Balgarianovinite.com
Under President Donald Trump, America is refighting some of the battles of the 1960s and civil rights groups are responding by spending more money in Washington.
As Americans prepare to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday — which is no longer a free admission day at national parks — Black officials and activists say the gains they’ve made over the last 60 years are being eroded.
“It is an unfortunate reality, the defensive posture every civil rights organization finds itself in at the moment,” said Cedric Haynes, vice president, policy & legislative affairs for the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization.
The Trump administration has ended federal diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs in the federal government; removed references to accomplishments by Blacks and other minorities; and championed changes to election law that disproportionately would affect minority voters.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) mentioned other actions.
“From the gutting of the Department of Justice and so many of the people who were making sure there weren’t violations of voting rights, from the elimination in the Department of Education of the Office of Civil Rights, really the gutting of it, this administration is — in a fashion like I’ve never seen before in my lifetime — undermining any steps toward civil rights, equal rights for women, enforcement of the law of the land.”
The Pentagon even temporarily removed a webpage highlighting the World War II military service of Jackie Robinson, the first Black person to play major league baseball in the modern era, and Trump rescinded an executive order first issued by President Lyndon Johnson to provide equal opportunities and prevent discrimination in employment.
“I never thought that we would experience what we were experiencing today — the wholesale dismantling of our rights, the wholesale dismantling of our right to vote, and to be proud to be American and to be able to participate in the greatness of this nation,” said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.).
Civil rights organizations stepped up their lobbying efforts in 2025, as Trump returned to the White House.
- The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund reported spending $180,000 on lobbying during the first nine months of 2025, up from $100,000 during the same period a year earlier, although still well below its totals from 2022-2024. (Final disclosures for the year will be filed Jan. 20.)
- Lobbying spending by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights approached $1.7 million January to September 2025, an increase over the $1.5 million in expenses reported during the same time in 2024.
- The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School spent $80,000 during the first nine months of 2025, the same amount as in 2024.
Trump defended his efforts to roll back diversity programs in an interview with The New York Times earlier this month.
“Well, I think that a lot of people were very badly treated. White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university or a college. So I would say in that way, I think it was unfair in certain cases. I think it was also, at the same time, it accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people — people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination.”
Haynes took aim at those comments.
“Not only has the Trump administration worked to erode civil rights over the first year of his second term, but the president recently made completely unsubstantiated claims that civil rights somehow hurt white men,” Haynes said. “This couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is, Trump wields race like a knife to continue to cut us apart.”
Ironically, these efforts came after Trump sharply increased his support among minority voters, which helped him return to the White House and defeat the first Black woman nominated for president by a major political party.
Trump garnered 15 percent of the Black vote last fall, almost double his 8 percent share in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of the 2024 electorate. That included one in five Black men, even after former President Barack Obama chastised them in Pittsburgh during the campaign for even thinking about backing Trump.
Republicans also ate into Democrats’ historically strong financial support from human rights groups. In 2024, while individuals and political action committees affiliated with human rights organizations gave Democrats 79 percent of their campaign contributions and 21 percent to Republicans – down from a 94–6 split in Democrats’ favor in 2020 and the lowest Democratic share since 2012.
“I am certain that, to a person, they are saying, ‘We made a big mistake,’” Watson Coleman said,
Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said Trump’s actions against Blacks should have come as no surprise.
“I think it’s been incredibly targeted. But it’s also precisely what they said they were going to do,” she said. “Even now, people are not as willing to acknowledge the ways in which the Trump administration and conservatives have systematically attacked any semblance of equality of equity of diversity because they have been attacking any sort of opportunities or advancement for Black people, and I’m sad to say that still today there is an expectation that some anti-Black racism will just be there.”
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) grew up in a segregated South and said he remembered what life was like before the successes of the civil rights movement.
“I’m a son of the segregated South,” he said. “The laws recognized by me under the Constitution were ignored by my friends and neighbors. I had to drink from a colored water fountain when there was a white water fountain next to it. BBy the way, the colored water fountain was not nearly as pristine as the white water fountain. I had to sit in the back of the bus. I had to sit in the balcony of the movies.
“I know what bigotry looks like. And one form of bigotry is something called racism. The Klan burned a cross in my yard. I know what it sounds like. I’ve been called ugly names. I know what it hurts like.”
Trump also has sought to expand federal involvement in election administration, which constitutionally rests with Congress and the states. Much of it has been blocked by the courts. Trump also revoked President Joe Biden’s executive order making it easier for citizens to register and vote.
The White House has demanded specific proof of citizenship for registered voters, and the House Republicans have sought to enact that requirement into law.
But a study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University found that 21.3 million U.S. citizens couldn’t quickly get their hands on the required documents, including 11 percent of people of color compared with 8 perent of white people.
“I am not surprised there continues to be attacks against voting access and voting access by Americans of color,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, deputy director of the voting rights program at the Brennan Center. “This is part of our country’s long history that there have been attempts to stop Americans of color from participating in our democracy.”
And the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority appears poised to throw out a key part of the Voting Rights Act that prevents states and localities from drawing district lines that prevent minority voters from electing candidates from their communities.
Just as the NAACP has done throughout its 117-year history, Haynes said the group is ready to battle again.
“I don”t think there was a single victory that wasn’t met with some sort of resistance,” he said. “Our resolve to uplift and protect Black communities is as strong as it’s ever been. Just because we’re facing political headwinds, we just can’t be deterred.”
Jonathan D. Salant has covered money and politics out of Washington for almost 40 years. He is a former president of the National Press Club and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists D.C. chapter’s Journalism Hall of Fame.
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