Watch
President Donald Trump and follow his actions carefully. Even in the
early days of his administration, he is telling you what he thinks
about you and what he plans to do. A case in point: Those issues he
removed from the White House website.
As
soon as Trump took the oath of office, the
WhiteHouse.gov
site
changed drastically. And you should be alarmed. All of a sudden, the
sections
devoted to civil rights,
LGBTQ
rights, climate change, health care
and
people
with disabilities
are
gone.
If
you care about these important issues, you need to go to the
archived
Obama White House website.
There were
rumors
that
Trump had removed certain terms such as “LGBT” and
“climate change,” but in reality — even worse —
those pages are gone.
Replacing
the civil rights page is a section called
“Standing
Up For Our Law Enforcement Community.”
Don’t
expect President Trump to stand up for your civil rights. The new
president, who campaigned on “law and order,” more racial
profiling and increased police monitoring of Black communities, was
endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police. The nation’s largest
police union endorsed Trump with the demand that he bring back
legalized
racial
profiling
to
federal agencies.
Trump’s
attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, is a racist who has shown
nothing but hostility towards civil rights and voting rights and
outright disdain for people of color throughout his career. And the
new occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue chose the King Day weekend
to pick a fight with civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis and disrespect
the man’s legacy.
While
Obama was interested in criminal justice reform and addressing police
violence, Trump and his people made it clear that Blue Lives Matter,
that there is a war on police, and promoted the notion that Black
Lives Matter activists are lawless thugs and criminals.
“One
of the fundamental rights of every American is to live in a safe
community. A Trump Administration will empower our law enforcement
officers to do their jobs and keep our streets free of crime and
violence,” says the new White House site. “The Trump
Administration will be a law and order administration. President
Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their
mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police
atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end
it.”
And
instead of discussing climate change, the new White House page has a
section called
“An
America First Energy Plan.”
Trump has said in no uncertain terms that he believes climate change
is a hoax invented by the Chinese. “For too long, we’ve
been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry.
President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary
policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S.
rule. Lifting these restrictions will greatly help American workers,
increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years,”
according to the Trump White House site.
Similarly,
as Trump, his surrogates and advisers have displayed hostility
towards the LGBTQ community and people with disabilities and vowed to
eliminate
Obamacare,
it stands to reason they would erase any mention of that subject
matter.
But
it goes deeper. These dramatic changes to the White House website
mirror the
drastic
and draconian cuts
this
president plans to make to the government. To sum it up,
he’s
getting rid of everything.
If he gets his way, Trump will cut Social Security, Medicare and
Medicaid. He will eliminate the Department of Justice Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services and cut the Civil Rights and
Environment and Natural Resources divisions. He also wants to gut the
Violence Against Women Grants, which fund state and local
anti-domestic abuse programs, and the Legal Services Corporation,
which provides free legal assistance to the poor. Also on the
chopping block are the Minority Business Administration, which helps
minority business owners obtain funding and resources, and the
Economic Development Agency, which assists low income people with
jobs programs.
And
he’ll privatize public broadcasting and dismantle the National
Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Trillions of dollars are at stake
—
anything and everything that is important if you care about the
positive role of government in society and promoting the general
welfare.
So,
the changes to WhiteHouse.gov point to much more.
“At
the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United
States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will
rediscover our loyalty to each other,” Trump said in his
inauguration
speech,
channeling his inner Hitler. The angry white man has returned, and if
you are not one of his kind, you need to step back. That means he
expects you to get in line, stop complaining, and expect nothing, as
he exploits the people and defiles the land. You have no rights he is
bound to respect. Know this.
This commentary originally appeared in The Grio
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