After signing a consent order with the feds, Trump’s family real estate firm was again accused of racial bias.David CornOctober 25, 2016At the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton brought up a notable and much-covered chapter in Donald Trump’s business career: when the Justice Department in 1973 sued the Trump family real estate business founded by his father Fred for discriminating against African Americans seeking to rent apartments in its buildings in New York City and Norfolk, Virginia. Donald Trump, who was president of the firm at the time of the lawsuit, tried to downplay the matter, noting, “We along with many, many other companies throughout the country, it was a federal lawsuit, were sued. We settled the suit with zero—with no admission of guilt. It was very easy to do.” Trump didn’t acknowledge that federal investigators had gathered compelling evidence of bias (Trump employees had coded applications from minorities with a “C” for colored) and that his company had fiercely battled the suit for two years before signing a consent decree—hailed by equal housing advocates—that would guarantee the desegregation of Trump properties. In 1978, though, the Justice Department accused the Trumps of violating the agreement and charged they were still discriminating against African Americans, but that case fizzled out by 1982.
The result: In 1975, Donald Trump and his father signed a consent decree to settle the case. They didn't admit to any wrongdoing, but it required them to implement extensive changes.
Back in the sixties, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed with bipartisan support, but since then, support for the act has diminished to the point where they are now actively attacking the law and turning the definition of discrimination on its head! It was during the Goldwater campaign that we started to hear that it represents an unconstitutional overreach of federal power directed at private businesses, and Trump has run with that. Under Trump, even saying you don't discriminate can get you into hot water.
The Hillby Rebecca BeitschJune 9, 2026The Justice Department on Tuesday found the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) hiring guidelines unconstitutional, finding they pressure employers to take race into consideration.The opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is not a court opinion but could nonetheless make it more difficult for employees to bring discrimination claims against their employers.[...]In an unusual move, the Justice Department announced the opinion alongside the EEOC.“The fundamental problem is that disparate-impact liability tends to incent—and even coerce—employers to make race-based decisions to avoid liability or the threat of liability,” T. Elliot Gaiser, assistant attorney general for OLC, wrote in the opinion.
Under Trump, the EEOC has launched a number of investigations into major companies and law firms to determine if their hiring practices disadvantaged white people. It also rescinded its harassment guidance, pointing to President Trump’s executive order declaring there to be two sexes.
Many agencies have instituted policies to more strictly scrutinize telework as a reasonable accommodation for workers with disabilities since the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate.Government ExecutiveJune 3, 2026Anew lawsuit alleges that the Justice Department discriminated and retaliated against two of its employees with disabilities “as part of a systematic, agency-wide practice of refusing to grant requests for telework as a reasonable accommodation.”Both employees teleworked for years in their roles as supervisory IT program managers in the Criminal Division’s Office of Administration without any adverse impacts to their work, according to the complaint. But President Donald Trump’s January 2025 return-to-office directive for the federal workforce upended that.
But last year, after Donald Trump signed executive orders gutting DEI programs across the federal government and the military, people in the Pentagon noticed that a painting of James had been taken down from its prominent location in the Air Force Art Gallery. Instead of putting a new painting in the spot where James’s portrait had been, the Pentagon kept the space empty, leaving employees with the impression that, in spite of his many achievements, the new administration viewed the general as a symbol of unearned advancement, unworthy of recognition.James, who died in 1978, might not have been surprised. “One of the most insulting questions that gets asked to me sometimes is Did they give you your fourth star just because it’s the bicentennial year coming up and they wanted to say we got a Black general? ” he said in a 1975 interview. “They didn’t give me anything. And they don’t give away stars in my service. You got to earn them.”Racism, sexism, transphobia, and ableism. Under Trump & Company, the message from the top is loud and clear: If it fits Trump & Company’s agenda, discrimination isn't just tolerated—it’s government policy.







