US Faces 'State of Emergency' for Civil Rights Under Trump: Urban League Report

One of America's oldest civil rights organizations warned Thursday that the country is experiencing a "dangerous tilt toward authoritarianism."

In its annual report on "The State of Black America," the National Urban League said the country is in the midst of a "state of emergency" for racial equality under the second administration of U.S. President Donald Trump as it wages war on voting rights protections; guts Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs; turns civil rights investigations into "tools of political retribution"; and embraces social media platforms that promote hate speech and false information.

"Almost daily, since January 20, 2025, the federal government, at the direction the White House, has set fire to policies and entire departments dedicated to protecting civil and human rights, providing access to an equal education, fair housing, safe and effective healthcare, and ensuring that our democratic process is adhered to across the nation," the report says.

It cites the White House's attacks on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Supreme Court, it says, dealt the "first seismic crack" to the law in 2013 with the Shelby County v. Holder decision, which got rid of the requirement that states with a history of race-based voter suppression clear new voting laws with the Department of Justice.

"Dozens of states have seized on this weakened federal oversight to pass restrictive voting laws—from voter ID requirements that disproportionately burden Black and Latino voters, to aggressive voter roll purges that remove eligible citizens from voter lists, to reduced polling hours and locations in communities of color," wrote Janai Nelson, the president of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in one essay.

Since then, Nelson writes, "The Trump administration has launched a full-scale assault on what remains."

Nelson notes the president's "sweeping executive order requiring individuals to show documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote—and permitting only a narrow set of documents, such as a passport, that many Americans don't have easy access to."

She also notes that the administration "shifted the focus of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division away from protecting voting rights and toward investigating voter fraud, even though such fraud is exceedingly rare."

In another essay, Samantha Tweedy, the CEO of the Black Economic Alliance, described "an all-out assault on... Black liberty, livelihood, history, prosperity, economic power, and opportunity," being carried out "under the false premise and scapegoating of 'Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.'"

The Trump administration has aggressively sought to purge DEI initiatives and affirmative action from all sectors of public life, banning them from use in the federal government and putting pressure on private corporations and universities to abandon them as well.

Fueling this, Tweedy says, is the "destructive lie" that "for Black people to succeed, others must lose out." The report goes on to cite statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank, Citi, and McKinsey showing that closing economic disparities increases economic prosperity for the entire country.

One of the engines propelling the Trump administration's attack on civil rights has been the DOJ's Civil Rights division itself, which the report says has been "hollowed out and repurposed" to go after universities that pursue DEI initiatives.

The report also singled out Harmeet Dhillon, who Trump tapped to lead the Civil Rights Division, for her past assertions that the 2020 election was stolen and her writings arguing against the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would have restored power to the original law.

The report also highlighted the recent surge of racist rhetoric on billionaire-owned social media platforms, which have abandoned many content moderation policies in recent years.

The report especially singled out the violent shift on Elon Musk's X, which saw a dramatic increase in hate speech against racial minorities and LGBTQ+ people after the billionaire bought the platform.

"We are witnessing something more than policy shifts," said the Urban League's president and CEO, Marc H. Morial, in the report's foreword. "We are watching an attempt to turn back the clock to an era when the full humanity of all Americans was not recognized—when the idea of true equality was treated as a threat to the social order."

"What we face today is a deliberate, coordinated effort to deny the future of a more just and inclusive America," Morial said. "And the architects of this effort have made their intentions plain: they would rather see our democracy crumble than cede power to a multiracial, equitable society."