Urban League declares a 'state of emergency' for civil rights in the US
in response to Trump
[July 17, 2025]
By MATT BROWN
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations
on Thursday declared a “state of emergency” for antidiscrimination
policies, personal freedoms and Black economic advancement in response
to President Donald Trump 's upending of civil rights precedents and the
federal agencies traditionally tasked with enforcing them.
The National Urban League's annual State of Black America report accuses
the federal government of being “increasingly determined to sacrifice
its founding principles” and “threatening to impose a uniform education
system and a homogenous workforce that sidelines anyone who doesn’t fit
a narrow, exclusionary mold," according to a copy obtained by The
Associated Press.
"If left unchecked," the authors write, “they risk reversing decades of
progress that have made America more dynamic, competitive, and just."
Report critiques racism entering ‘mainstream’ of American
politics
The report, to be released Thursday at the group’s conference in
Cleveland, Ohio, criticizes the administration for downsizing federal
agencies and programs that enforce civil rights policies. The authors
aimed to highlight what they saw as a multiyear, coordinated effort by
conservative legal activists, lawmakers and media personalities to
undermine civil rights policy and create a political landscape that
would enable a hard-right agenda on a range of social and economic
policy.
“It is not random. It is a well-funded, well-organized,
well-orchestrated movement of many, many years," said Marc Morial,
president of the Urban League. “For a long time, people saw white
supremacist politics and white nationalism as on the fringe of American
politics. It has now become the mainstream of the American right, whose
central foundation is within the Republican Party."
The report directly critiques Project 2025, a sweeping blueprint for
conservative governance coordinated by The Heritage Foundation think
tank. Project 2025 advised approaches to federal worker layoffs,
immigration enforcement and the congressional and legislative branches
similar to the Trump administration's current strategy.
The Urban League report condemns major corporations, universities and
top law firms for reversing diversity, equity and inclusion policies. It
also criticizes social media companies like Meta and X for purported
“censorship” of Black activists and creatives and content moderation
policies that allegedly enabled “extremists” to spread “radicalizing”
views.
Debates over civil rights enter the center of the political fray
The Trump administration has said many policies implemented by both
Democratic and Republican administrations are discriminatory and
unconstitutional, arguing that acknowledgments of race and federal and
corporate policies that seek to address disparities between different
demographics are themselves discriminatory. Trump has signed executive
orders banning “illegal discrimination” and promoting “merit based
opportunity.”
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said civil rights groups that
oppose the administration “aren’t advancing anything but hate and
division, while the president is focused on uniting our country."
The report, meanwhile, calls for the creation of a “new resistance” to
counter the administration’s agenda. Morial urged other organizations to
rally to that cause.
The Urban League and other civil rights groups have repeatedly sued the
Trump administration since January. Liberal legal groups and Democratic
lawmakers similarly sued over parts of the administration’s agenda.
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Marc Morial, center, President and Chief Executive Officer of the
National Urban League, talks with reporters outside the West Wing of
the White House in Washington, July 8, 2021, following a meeting
with President Joe Biden and leadership of top civil rights
organizations. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Veteran civil rights activists, Black civic leaders, former federal
officials, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and seven members
of Congress, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries,
contributed to the text.
Raoul said that civil rights allies have felt “on the defense” in
recent years but that now “it’s time to act affirmatively." For
instance, if rollbacks of DEI policies result in discrimination
against women or people of color legal action could follow, he
warned.
“It all depends on how they do it. We're going to be watching," he
said. “And just because the Trump administration doesn't believe in
disparate impact anymore doesn't mean the rest of the universe must
believe that.”
The report criticizes the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter
the Education Department, and denounces changes to programs meant to
support communities of color at the departments of Commerce, Health
and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development, among others.
The transformation of the Justice Department’scivil rights division
was singled out as “an existential threat to civil rights
enforcement.”
The Justice Department pointed to its published civil rights policy
and a social media post from its civil rights arm that reads the
division “has returned to enforcing the law as written: fairly,
equally, and without political agenda.”
Nevada Rep. Steve Horsford, a contributor to the report, said Trump
“betrayed the American people” in enacting plans he said were
similar to Project 2025.
Lawmakers reflect on the long fight for civil rights
Another contributor, Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional
Black Caucus, said civil rights advocates and their Democratic
allies must do more to communicate with and educate people.
“When you have an administration that’s willing to take civil rights
gains and call it reverse racism, then there’s a lot of work to be
done to unpack that for folks,” the New York Democrat said. “I think
once people understand their connection to civil rights gains, then
we will be in a position to build that momentum.”
The Urban League originally planned to focus its report on the
legacy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for the law’s 60th
anniversary but pivoted after Trump returned to office to focus on
“unpacking the threats to our democracy” and steps civil rights
advocates are taking to pull the country back from “the brink of a
dangerous tilt towards authoritarianism.”
For many veteran civil rights activists, the administration's
changes are condemnable but not surprising. Some lawmakers see it as
a duty to continue the long struggle for civil rights.
“I think it’s all part of the same struggle," said Rep. Shomari
Figures, an Alabama Democrat who contributed to the report and whose
father was successfully brought a wrongful-death suit against a
branch of the Ku Klux Klan. "At the end of the day, that struggle
boils down to: Can I be treated like everybody else in this
country?”
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