discrimination against white men and use that to justify eliminating DEI initiatives in the private as well as public sectors. They are using the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights as a vehicle to investigate and destroy civil rights programs. What took decades to build, the Trump Administration has torn down in a year through a blatant disregard for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

But it isn’t enough to just change policies, Trump is also trying to erase the contributions of African Americans and other people of color from mention in the federal government. Mention of these contributions have been taken off of governmental websites. Military bases have been renamed after Confederate generals who fought the federal government in the American Civil War.

And they are demanding a trove of information from the Smithsonian Museum through the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order as a way to decide what American History is. As the old adage goes, history is the story of the conqueror. It is an attempt by the Trump Administration to “whitenize” American history in time for the celebration of the 250^th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Gone will be the Black figures who exhibited their bravery in every war beginning with the American Revolution. Gone will be the Black scientists who have made an incredible contribution to American society and our quality of life. Just imagine trying to drive around Madison without traffic signals. Garrett Morgan, an African American, invented the three-light signal and sold his patent to General Electric. Trump will want to pretend that it was just Euro-Americans who have created the America we knew before 2025.

If that were only the case, perhaps we could hold our breath and work hard on the 2026 midterm elections in November. But that’s not the worse of it.

The United States is currently projected to become a minority majority country where non-Hispanic whites would be in the majority in the mid 2040s, about 20 years from now. But the actions of the Trump Administration reveal that they are actively trying to reverse that trend. Last summer, while the Trump Administration had halted almost all immigration of Africans to the U.S., he made an exception. White South Afrikaners would be allowed into the country.

Just recently, Trump withdrew the temporary protected status of Somalis from East Africa, who have been in this country legally. The Somalis I know have opened restaurants, work hard and those who legally can, participate in the electoral process, something that you wish every U.S. citizen would do.

But that wasn’t enough. The Trump Administration has announced the suspension of halting of all or some visas from 75 countries. An incredible number of those countries are African countries. As I purview the list, almost all — if not all — are countries that are majority people of color or Muslim. One of the stated reasons was to reduce the number of people coming to the U.S. who would rely on public assistance. If this law had been in effect 25 years ago, perhaps my good friend Samba Baldeh from The Gambia would not have been allowed to enter the United States. Samba has opened restaurants, works in IT and was a state representative, fully contributing to the quality of life in the Madison area.

And of course, there is the continuous immigration raids almost exclusively in Democratic cities like Minneapolis and Portland. The Trump Administration has made exceptions for rural areas controlled by Republicans. They are shipping immigrants out — in some cases people in the U.S. legally — of the United States and not particularly caring where they end up. I have yet to see photos of a planeful of illegal European immigrants landing in London or Paris. Again this is an effort to remove people of color out of the United States.

The murder of a woman in a vehicle with her child in Minneapolis by an ICE agent is particularly troubling. I’ve looked at the video a bunch of times and it appears that the ICE agent was standing near the left front bumper of the woman’s car when she backed up and then turned to the right away from the agent. He fired once into the far left of the woman’s windshield and then twice in the driver’s window as the car moved away from them. He could relatively easily got out of the way. Police departments across the country prohibit the use of deadly force in these situations.

It appears they are setting up the precedent for masked, unidentified agents to be able to fire upon people at will for whatever reason. These agents are being used to strike fear in protesters as they haul away whomever they like, with cause or with no cause. This is truly the beginning of a Nazi-like environment, a government run by a dictator.

I watch and read about the tensions rising between the ICE agents in Minneapolis. There was an ICE agent shooting in Portland and apparently another one in Minneapolis yesterday. Donald Trump is talking about calling in federal troops to stop the protests. On the eve of the King Holiday when we celebrate milestones like the integration of schools in Little Rock under the watch of federal troops, we could have federal troops watching over the forced removal of immigrants — almost all people of color — who are legal and undocumented. How ironic.

These are the times that we need Dr. King and his philosophy of non-violence to ease the tensions in places like Minneapolis while also promoting massive non-violent actions and protests that would show the U.S. and the world the morality of our actions. ICE must be resisted, but only in a non-violent way in the spirit of Dr. King. Only then will justice be achieved for righteousness sake. We must overcome the forces of illegality and racism for the sake of all of us.