Six ways the Trump administration tried to erase MLK's legacy in 2025
More than 60 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement helped generate the moral impetus and political will for U.S. lawmakers to pass sweeping legislation to combat the oppressive legacies of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the many expressions of racial discrimination in the United States. Through landmark legislation, the U.S. outlawed racial segregation, prohibited employment and housing discrimination, and dismantled legal barriers to voter registration—challenging a centuries-long denial of basic human and civil rights for people of color.
While acknowledging that these legislative achievements led to “some very wonderful things,” President Trump recently mischaracterized this historic period as one in which white people “were very badly treated” amid “reverse discrimination.” The president’s unfounded remarks explain why this administration has directly attacked more than half a century of progress toward racial and economic justice.
Here are six ways the Trump-Vance administration worked to undermine Dr. King’s legacy and curtail economic justice for people of color in 2025:
Making it easier for employers to discriminate by undermining the effectiveness of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC) to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for historically marginalized workers, and by gutting the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).
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https://www.epi.org/blog/six-ways-the-trump-administration-tried-to-erase-mlks-legacy-in-2025/