgage Disclosure Act data and shared it with the Post-Dispatch through the Associated
Press. Reveal’s analysis found that African-Americans who apply for conventional mortgage
loans are 2.5 times more likely to be denied than non-Hispanic whites, controlling for loan
amount, income and neighborhood.

In St. Louis and elsewhere, poor, underserved communities are often those that are majority
black because of lingering effects of historical, racist local and federal housing and zoning
policies.

Also on May 25, 2018, President Trump nominated Ronald Mortensen as Secretary of State
for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Mortensen is listed as a fellow at the
Center for Immigration Studies, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a
hate group.

At a May 29, 2018 rally in Nashville, Tenn., Trump continued his recent use of the term
“animals” to describe gang members of MS-13. "They're not human beings," Trump added,
saying that they use "glaring loopholes in our immigration laws" in order "to infiltrate our
country" and rape, murder and "cut people up into little pieces."

On May 30, 2018, following an apology by Bob Iger, CEO of ABC’s parent company Disney,
for a racist tweet by Roseanne Barr comparing Valerie Jarrett to an ape, Trump tweeted:

Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that “ABC does not tolerate comments
like those” made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to
apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just
didn’t get the call?

And also on May 30, 2018, National Security Advisor John Bolton selected Fred Fleitz as
Executive Secretary and Chief of Staff to the National Security Council. Fleitz was a senior
vice president of the Islamophobic Center for Security Policy, identified by the Southern
Poverty Law Center as a hate group.

On May 31, 2018, President Trump tweeted that he planned to pardon Dinesh D’Souza, who
was “treated very unfairly by our government!” D'Souza pleaded guilty to violating federal
campaign finance laws in 2014 after he was indicted earlier that year on charges that he
illegally used straw donors to contribute to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long in New
York in 2012, the Washington Post reported.

June 2018, Generally


On June 5, 2018, President Trump tweeted an apparent jab at the NFL for not ending player
protests of racism and police brutality.

On June 8, 2018, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Department of Education
Candace Jackson issued instructions to her staff not to investigate systemic issues unless they
were specifically raised by the complainant. Those instructions said that, "For the sake of
clarity, these instructions mean that [the Office of Civil Rights] will only apply a 'systemic' or
class action approach where the individual complaint allegations themselves raise systemic of
class wide issues." This has the effect of making the Office of Civil Rights much less
aggressive and proactive when it comes to investigations.

On June 13, 2018, President Trump tweeted congratulations and his apparent endorsement of
racist candidate for a Senate seat from Virginia Corey Stewart. At the Old South Ball in
Danville, Virginia on April 7, 2018, Stewart proclaimed, "It's the state of Robert E. Lee and
Stonewall Jackson. That is our heritage. It is what makes us Virginia."

Stewart also claimed that the Confederate flag was totally unrelated to racism or slavery. "I'm
proud to be next to the Confederate flag," Stewart said. "That flag is not about racism, folks,
it's not about hatred, it's not about slavery. It's about our heritage. It's time that we stop
running away from our heritage." On Dec. 8, 2017, Stewart tweeted, @TheDemocrats got
cocky forging @BarackObama birth certificate. Thought they could slip phony
#AllredYearbookFraud by on @MooreSenate. Sad!! #ALSEN #alpolitics." And after Stewart
took his seat as chair in 2007, the Prince William County Board of Supervisors unanimously
passed a resolution designed to purge the county of undocumented immigrants; the new law
allowed the Prince William County Police Department to check the immigration status of
anyone, even if they were not suspected of wrongdoing. Additionally, the Board directed
county staff to cut off public services to illegal immigrants, including drug counseling, elderly
services, services to the homeless, and business licenses.

Also on June 13, 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis
Cissna announced the creation of a new office with the purpose of reporting “citizenship
fraud” to the DOJ.

In a sweeping enforcement effort in the Los Angeles area, which ICE celebrated on June 14,
2018 for including 162 arrests, ICE arrested 62-year-old Jose Luis Garcia outside of his
house. Garcia is a Mexican immigrant who has been a legal U.S. resident since the 1980s,
according to his family. Authorities told his daughter that they had a warrant for Garcia’s
arrest related to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge that was resolved nearly two
decades ago. Garcia, who has high blood pressure and diabetes, was detained for 19 days,
including over Father’s Day. A judge ruled he should never have been detained.

On June 19, 2018, Trump tweeted:

Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no
matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can’t win
on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!

On June 21, 2018, Education Secretary DeVos was found by ProPublica to have “scuttled”
more than 1,200 civil rights investigations initiated under President Obama, foten for
“insufficient evidence.” The cases included “complaints of civil rights violations ranging from
discriminatory discipline to sexual violence in school districts and colleges around the
country.”

At a June 22, 2018 press conference elevating the stories of family members who lost loved
ones to violence committed by undocumented immigrants, President Trump autographed 11
large photos of those lost loved ones.

On a June 24, 2018 Fox & Friends segment where he was debating Democratic strategist Joel
Payne, who is black, about whether accusations that the Trump administration was racist were
meritorious, former Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie, who is white, told
Payne, “You’re out of your cotton-picking mind.”

On June 25, 2018, Trump tweeted:

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together


with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to
supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful
what you wish for Max!

July 2018, Generally


On July 3, 2018, Secretary of Education DeVos and Attorney General Sessions issued a joint
letter rescinding seven Obama-era guidelines on affirmative action.

At July 5, 2018 rally in Great Falls, Mont., the Washington Post reported that:

Calling [Senator Elizabeth] Warren "Pocahontas," Trump imagined himself sparring with
Warren on the debate stage and told the crowd that he would toss her a DNA kit, “but we
have to do it gently because we’re in the #MeToo generation, so we have to be very gentle.”

He then made a throwing motion and said that “we will very gently take that kit, and we will
slowly toss it, hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm.”

In that same July 5, 2018 rally in Great Falls, Mont., Trump mentioned his prior attacks on the
Representative Maxine Waters as a “low-IQ individual,” adding his assessment, “I mean,
honestly, she’s somewhere in the mid-60s, I believe.”

On July 6, the Associated Press uncovered allegations of the US. Army abruptly discharging
reservists and recruits once promised a path to citizenship through their service:

The AP was unable to quantify how many men and women who enlisted through the special
recruitment program have been booted from the Army, but immigration attorneys say they
know of more than 40 who have been discharged or whose status has become questionable,
jeopardizing their futures.

On July 9, 2018, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, drawing
swift criticism from civil rights organizations critical of of Kavanaugh’s record on matters
related to race.
On July 10, 2018, President Trump pardoned Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were
convicted for activities related to the Bundy Standoff with federal authorities during the
Obama presidency, which took on racist overtones when leader Cliven Bundy wondered
aloud to a New York Times reporter whether black people would be better off enslaved.

On July 13, 2018, President Trump endorsed a racist candidate for running for reelection to
Congress from Florida. Congressman Matt Gaetz invited an infamous alt-right activist, racist
and troll, Chuck Johnson, to the 2018 State of the Union address. Johnson was banned from
Twitter for soliciting donations to “take out” Black Lives Matter activist Deray McKesson.
Gaetz also once tweeted that a court filing bearing typos looked like it was drafted by two of
his black colleagues in the Florida state house.

On July 14, 2018, the White House Council of Economic Advisors published a report in favor
of expanding work requirements for recipients of food stamps, Medicaid and housing
subsidies with a novel argument: We should scale back the War on Poverty because it
worked. Their report read:

Over the past 54 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration of a War on Poverty,
federal spending on welfare programs targeting low-income households has grown
dramatically, contributing to a substantial reduction in material hardship.

None of these statistics is intended to deny the ways in which millions of Americans
sometimes struggle to make ends meet, [but] the vast majority of Americans are able to meet
their basic human needs.

On July 18, 2018, President Trump endorsed immigration hardliner Brian Kemp for governor
of Georgia against Stacey Abrams, who would be the first black woman governor in the
United States. In his endorsement message on Twitter, Trump referenced Kemp’s hardline
position on “illegal immigration.” The endorsement arrived just over two months after
Kemp’s campaign began running a television ad in which the candidate says, “I got a big
truck, just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take ‘em home myself. Yep, I just
said that.”

On July 19, 2018, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that President
Trump’s nomination of Ryan Wesley Bounds to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals would be
withdrawn after Republican Senator Tim Scott, who is black, announced that he could not
support the nomination over past racist writings, depriving the nomination of a crucial vote of
support. Bounds’ nomination initially drew scrutiny from both of the nominees’ home state
Senators, who refused to return the Senate blue slips in favor of his consideration.

The nomination, initially made on Sept. 7, 2017, was then returned to the Senate on Jan. 3,
2018. Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley persisted in their refusal to return the
related blue slips, citing Bounds’ college writings hostile to people of color, among others. In
college, Bounds wrote, “Race-focused groups foster racethink, and the only way to rid our
multicultural community of race-think is to rid it of these invidious factions." He also wrote,
"The opponent is the white male and his coterie of meanspirited lackeys: ‘oreos,’ ‘twinkies,’
‘coconuts,’ and the like … . He enjoys making money and buying material things, just to
make sure people with darker skin don’t have access to them. He enjoys killing children and
revels in the death of minorities (if you are white, male, and pro-choice, for instance, it is
often ascribed to your desire for poor black and Hispanic women to abort their children as
frequently as possible).”

On July 20, 2018, President Trump renewed his attacks on predominantly black NFL players
protesting racism and police brutality, tweeting:

The NFL National Anthem Debate is alive and well again - can’t believe it! Isn’t it in contract
that players must stand at attention, hand on heart? The $40,000,000 Commissioner must
now make a stand. First time kneeling, out for game. Second time kneeling, out for season/no
pay!

On July 25, 2018, DOJ public information officers were directed in an internal email to forego
the term “undocumented” immigrants, and to favor “illegal alien.”

On July 29, 2018, President Trump threatened a government shutdown if Congress refused to
fund a southern border wall, tweeting:

I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for
Border Security, which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and
finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our
Country!

Please understand, there are consequences when people cross our Border illegally, whether
they have children or not - and many are just using children for their own sinister purposes.
Congress must act on fixing the DUMBEST & WORST immigration laws anywhere in the
world! Vote “R”

Family Separations
With limiting immigration a top priority of the Trump administration, family separations and
a “zero tolerance policy” came under discussion in the earliest days of Trump’s presidency.
Once public, family separations were relatively quickly halted amid public outcry. As of
August 2018, hundreds of children remain separated from their families as a result of the
policy and how it was implemented.

Family Separations Under Discussion


Trump administration begins internally discussing family separations policy to deter asylum
seekers in February 2017.

Then-DHS Director John Kelly said that DHS was considering family separations on March
7, 2017, saying:

We have tremendous experience of dealing with unaccompanied minors. We turn them over
to (Health and Human Services) and they do a very, very good job of putting them in foster
care or linking them up with parents or family members in the United States.

On March 30, 2017, then-DHS Director John Kelly says that DHS will not separate families
at the border.
On April 5, 2017, the Trump administration said that family separations were no longer under
consideration, according to DHS spokesperson David Laplan.

In June 2017, the Trump administration shuttered a program to keep families with children
out of immigration detention.

On Nov. 25, 2017, the Houston Chronicle identified 22 cases of family separations at the
southern border since June.

In December 2017, the Trump administration was reportedly weighing adopting the family
separations policy amid a surge of Central American families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Family Separations Escalate


DHS’ family separation policy reported to be underway on Feb. 20, 2018.

Attorney General Sessions orders federal prosecutors to adopt a “zero-tolerance policy” for all
immigration offense in an April 6, 2018 memo.

Affidavits filed in federal court on April 23, 2018 as to detention conditions faced by children
separated from their families were reported on by Reveal:

Children held at the Shiloh Treatment Center, a government contractor south of Houston that
houses immigrant minors, described being held down and injected, according to the federal
court filings. The lawsuit alleges that children were told they would not be released or see
their parents unless they took medication and that they only were receiving vitamins.

Parents and the children themselves told attorneys the drugs rendered them unable to walk,
afraid of people and wanting to sleep constantly, according to affidavits filed April 23 in U.S.
District Court in California.

One mother said her child fell repeatedly, hitting her head, and ended up in a wheelchair. A
child described trying to open a window and being hurled against a door by a Shiloh
supervisor, who then choked her until she fainted.

“The supervisor told me I was going to get a medication injection to calm me down,” the girl
said. “Two staff grabbed me, and the doctor gave me the injection despite my objection and
left me there on the bed.”

Another child recounted being made to take pills in the morning, at noon and night. The child
said “the staff told me that some of the pills are vitamins because they think I need to gain
weight. The vitamins changed about two times, and each time I feel different.”

On April 20, 2018, a DHS spokesperson appears to have lied in defending family separations,
saying:

As required by law, D.H.S. must protect the best interests of minor children crossing our
borders, and occasionally this results in separating children from an adult they are traveling
with if we cannot ascertain the parental relationship, or if we think the child is otherwise in
danger.
In May 7, 2018 remarks at a gathering of the Association of State Criminal Investigative
Agencies, Attorney General Sessions spoke about the administration’s “zero-tolerance policy”
for families crossing the southern border unlawfully:

If you cross the border unlawfully, even a first offense, we're going to prosecute you. If you're
smuggling a child, we're going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you,
probably, as required by law. If you don't want your child to be separated, then don't bring
them across the border illegally.

In a May 11, 2018 interview with NPR’s John Burnett, when pressed about the
administration’s “zero-tolerance policy,” Chief of Staff John Kelly somewhat incorrectly said
of undocumented immigrants:

Let me step back and tell you that the vast majority of the people that move illegally into
United States are not bad people. They're not criminals. They're not MS13. But they're also
not people that would easily assimilate into the United States into our modern society.
They're overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth,- fifth-, sixth-
grade educations are kind of the norm. They don't speak English, obviously. That's a big
thing. They don't speak English. They don't integrate well. They don't have skills.

On May 15, 2018, DHS Director Nielsen defended the administration’s family separation
policy, claiming that the policy was not remarkable.

With the furor over Trump’s family separation policy coming to a boil, on May 27, 2018,
President Trump’s daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump posted a sweet, if potentially tone
deaf, picture of herself holding and nuzzling her son on Twitter with the caption, “My ♥️!
#SundayMorning.”

In a June 5, 2018 interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Attorney General
Sessions said:

If people don’t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with
them. We’ve got to get this message out. You’re not given immunity.

Also on June 5, 2018, NBC News reported:

Border agents and child welfare workers are running out of space to shelter children who
have been separated from their parents at the U.S. border as part of the Trump
administration's new "zero tolerance" policy, according to two U.S. officials and a document
obtained by NBC News.

As of Sunday, nearly 300 of the 550 children currently in custody at U.S. border stations had
spent more than 72 hours there, the time limit for immigrants of any age to be held in the
government's temporary facilities. Almost half of those 300 children are younger than 12,
according to the document, meaning they are classified by the Department of Homeland
Security as "tender age children."

The stations, run by the Border Patrol and meant only as the first stop for children detained
at the border, often lack adequate bedding or separate sleeping rooms for children.
With a surge in immigration arrests, officials said on June 7, 2018 that ICE and the DOJ had
reached an agreement to house about 1,600 immigration detainees in federal prisons,
including asylum seekers.

Between May 5 and June 9, 2018, the Trump administration acknowledges 2,342 children
separated from 2,206 parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Criticism of Family Separations Mounting


On June 9, 2018, news emerged that one immigrant father in immigration detention, Marco
Antonio Muñoz, killed himself in a Texas jail after being separated from his child at the U.S.-
Mexico border .

On June 11, 2018, Attorney General Sessions determined that victims of gang violence and
domestic violence were no longer eligible for asylum in the United States. That decision was
expected to affect large numbers of people from Central America, and considerable source of
the families being separated at the border by U.S. authorities. ICE followed up with new
asylum policy in line with Sessions’ determination on July 11, 2018.

Also on June 11, 2018, CPB Commissioner Kevin McAleenan sat down for a lengthy
interview with the Los Angeles Times, in which family separations are explained as an
incentive to discourage people from crossing the border with children.

On June 16, 2018, President Trump falsely tweeted:

Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the Border by working with Republicans on
new legislation, for a change! This is why we need more Republicans elected in November.
Democrats are good at only three things, High Taxes, High Crime and Obstruction. Sad!

Also on June 16, 2018, White House domestic policy advisor Stephen Miller told the New
York Times, "[Family separation] was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero
tolerance policy for illegal entry, period."

On June 17, 2018, DHS Director Nielsen falsely tweeted, “We do not have a policy of
separating families at the border. Period.”

At a June 18, 2018 press conference, DHS Director Nielsen appeared to lie about the
conditions of family members separated by U.S. officials at the southern border:

It is important to note that these minors are very well taken care of. Don’t believe the press.
They are very well taken care of. You know this, as many of you have detention facilities of
your own. We operate according to some of the highest standards in the country. We provide
food, medical, education and all needs that the child requests.

Also on June 18, 2018, the Associated Press described conditions of children separated from
their parents by immigration officials:

Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages
created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of
water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets.
One teenager told an advocate who visited that she was helping care for a young child she
didn’t know because the child’s aunt was somewhere else in the facility. She said she had to
show others in her cell how to change the girl’s diaper.

And also on June 18, 2018, the New Yorker uncovered that, as of that point, “No protocols
have been put in place for keeping track of parents and children concurrently, for keeping
parents and children in contact with each other while they are separated, or for eventually
reuniting them.”

On June 19, 2018, Attorney General Sessions defended the Trump administration’s ongoing
family separation efforts, according to CNN:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions dismissed comparisons of the detention facilities for migrant
children to Nazi concentration camps by arguing that Nazis "were keeping the Jews from
leaving the country."

"Well, it's a real exaggeration, of course. In Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from
leaving the country," Sessions tried to explain during an interview Monday night with Fox
News host Laura Ingraham.

Sessions later [falsely] said if parents are deported, their children return to their home
country with them. If the parents claim asylum and stay in the US, Sessions said, their
children also stay but in Department of Health and Human Services' custody.

Administration Haltingly Backpedals From Family


Separations
On June 20, 2018, President Trump issued an executive order to terminate family separations.
The order relies heavily on language like that employed by immigration opponents, including
“alien families,” “alien parent,” and “alien child.”

Also on June 20, 2018, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski mocked a
child with a disability who was separated from her family at the border, according to the
Guardian:

Donald Trump’s former presidential campaign manager has refused to apologize for
appearing to dismiss the significance of the removal of a 10-year-old Mexican girl with
Down’s syndrome from her mother.

Amid controversy over the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families at
the southern border, Corey Lewandowski appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night. In
response to a panelist who mentioned the separation of the girl with Down’s syndrome, he
responded: “Womp womp.”

On June 21, 2018, First Lady Melania Trump boarded a flight to visit a facility detaining
children separated from their families at the southern border wearing a jacket that read, “I
DON’T REALLY CARE DO U?”

Also on June 21, 2018, the Hill reported,


The Department of Justice on Thursday asked a federal district court to modify a decades-old
court settlement that prohibits the federal government from keeping children in immigration
detention centers for more than 20 days, following President Trump's decision to end the
practice of separating migrant children from their parents who cross the U.S. border
illegally.

And still on June 21, 2018, the Department of Defense announced that it would house up to
20,000 unaccompanied migrant children on military bases, at the request of HHS.

President Trump tweeted on June 24, 2018:

We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we
must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.
Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come
without parents...

On June 26, 2018, CPB said that family separations are over.

Also on June 26, 2018, Reuters reported:

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told a Senate hearing on Tuesday that most
of the 2,000-plus children who had been separated from their parents could not be reunited
with them until Congress passes new legislation.

A 1997 court settlement known as the Flores agreement set policy for the detention of minors
in the custody of immigration officials, and a federal appeals court has interpreted it to allow
immigration officials to detain families for only 20 days.

While that settlement is in place, Azar said the children could not be moved to be with their
parents in detention.

“I cannot reunite them while the parents are in custody because the court order doesn’t allow
kids to be with their parents for more than 20 days,” Azar said.

And still on June 26, 2018, the Washington Post reported:

“These same people [opposed to family separations] live in gated communities, many of
them, and are featured at events where you have to have an ID to even come in and hear them
speak,” Sessions said [in a speech to the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Los Angeles,
Calif.]. “They like a little security around themselves, and if you try to scale the fence, believe
me, they’ll be even too happy to have you arrested and separated from your children.”

Sessions looked up from his notes and grinned. Laughs and applause rose from the audience.

Partial to the “lunatic fringe” was how he characterized the lawmakers, lawyers, academics,
celebrities and organizers who have condemned the division of families who cross the border
illegally, often seeking asylum.

“They want borders in their lives, but not in yours,” Sessions said. “Not in the American
people’s lives. That’s why the American people are sick of the lip service and the hypocrisy.
They are sick of politicians who abandon promises as soon as the mainstream media
criticizes them. They’ve seen it for decades and now they’re supporting the president, who’s
on their side for a change.”

“If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you, and that child may be separated
from you as required by law,” Sessions said.

On July 2, 2018, the Trump administration, through an DHS spokesperson, finally admitted
that family separations were a result of the administration’s “zero-tolerance policy.”

Also on July 2, 2018, WNYC reported that the USCIS is launching a “denaturalization” task
force to revoke what they identify as faulty grants of non-birthright citizenship and deport
related people.

On July 3, 2018, NBC News reported:

After a court order to reunite more than 2,000 migrant children who were separated from
their parents in May and June, the Trump administration has instructed immigration agents
to give those parents two options: leave the country with your kids — or leave the country
without them.

On July 9, 2018, the DOJ informed a judge that the administration was poised to miss a court-
ordered deadline for reuniting children separated from their families by immigration
authorities at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Amid encountering obstacles to reuniting many families federal authorities separated at the
border, the Daily Beast reported on July 10, 2018:

U.S. government officials recently told four immigrant women that they must pay for DNA
tests in order to be reunited with their children, according to the shelter that housed the
women.

The tests are the latest ad hoc effort by the Trump administration to reunite families it had
separated—in some cases because authorities took documents from adults proving they are
related to their children. The tests are being administered by a private contractor on behalf of
the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, which
oversees the care and housing of children. HHS has refused to name the contractor, which
may be a violation of federal law.

On July 11, 2018, the DOJ admitted before a federal judge that the federal government may
have accidentally separated a father and his toddler — both of whom may be U.S. citizens
— for up to one year.

“Since the middle of July, a group of some twenty government officials has been gathering
each week at the headquarters of Customs and Border Protection, in Washington, D.C., to
discuss what the Trump Administration should do in the aftermath of the President’s failed
zero-tolerance policy,” the New Yorker reported on Aug. 22, 2018. According to one
administration official, the purpose of the meetings is not how to avoid mistakes like family
separation, but that “we need to be smarter if we want to implement something on this scale”
again.
A new report, published on July 24, 2018, found that people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border
with children were prosecuted at a higher rate than were people crossing the border without
children under President Trump’s “zero tolerance policy.”

As of July 27, 2018, over 700 children remained separated from their families by the Trump
administration.

On July 30, 2018, a federal judge found detention conditions and punishment at Shiloh
Residential Treatment Center in Manvel, Texas for undocumented children separated from
their families so appalling that she ordered substantial changes or the transference of detained
children to a more humane facility.

At a July 31, 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, ICE Executive Director of
Enforcements and Removal Operations Matthew Albence described the “family residential
centers” where authorities detained children without their families as “more like a summer
camp” than a jail.

August 2018, Generally


On Aug. 3, 2018, President Trump renewed his attacks on the intelligence of black people,
this time targeting basketball star Lebron James and CNN television personality Don Lemon.
An ensuing analysis by the Washington Post found that Trump’s attacks on people’s
intelligence were increasingly reserved for people of color.

On Aug. 9, 2018, the parents of First Lady Melania Trump became U.S. citizens through
“chain migration,” of which Trump was uniformly critical, especially when talking about
immigrants of color.

On Aug. 11, 2018, President Trump commemorated the one-year anniversary since clashes
between white supremacists and anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Va. which ultimately
claimed the life of Heather Heyer, who was run down by a white supremacist driver. In a
tweet, he condemned “all types of racism and acts of violence.” He proceeded to take credit
for “the LOWEST African American and Hispanic unemployment rates in history.”

On Aug. 13, 2018, in a scathing op-ed, policy advisor Stephen Miller’s uncle detailed the
hypocrisy of Miller’s positions on immigration, suggesting that the administration is less
welcoming of immigrants of color.

Following accusations by former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman that she has
tapes of President Trump saying the “N-word,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders
fielded an Aug. 14, 2018 question about whether she could say that no such recordings will
emerge, answering, “I can’t guarantee anything.”

Also on Aug. 14, 2018, President Trump tweeted of Manigualt Newman, who is black,
“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I
guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”

On Aug. 18, 2018, ICE detained a man driving his wife to the hospital for a scheduled
cesarean section. Surveillance footage showed ICE taking away the pregnant woman’s
husband, who is Latino, leaving her sobbing, before she drove herself to the hospital, where
she gave birth to their fifth child.

On Sunday, Aug. 19, 2018, the Washington Post reported that White House speechwriter
Darren Beattie was fired the prior week for having “spoken at a conference attended by well-
known white nationalists.”

That same weekend, President Trump’s top economic advisor Larry Kudlow celebrated his
birthday with a party at his house attended by Peter Brimelow, who the Washington Post
identified as “a zealous promoter of white-identity politics on Vdare.com, the anti-
immigration website that he founded in 1999.” The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies
the VDARE Foundation, which operates Vdare.com, as a hate group.

Speaking at the American Renaissance conference a year earlier in 2017, Brimelow spoke
approvingly of then-candidate Trump’s campaign kickoff speech:

But there's no doubt that something in that book got to [President Donald Trump], because
the way his speech was set up. His announcement speech went to the question of Hispanic
crime, specifically rape. And [Ann Coulter]'s book is a very powerful statement of the fact
that crime in this country is ethnically variegated. There's ethic specialization in crime. And
Hispanics do specialize in rape, particularly of children. They're very prone to it, compared
to other groups.

On Aug. 20, 2018, during what New York Magazine called “a demagoguery-heavy White
House event” to celebration CPB staff, President Trump invited a Latino CBP officer to the
stage, saying, “Come here. You’re not nervous, right? Speaks perfect English.” Trump also
uniformly referred to CBP by the acronym “CBC,” mostly commonly reserved for the
Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C. Trump also again falsely claimed ties
between immigration and crime, saying, “Blue wave means crime. It means open borders. Not
good.”

The White House subsequently included a photo of President Trump with the Latino CBP
officer who “[s]peaks perfect English” in its weekly distribution to media of their photos of
the week.

Also on Aug. 20, 2018, President Trump sent a letter to state and local leaders attacking the
movement to “Abolish ICE,” saying, “Abolishing ICE effectively means no enforcement, no
deportations and no borders — and would result in massive crime, huge loss of life, colossal
economic hardship for American workers and lawless anarchy.”

On Aug. 21, 2018, former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman continued her book
tour critical of the president, saying, “It is very clear Donald Trump is a racist.”

Also on Aug. 21, 2018, President Trump spoke about the murder of Mollie Tibbetts by
Cristhian Bahena Rivera, who is an undocumented immigrant, saying at a Charlestown, W.
Va. rally:

You heard today, with the illegal alien coming in from, very sadly, from Mexico. And you saw
what happened to that incredible, beautiful young woman. Should’ve never happened. The
laws are so bad. The immigration laws are such a disgrace.
On Aug. 22, 2018, President Trump posted a video on Twitter criticizing calls to abolish ICE,
proposing instead to “abolish the killers in ISIS.”

Also on Aug. 22, 2018, via the @WhiteHouse account, the Trump administration tweeted a
video publicizing the death of Mollie Tibbetts and other victims of crime perpetrated by
undocumented immigrants in an apparent effort to minimize the harm from the family
separations and argue for other hardline immigration positions.

President Trump concluded Aug. 22, 2018 by tweeting what CNBC called a “fringe talking
point about South African government ‘seizing land from white farmers.’” The statement
drew impassioned responses, including the South African government condemning Trump’s
remark and former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke praising it. White nationalists were
ecstatic about Trump’s tweet.

On Aug. 23, 2018, in a move that advocates feared threatened due process rights of
immigrants, the DOJ ordered immigration judges around the country to increase their hearings
from 700 per year to three per day. Observers expected the move to increase deportations.

In his Aug. 23, 2018 endorsement of Cindy Hyde-Smith, running to represent Miss. in the
Senate, President Trump repeated the theme of his inaugural address echoing past xenophobes
and nativists: “America First!”

On Aug. 28, 2018, the Atlantic reported that DHS policy analyst Ian Smith recently resigned
from the administration upon the surfacing of email threads between Smith and prominent
white nationalists.

Also on Aug. 28, 2018, reports emerged of a toddler dying from a respiratory infection
contracted during immigration detention, along with allegations of subpar conditions and
medical treatment.

On Aug. 29, 2018, President Trump’s endorsed candidate for governor of Florida, Ron
DeSantis, said of the coming general election on Fox News that Florida should not “monkey
this up” by voting for his opponent Andrew Gillum, who is black.

Also on Aug. 29, 2018, the Washington Post reported that the State Department is accusing
hundreds, if not thousands, of Latinos along the southern border applying for new or renewed
United States passport with possessing fraudulent U.S. birth certificates.
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https://democracyincolor.com/recordofracism2
Trump’s Record ON Racism part II
Later 2018
At an Oct. 22, 2018 rally in Houston, President Trump said:

A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about the country
so much. And you know what? We can’t have that. You know, they have a word — it’s sort of
became old-fashioned — it’s called a nationalist. And I saw, really, we’re not supposed to
use that word. You know what I am? I’m a nationalist, okay. I’m a nationalist. Nationalist.
Nothing wrong. Use that word. Use that word.

Trump subsequently defended his remarks when asked if they were racist dog whistles or
emboldening white nationalists.

On Oct. 31, 2018, President Trump tweeted a new anti-immigration ad, paid for by the
President’s reelection campaign, characterizing migrants as extremely violent and showing
masses of people pouring through broken down barriers. The ad was subsequently pulled
from major news networks and Facebook. (See below, Nov. 4, 2018.)

Ahead of mid-term elections, President Trump used a Nov. 1, 2018 White House address to
boast of crackdowns on asylum-seekers, even hinting that they might be fired upon by U.S.
military personnel. He called Central American migrant caravans “violent” and threatened to
hold thousands of participants indefinitely in “massive cities of tents.”

Those remarks were followed by a rally that night in Colombia, Mo. in which he said of
Central American migrants: (See link immediately above)

Did you see what they did to the Mexican police and military in breaking through the border?
These are tough people, they are not little angels, and we are not letting them into our
country.

Early 2019, Generally


In a Feb. 9, 2019 tweet, President Trump again referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as
“Pocahontas,” saying, “Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas,
joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate,
or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore?” The New York
Times also reported that he referenced the Trail of Tears in that disparaging tweet.
At a May 22, 2019 congressional hearing, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced a
delay to changing the $20 bill. Plans to remove President Andrew Jackson’s image from the
bill and replace it with an image of the abolitionist and activist Harriet Tubman were delayed
until 2026. The move drew criticism across the political spectrum. Defending the decision,
President Trump said, “Andrew Jackson had a great history.” Jackson owned slaves, censored
anti-slavery mailings, and removed Native Americans from massive portions of the southern
United States to open up more land for slave-owning plantations.

July 2019 Attacks on Congresswomen of Color


President Trump used a Twitter-thread on July 14, 2019 to disparage people of color and
immigrants, and challenge four Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back to where
they came from” and fix “governments, [who] are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst,
most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world.” The United States Equal Opportunity
Commission lists some of the specific language used as a violation of anti-discrimination
employment law. Privately, President Trump subsequently defended his language to less
enthusiastic advisors.

The following day, Trump offered a public defense of his July 14 tweets, accusing the four
congresswomen, three of whom were born in the United States and one of whom took refuge
here as a child, of “hat[ing] our country” and saying:

All I’m saying is, if they’re not happy here, they can leave. There will be many people who
will be happy.

His criticisms of the four congresswomen continued at a July 17, 2019 campaign rally, where
he again invited them to leave the country, while the crowd, referring to Rep. Ilhan Omar,
chanted, “Send her back!”

Following that rally, Trump tweeted of it, “What a crowd, and what great people.”

Later 2019, Generally


In a July 27, 2019 Twitter thread, President Trump attacked Rep. Elijah Cummings, who was
Black and had been critical of the administration’s immigration policies. Referring to
Cummings’ largely Black congressional district in Baltimore, the president wrote, “Cumming
District is a disgusting rat and rodent infested mess…A very dangerous & filthy place.”

The next day, Trump tweeted that Cummings was “racist” without explanation. He also
retweeted a conservative columnist calling Baltimore a “proper sh*thole.”

On July 29, 2019, President Trump replied to hinted criticism from Rev. Al Sharpton, calling
him “a con man,” and writing that Sharpton “Hates Whites & Cops!”

The Trump administration extended Temporary Protected Status for roughly 7,000 Syrian
refugees on Aug. 1, 2019, but refused to redesignate Syrians for eligibility, effectively
shutting the United States off for other Syrians seeking protections.
In an Aug. 7, 2019 Vox story, 24 instances of President Trump calling Latinx immigration “an
invasion” were detailed. Up to that point, the New York Times reported that Trump’s
campaign had purchased 2,000 online ads using the word “invasion” to describe immigration
at the southern United States border.

That same rhetoric was repeated by a man who massacred dozens of people at an El Paso
Walmart on Aug. 3 after posting a racist manifesto online. The shooter told police he was
specifically targeting Mexicans following the shooting.

At an Aug. 20, 2019 press event, President Trump stated, “I think any Jewish people that vote
for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty," playing
on anti-semitic tropes of dual loyalty of American Jewish people to Israel.

Emails leaked to NPR on or before Nov. 26, 2019 found White House adviser and
immigration policy architect Stephen Miller recommending a white supremacist website
repeatedly. The website has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate
group. The White House resisted calls for Miller’s resignation by civil rights activists and
members of Congress.

The Trump Administration’s Dec. 5, 2019 rule rescinding food assistance to over 700,000
people was criticized as being rooted in racial discrimination.

In a Dec. 7, 2019 speech before the Israeli American Council, President Trump rehashed old
anti-Semitic tropes before a largely Jewish audience, nonetheless, referring to their “dual
loyalty,” but also saying that some Jewish people “don’t love Israel enough.” He also added a
dash of racism against Native Americans, saying:

A lot of you [Jewish people] are in the real estate business because I know you very well.
You’re brutal killers, not nice people at all. But you have to vote for me — you have no
choice. You’re not gonna vote for Pocahontas [his nickname for Sen. Elizabeth Warren], I can
tell you that. You’re not gonna vote for the wealth tax. Yeah, let’s take 100% of your wealth
away! Some of you don’t like me. Some of you don’t like me at all, actually. And you’re
going to be my biggest supporters because you’re going to be out of business in about 15
minutes if they get it. So I don’t have to spend a lot of time on that.

Early 2020
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos compared favoring reproductive justice to being pro-
slavery in a Jan. 24, 2020 speech in Washington, D.C. Referring to President Abraham
Lincoln, she said:

He too contended with the ‘pro-choice’ arguments of his day. They suggested that a state’s
choice to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it. Well, President Lincoln reminded
those ‘pro-choicers’ that there is a vast portion of the American people that do not look upon
that matter as being this very little thing. They look upon it as a vast moral evil.

At a campaign rally on Feb. 20, 2020, President Trump criticized the movie “Parasite.” His
biggest complaint, according to the Associated Press, was that the movie was made in South
Korea. Trump went on to praise “Gone with the Wind,” which others critique for being
nostalgic for slavery. He continued his derision of South Korean-produced “Parasite” at a
campaign event the next day.

Trump expanded his travel ban to bar citizens of Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria,
Sudan, and Tanzania from settling in the United States long term on Feb. 21, 2020.

Having developed a habit of calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus,” on March 18, 2020,
President Trump defended accusations that the term employed by himself and several
administration officials was racist. The following day, a reporter tweeted images of the
president’s remarks in which “Corona” appeared to be replaced by “Chinese” in black marker,
suggesting persistence in the xenophobic labelling by the president or someone close to him.

Also on March 18, 2020, the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report finding a 55-
percent increase in the number of white nationalist groups between the year that President
Trump took office and 2019. Several of these groups believe that “mass violence is necessary
to bring about the collapse of our pluralistic society,” the report states.

President Trump sparred with an Asian-American journalist on May 12, 2020, who asked a
question about why COVID-19 testing was an issue of “global competition.” He challenged
her to “Ask China that question,” and called it a “nasty question.” He then cut the press
conference off abruptly.

On May 15, 2020, Trump nominated Mark Burkhalter as the United States ambassador to
Norway. Burkhalter was since revealed to have produced a racist campaign flier against a
Black politician. He settled a related lawsuit and publicly apologized.

President Trump tweeted that “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” on May 29, 2020.
He also called Black Lives Matter protesters “THUGS.” The saying about shooting and
looting was first offered by Miami police chief Walter E. Headley in 1967, amid uprisings
following the killing of several Black men in the area. It has been thought to justify deadly
use of force by police, especially against men of color. See also, NPR. The term “thug” has a
history as a racial slur, and was recently described by Professor James McHorter as “a
nominally polite way of using the N-word.”

June 2020, Generally


Trump called for using the military to “dominate” Black Lives Matter protesters on June 1,
2020.

Senior Trump campaign advisor Mercedes Schlapp retweeted a viral video of a man
threatening Black Lives Matter protesters with a chainsaw and using the N-word on June 6,
2020. Schlapp subsequently tweeted the same video with the racial slur muted.

On June 7, a handful of top Trump administration officials denied the existence of systemic
racism in media interviews.

Referring to military bases named for Confederate leaders, the president tweeted on June 10,
2020:
The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed
Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore my Administration will not even consider the
renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations.

Trump later threatened to veto legislation to rename those military bases. Congress
subsequently passed such legislation by veto-proof majorities, leading Trump to tweet that he
remains dedicated to blocking renaming efforts.

In a June 12, 2020 interview with Fox News’ Harris Falker, who is Black, President Trump
claimed to have done more for Black people than any other president, carving out a possible
exception for President Abraham Lincoln.

In three media interviews on June 18, 2020, Trump spoke on race issues. He told the Wall
Street Journal that his utterance that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” was “both”
a fact and a threat. He also took credit for making Juneteenth “very famous,” though
displayed ignorance about the related statement released by the White House. On Fox News,
that same day, he seemed to defend police brutality and said, “police have not been treated
fairly in this country.”

Amid divided advisors, President Trump has repeatedly said of Black Lives Matter protesters,
“These are not my voters.” According to a June 18, 2020 report by NBC News, some advisors
support the president’s insensitive, racist rhetoric following the murder of George Floyd by
police.

The president tweeted a doctored, viral video — widely known as the “racist baby” video —
which inaccurately accused CNN of fabricating a news story to find racism where it did not
exist. On June 19, 2020, both Facebook and Twitter removed the video from their platforms
for its inaccuracy.

Also on June 19, 2020, “for violating [their] policy against organized hate,” Facebook
announced the removal of Trump campaign ads employing a Nazi symbol.

President Trump said “the silent majority is stronger than ever before,” at a June 20, 2020
rally in Tulsa, Okla., on native land. The phrase “silent majority” is historically linked to
President Nixon’s racist Southern Strategy, employed by his campaigns.

During that rally, President Trump also labelled COVID-19 as the “kung flu,” as his crowd of
supporters cheered. He also referred to a hypothetical burglar as “a very tough hombre,”
earning laughs from his audience.

That rally, which took place in the former home city of the Black Wall Street—which was
burned to the ground during a 1921 race massacre—was initially planned for June 19, or
Juneteenth.

In a June 22, 2020 interview with Catholic News Agency, President Trump indicated his
eagerness to defend monuments to Confederates by executive order. He also defended his
failure to comply with a Supreme Court order to restore Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA). Additionally, Trump attacked his past National Security Advisor John
Bolton for his claim that Trump approved forced internment and reeducation camps built by
the Chinese government for the Uighur ethnic minority, who are largely Muslim.
Also on June 22, 2020, President Trump asked why there were no protesters in the streets
concerned about a Black man punching a white retail store employee, video of which he also
tweeted. Some have suggested the store employee used a racial slur before being struck.

That same day, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended the president’s
persistent use of the term “kung flu” as a moniker for COVID-19. President Trump had used
the term again at a Tulsa campaign rally days earlier. The president used the term once more
at a Phoenix rally on June 23, 2020 to raucous cheers from attendees.

At a Students for Trump rally on June 23, 2020, event speaker Reagan Escudé criticized
Quaker Oats for recently rebranding its “Aunt Jemima” syrup for the racist history and
association of the brand. Escudé is an employee of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit organizing
students who favor Trump.

Through June 23, 2020, President Trump insisted on calling COVID-19 the “kung flu” or the
“Chinese virus,” in what Vox saw as an effort to fan the flames of xenophobia.

Trump retweeted a post on June 28, 2020, in which a Florida supporter chants, “White
power!” The sole Black Republican Senator, Tim Scott, decried the video as “indefensible.”
Trump has since deleted the tweet, with press secretary Kayleigh McEnany claiming that the
president watched the video, but did not hear the repeated, clear chants of “white power.” The
White House failed to condemn either the tweet or the phrase “white power.”

Reddit shut down a forum populated by supporters of President Trump on June 29, 2020 after
years of “racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, glorification of violence and conspiracy theories
that flourished there,” according to the Washington Post.

That same day, livestreaming platform Twitch suspended the president’s channel for “hateful
content” after a pair of videos were broadcast in which the president spoke disparagingly of
Mexican and Latinx people.

A June 30, 2020 Washington Post story noted the president’s numerous tweets dedicated to
tough-on-crime approaches towards Black Lives Matter protesters and vandals of Confederate
monuments amid near silence on the COVID-19 pandemic. The Center for Disease Control
observes that the virus disproportionately infects and kills Black, Latinx, and Native
American people in the United States, who experience hospitalizations at four-to-five times
the rate of white people.

July 2020, Generally


Up to July, 2020, President Trump continued his “ardent defense of Confederate monuments,”
even as public opinion swung against him, according to the Washington Post. That story also
noted his tweets at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, again referring to her as “Pocahantas,” and his
criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The president called the painting of “Black Lives Matter” on a prominent New York City
street “a symbol of hate” and “denigrating.” The comments were defended by White House
press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and echoed by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
President Trump’s July 4, 2020 remarks at Mount Rushmore, on native land in South Dakota,
were considered “outrageous” by CNN. He railed against a “new far-left fascism,” reported
the New York Times.

On July 6, 2020, Trump falsely tweeted that NASCAR ratings were down, following the
finding of a noose in the garage of Bubba Wallace, the sole Black driver in NASCAR’s
highest ranks.

That same day, the president criticized the Washington professional football team and the
professional baseball team in Cleveland for considering changing their clubs’ names, widely
derided as racist. He then fumed as the football team announced a name change the following
week.

CNN, on July 7, 2020, detailed 17 recent instances in which the Trump administration took
advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce immigration into the United States, primarily
from predominantly Black and brown populations.

President Trump seemed to deny the fact or the importance of Black people being killed
disproportionately by police in a July 14, 2020 interview with CBS News. He also defended
monuments to Confederate leaders and people brandishing the Confederate flag.

As of July 16, 2020, the Trump administration continued flouting a Supreme Court ruling that
the administration’s rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was
unconstitutional for being “arbitrary and capricious.”

That evening, Trump’s niece Mary Trump told MSNBC that she had heard the president use
racist and anti-Semitic slurs.

Following a week of federal agents accosting Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Ore.,
on July 20, 2020, President Trump threatened to do the same in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit,
New York City, Oakland, and Philadelphia—all cities with high populations of people of
color. The next day he expanded his threats to include Albuquerque, Cleveland, and
Milwaukee.

Trump moved on July 21, 2020 to bar the Census from counting undocumented immigrants.

That same day, the Washington Post reported that a forthcoming book by former Trump
lawyer Michael Cohen includes allegations that Trump used racist slurs to describe both
Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela.

Reports emerged on July 22, 2020 that Woody Johnson, Trump’s ambassador to the United
Kingdom, was under investigation by the State Department inspector general for racist and
sexist comments on the job.

The administration announced plans on July 23, 2020 to scrap the Affirmatively Furthering
Fair Housing rule implemented by President Obama to address housing discrimination. In the
announcement, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson called the policy
“unworkable and ultimately a waste of time.”
White nationalist Earl Holt III made a $1,000 contribution to a pro-Trump Super PAC, NPR
reported on July 25, 2020. Holt’s racist internet activity was cited by Dylann Roof, the white
man who massacred nine Black parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
in June of 2015. The Super PAC, The Committee to Defend the President, hastened to return
the contribution following NPR’s inquiry.
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