The sigh of relief was audible yesterday when new White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly, made the predictable move of firing Anthony Scaramucci. The Monday afternoon massacre provided fodder for pundits who praised Kelly, opining that this was a harbinger of a newly disciplined White House. On the other hand, progressives among us were buoyed by new reporting from The Washington Post that Trump had personally dictated his son’s misleading statement about the nature of his meeting with several Russians with Kremlin connections. While these are indeed welcome developments, we must remain vigilant because, away from the spotlight, Trump’s toxic agenda is proceeding apace.
There are reports that Trump is considering replacing John Kelly at Homeland Security with the virulently anti-immigrant Kris Kobach. Under Kelly, ICE has already stepped up the pace of deportations by 40% (Source: “Democracy Now” 5/18/17) and shifted the focus from undocumented immigrants with criminal records to all undocumented persons. It is a frightening prospect to imagine anti-terrorism, border security, and immigration under the control of Kobach, author of the racist SB 1070 statute (the “papers please” law declared unconstitutional by The Supreme Court in 2012) and current head of the Trump administration’s engine of voter suppression, the Election Integrity Commission.
Secondly, while significant attention has rightly been focused on Trump’s bizarre Twitter transgender ban, less attention has been paid the Department of Justice’s submission of an amicus brief in Zarda v. Altitude Express to argue that Title VII does not prohibit discrimination against LGBT people. This move is a clear signal that diminutive bigot, Jeff Sessions, intends to use the power of the Justice Department to aggressively roll back civil rights for LGBT Americans. The Justice Department, which was not a party to the case, advanced an argument that was not only counter to Obama administration DOJ policy, but contradicted the EEOC position in the same case and flew in the face of 15 years of Title VII jurisprudence.
Lastly, we must consider the impact of Trump’s reprehensible speech on Friday, in which he actively encouraged police brutality. His remarks were met with laughter and applause from many of the police officers in attendance. The Suffolk County Police Department was forced to walk back the response of their officers over the weekend and yesterday, Trump spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, offered the lame excuse that Trump was “joking.” We can be sure that the families of Freddie Gray, Michael Brown and Eric Garner did not find it funny. Trump knows that his comments embolden cops who are predisposed to mete out harsh and often fatally violent attacks on Black people. Trump’s winking remarks signal that police officers no longer need to worry about being brought up on civil rights charges by Trump’s Justice Department. As an example, even my own bucolic suburb of South Orange/Maplewood is not immune from the scourge of police brutality. In footage just released after a year of pressure from community activists, we see Maplewood police officers, who we pay with OUR tax dollars, handcuffing, punching and berating CHILDREN and trying to herd them into the neighboring predominantly Black neighboring town of Irvington. Resentful of the our hard won material comfort, these cops tried to turn this into a 21st Century sundown town. This is the impact of having a toxic bully with a bully pulpit.
The inconvenient truth is that the tabloid ready distractions of the fall of “The Mooch,” or even the latest development in the consequential Russian investigation divert our attention from the ways in which Trump is actively hurting the most marginalized among us — immigrants, LGBT people and Black people. Aided by a racist base, somnambulant Congress and rogue cops, Trump is erecting a new infrastructure of oppression. That is where our work is.