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:

1. 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). 
2. Hindering equal access to education by dismantling the Department of Education and pushing policies that could limit diversity in higher education, a critical pathway to economic mobility.
3. Effectively eliminating the Minority Business Development Agency, the only economic development agency created to help minority-owned businesses overcome social, economic, and legal discrimination.
4. Cutting spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) amid persistently high rates of poverty for children of color and rising food insecurity.
5. Slashing funding for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), programs that disproportionately help families and children of color access health care.
6. Undermining health equity through massive cuts to the country’s public health infrastructure, setting the stage for the next health crisis.

The emboldened assertion of white supremacy in our political economy demands a renewed commitment to Dr. King’s legacy of racial and economic justice. In a 1966 essay, Dr. King described economic justice and security as rightful aims in the transition from equality to opportunity. Contrary to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of pervasive discrimination against white people, both equality and opportunity continue to elude people of color at far greater rates as evidenced by disparate and suboptimal outcomes in employment, earnings, wealth, and even health. Moreover, none of those indicators suggest that white people have been disadvantaged by civil rights enforcement. The immortal words of Coretta Scott King capture the true spirit and impact of the civil rights era and expose Trump’s error and hypocrisy: “Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”