By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
America is no longer drifting toward authoritarianism. It is living it. Project 2025 has been instituted, and the results are clear. Donald Trump has put forth racist policies that strip away protections, empower white supremacists, and turn Washington, D.C., into a militarized zone. His followers have taken the flag of racism and run wild with it, building whites-only communities and terrorizing Black neighborhoods under the cover of his administration.
The Thurgood Marshall Institute at the Legal Defense Fund warned last year that Project 2025 was “a direct, boundless, pregnant threat to the interests and well-being of Black people and our democracy.” The Institute detailed how the plan would consolidate executive power, dismantle civil rights enforcement, suppress the Black vote, gut public education, and eliminate safeguards against discrimination. “Our democracy stands at a crossroads, a path of infinite promise towards a more inclusive, equitable, and durable democracy on the one hand, and one of immeasurable and irretrievable demise on the other,” Janai S. Nelson, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in 2024. “The assault on Black communities envisioned by Project 2025 will almost certainly condemn us to demise.”
Trump’s Militarized State
Since his return to office, Trump has turned the nation’s capital into what residents describe as an occupied city. Military vehicles patrol neighborhoods, checkpoints dominate downtown, and police with expanded immunity operate with near total control. Trump has threatened to “clean out” cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, targeting majority-Black communities as justification for federal crackdowns. Immigration raids have surged, ripping apart families across Black and Latino neighborhoods. The atmosphere exploded this week when CodePink protestors confronted Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Cabinet members Marco Rubio and others. Standing within inches of Trump, they shouted “Free D.C. Free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time” before being hauled away by security.
Signs of Jim Crow
Across the country, the evidence of regression is mounting. In Rockdale County, Georgia, children walked into Honey Creek Elementary School to find “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” signs taped over water fountains and posted in the cafeteria. Officials claimed it was part of a history lesson about Ruby Bridges. Parents said their children were traumatized. One mother recalled her son being mocked by classmates when he drank beneath a sign reading “For Colored Only” and said, “to me that’s not a history lesson.”
Building a White Nation
Trump’s policies have also emboldened groups openly constructing whites-only settlements. In Arkansas, a compound called Return to the Land has built a 160-acre enclave restricted to people of European ancestry. Its leaders praise Adolf Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan while raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to expand into Missouri. “You want a white nation? Build a white town? It can be done. We’re doing it,” Eric Orwoll, Return to the Land co-founder, said. “We don’t need to get back to the Jim Crow era,” countered Barry Jefferson, NAACP Arkansas State Conference President. “We’ve been through that before. I think no one should be discriminated against because of their skin color.”
A Nation Pushed Backward
From the militarization of Washington to racist raids in Black cities, from schoolchildren forced to relive segregation to whites-only communities legally testing America’s civil rights laws, the consequences of Project 2025 are undeniable. Trump has institutionalized racism at the highest levels of government, and his supporters are enforcing it on the ground. “This organization wants to return us to sundown town, and we are not that,” said Susan Schmalzbauer, pastor of the United Methodist Church in Missouri. “There’s really no place for hate. Hate divides, but love unites.”
