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Congressional Black Caucus leaders and civil rights groups marked Black History Month on Tuesday by relaunching what they described as a national plan to mobilize against what they said are Trump administration efforts to weaken legal protections for minority communities.
Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Democrat from New York and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the organizing came in response to what she described as broader changes implemented since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. She argued that “Over the past year, we have seen a concerted effort to roll back civil rights underlying voting access, dismantle social programs and concentrate power in the hands of the wealthy and well-connected, at the expense of our community,” according to remarks reported by The Associated Press.
At a series of meetings on Capitol Hill, activists and lawmakers reviewed outreach strategies and aligned policy platforms across education and the teaching of history, health care, immigration enforcement and anti-discrimination policy. Leaders said the discussions were intended to translate their criticism of administration actions into a coordinated political and legal response, while providing lawmakers with a clearer view of priorities heading into the midterm elections.
The participants also focused on voting rights, including planning for ways they said they could protect voters’ access to the ballot in the midterms. Several sessions centered on worries about potential intervention by federal agents, a concern that organizers and Democratic lawmakers said they have raised more often since a raid on an Atlanta-area elections center.
The group also said it was preparing for an expected Supreme Court ruling that may affect a pivotal section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the meetings, civil rights leaders and Democratic lawmakers discussed how Congress and allied organizations could respond depending on the Court’s action, and leaders described those options as an uphill challenge on multiple fronts.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the effort reflects urgency and a broad menu of potential responses, telling AP after the press conference that it was an “all-hands-on-deck moment, and every tool available to the leadership collectively has got to be deployed to get this thing turned around.” Jeffries said he did not rule out steps ranging from mass protests and organizing boycotts to additional legal action.
The warnings came as the civil rights leaders criticized the administration’s steps aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion across the federal government, higher education and the private sector. AP reported that at the start of his second term, Trump signed executive orders banning the use of “illegal DEI” in government agencies and in organizations that interact with the federal government, and that he threatened to withhold funds from companies, nonprofit groups and state governments as part of those efforts.
Civil rights leaders also described the administration’s broader approach to culture and education, including efforts they said sought to redefine how history is taught in museums and classrooms. They said the Trump administration also prioritized investigating and prosecuting civil rights cases that the administration described as involving discrimination against white people, using the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission among other agencies.
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, described the effort as a direct attack on tools the Black community had used to secure protections. AP reported that Wiley said: “This is about how this administration is using the tools we built as a Black community to ensure that all of our people are protected.”
Several advocates acknowledged that the political moment carries an added irony, given the administration’s actions on immigration, voting rights, the economy and other issues. They said the president was exploiting hard-won policies that activists had worked for over decades to protect against discrimination and support economic advancement for Black communities.
While many of the leaders said the focus at the Capitol was on coordinated federal and state action, they also described parallel efforts in states and through litigation. AP reported that progressive state leaders and civil rights groups launched a campaign with Democratic attorneys general from 14 states and the District of Columbia intended to promote DEI and accessibility policies through more aggressive legal action, with Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul saying state attorneys general are “in a unique position to defend these fundamental rights” and that the campaign would ensure everyone is “heard and shielded from those who aim to weaken civil rights.”
In describing the legal landscape, the leaders pointed to uncertainty in court treatment of race in hiring and workplace anti-discrimination rules and to Supreme Court skepticism about the use of race in college admissions. Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, told AP that he expects continued struggle, saying: “We commit today to fight and fight and fight until hell freezes over, and then, I can assure you, we will fight on the ice.”