Donald Trump began his presidency with an onslaught of executive actions meant to dismantle all governmental institutions and agencies that offer any lifeline for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white communities. His actions highlight the Democratic Party's refusal to operate as a true opposition party.
Donald Trump wasted no time implementing his initiatives following his inauguration as the 47th president of the United States. As of February 10th, the president has signed 86 executive actions - 61 Executive Orders and 25 Presidential Memos/Proclamations - covering a range of sectors from foreign policy, to energy production, to reshaping a large swath of the federal government in his image and that of his acolytes including, but not limited to, his Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, and billionaire oligarch, Elon Musk.
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It’s clear that the driving paradigm of Trump’s political, legislative, and social agenda is (informed ?) by white “supremacy” ideology, which we at the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) define as “The combined ideological and structural expression of ‘white power.’ In its ideological expression, it posits that the descendants of people of the territory/idea referred to as Europe represent the highest examples of human development. That their culture, social institutions, religions and way of life are inherently and naturally superior.”
A quick analysis of some of Trump’s executive actions reveals an irrefutable assault on governmental systems, institutions and programs that were specifically designed to assist Black and other non white poor and working class people and ameliorate myriad instances of systemic injustices they are subjected to on a quotidian basis. To be clear, I am not attempting to make the argument that these governmental systems and institutions have all been successful or even that they are adequate as much as highlight the Trump administration’s concentrated blitzkrieg against them.
Trump’s executive action on January 21, 2025, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, takes pages from the Lee Atwater playbook of incognito, plausibly deniable racial discrimination. It was Atwater who is known ignominiously for a 1981 quote he offered while defending the so-called Southern Strategy as an operative in Reagan’s White House:
"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger'-that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'"
And while there’s plenty of examples of Trump’s rhetoric to suggest that he may have missed or ignored Atwater’s recommendations, the language of his executive action establishing interdiction for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the federal government is carefully crafted, even citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the impetus. For instance, the January 21, 2025 executive action proclaims that DEI itself potentially violates the civil rights laws of the United States, and goes on to stipulate, “It is the policy of the United States to protect the civil rights of all Americans and to promote individual initiative, excellence, and hard work.”
The executive action then lists a slew of previous executive orders that are, in effect, now revoked including, Executive Order 13583 of August 18, 2011 (Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce), Executive Order 13672 of July 21, 2014 (Further Amendments to Executive Order 11478, Equal Employment Opportunity in the Federal Government, and Executive Order 11246, Equal Employment Opportunity), and Executive Order 11246 of September 24, 1965 (Equal Employment Opportunity).
While revoking these executive orders in itself vindicates Trump’s methodology of white “supremacy” ideology, revoking Executive Order 12898 of February 11, 1994 (Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations), in particular, presents a clear and incontrovertible threat to Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white communities.
Executive Order (EO) 12898 previously provided the primary mechanism that required federal actions to include an assessment of potential impacts to environmental justice communities as part of larger environmental reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA). In fact, many of the lawsuits challenging the placement of pollutive infrastructure Including, but not limited to, fossil fuel pipelines and coal and gas fired power plants invoked EO 12898 as part of their arguments. Given that Black and Indigenous communities tend to be the most polluted and rendered into energy and economic sacrifice zones due to federal actions, by repealing a bedrock executive action to address this trend, the Trump administration has effectively signaled that environmental justice communities are sitting ducks for extractive industries such as petrochemicals, industrial agriculture, and fossil fuels writ large.
As it pertains to international policy, Trump’s recent suggestion that the people of Gaza should be permanently relocated and the U.S. assume ownership of the Gaza Strip is another example of policy recommendations rooted in the racialized narcissistic cognitive disorder of white “supremacy” that centers so-called white peoples and European civilization and renders the afflicted with an inability to perceive objective reality in the same way as others. And the fact that Trump is now threatening to withhold aid to nations like the Kingdom of Jordan and the Arab Republic of Egypt, who both rejected his Gaza Grab and ethnic cleaning proposal, further vindicates the toxic pathology associated with white “supremacy” ideology.
You would think that these actions in themselves would represent a casus belli moment for any opposition political party and political formations. But if you’re looking for the Democrats to be this opposition party, you are likely embarking on a Faustian and myopic exercise. And no one seems to know this better than actors within the Democrat Party themselves. In fact, a recent piece by The New York Times entitled, ‘We Have no Coherent Message’: Democrats Struggle to Oppose Trump, indicated, “In private meetings and at public events, elected Democrats appear leaderless, rudderless and divided. They disagree over how often and how stridently to oppose Mr. Trump. They have no shared understanding of why they lost the election, never mind how they can win in the future.” Worse yet, just yesterday, House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, in what can only be described as an act of political cowardice, all but admitted the Democrats have no leverage against Trump or the GOP.
In his book, It;s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics, author David Faris suggests, “Democrats must avoid their natural instinct to govern and make incremental progress on a host of issues.” He continues, “They must avoid the temptation to work with President Trump….,because doing so would give an enormous advantage to their ideologically minded anti-system opponents.” It seems unlikely that the Democrats will heed this advice, largely due to the fact that they are aligned with Trump on issues like Palestine and how best to end the era of fossil fuel proliferation.
Hakeem Jeffries himself has remained largely silent on Trump’s proposal to carry out an ethnic cleansing pogrom in Gaza - and this may be due to the fact that he himself is one of the biggest recipients of money from the pro-Israel/pro-genocide American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in the entire U.S. Congress. In fact, according to OpenSecrets.org, Democrat Party candidates for Congress received more AIPAC money than Republicans during the 2024 election cycle.
Source: OpenSecrets.org
As it pertains to fossil fuels and protecting environmental justice communities, it’s well documented that former president, Joe Biden, approved more oil and gas drilling on federal lands and in federal waters than during Trump’s first term, which is to say that the current administration's ethos of “drill baby drill” is less a new policy and more a continuation of Biden and the Democrats’ legislative agenda. And by calling for and, in some cases, implementing elements of deregulation of bedrock environmental policies like NEPA, as part of their Inflation Reduction Act, ostensibly referred to as “permitting reform,” the Democrats have also signaled their willingness to sacrifice environmental justice communities they purport to fight for and who the depend on for electoral success.
For BAP, white “supremacy” cannot be reduced to individualized attitudes and values just among people identified as white. Instead, it should be seen as a structure of domination that is also ideologically embedded into every aspect of U.S. and European society to the extent that it has become normalized and invisibilized as general common sense. To this end, It’s not just that the Democrats are waving a white flag of surrender, in far too many cases they are saluting the same flag of white “supremacy” as Trump, they just don’t like that they are not the ones who are actually waving it.
Standing up to and vanquishing Trump will require a true and operational opposition party. The Democrats are not it, and this reveals a truth many of us have known for a long time. Therefore, instead of relying on an opposition party that does not exist, or waiting for one to emerge, it’s incumbent upon the people to institute and effectuate principled opposition movements to survive Trump, the Democrats, and white “supremacy” ideology in all of its manifestations.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is a national racial and climate justice advocate. He is a proud member of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and is blessed to be the father of his eight-year-old son, Zahir Cielo. The opinions expressed in this piece are his own.
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