On May 25th, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. His death was one of many police murders that galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement and a wave of mass protests in which millions of people in the United States participated.

These protests were certainly a rejection of racist policing that took the lives of countless Black Americans. It was also a rejection of the racist, bigoted, and chauvinistic practices of Trump and his first 2016–2020 presidential administration. Working class and progressive masses were profoundly compelled to take the streets and demonstrate against the injustices of police murder. They also mobilized to the polls in historic numbers to vote against Trump and as part of the fight for a more democratic future.

Since then, the far right MAGA movement, led by Trump and the billionaires behind him, have made attempts to erode the anti-racist gains made in 2020. Particularly, many Trump surrogates have rallied around attacking Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), not just as an initiative, but on principle. When bridges collapse or planes fall from the sky, they do not ask, “Is our public infrastructure lacking the necessary funding?” Instead they charge, “Were the construction workers women?” or “Was the pilot Black?”

Instead of embracing moments of United States history that have served to advance democratic rights and unify the working class across racial and ethnic lines, they make attempts to remove these moments from educational curricula and books. Indeed, their vision for making “America great again” is not one that pays homage to struggles for racial equality such as the Civil Rights Movement or the Reconstruction era. The “Make America Great Again” movement is an homage to the Confederacy; it is an effort to usher in Jim Crow 2.0.

Now back in the White House, Trump’s assault on DEI has moved from the rhetorical to the actual. Just as Project 2025 laid out — and many MAGA talking heads openly promised — the administration began its assault on civil rights within the first few hours of his second term.

Executive Order 11246, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson more than half a century ago, prohibited discrimination of federal contractors based on race, religion, and nationality. It was rescinded within 24 hours of Trump’s inauguration. Just last month, he signed an executive order that will increase militarization of the police and “aggressively … unleash high-impact local police forces.”

Recently, some sections of the MAGA movement have called for Trump to pardon George Floyd’s murderer, Derek Chauvin. This is, of course, an egregious escalatory attack on civil rights, but it also serves as a dog whistle to violent law enforcement officers and racist vigilantes. It signals to them that they can kill with impunity, so long as their victim is Black and accused of a crime.

However, “accused of a crime” is left up to the discretion of those very violent law enforcement officers and racist vigilantes. Jogging is not a crime, and yet Ahmaud Arbery was murdered by vigilantes. Sleeping in your home is not a crime, and yet Breonna Taylor was murdered by police. In truth, suspected crimes may not be crimes at all, but manifestations of the racist ideas perpetuated by the Confederacy, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, and now Trump’s MAGA fascists.

The attacks on civil rights under the guise of “eliminating” DEI and the increasing enabling of racist police and vigilante violence are not inseparable. It is precisely an enactment of their slogan, “make America great again.” Their goal is to make workplace discrimination legal again, to politically disenfranchise Black voters again, to make Black Americans experience racist terror again, to make racial segregation official U.S. policy again, to make the United States of America the Confederate States of America again — and not just in the South, but throughout the entire country.

The truth is, Trump’s racist policies are carefully designed, and not for the benefit of working people or the majority of people in the U.S. Rolling back DEI initiatives does not foster more “merit-based” practices. It fosters racist practices that divide us in the places where unity is most desperately needed — in the workplace against the ruling capitalist class and politically against far right politicos. It fosters fascist ideology that promotes the fallacy of racial and gender inferiority. It promotes the antiquated and false idea that Black people, particularly Black women, cannot ascend to the highest level in their workplaces or be experts in their field. Massive super profits are reaped from paying Black and Brown workers and women workers less than white and male workers, while helping to prevent all workers from realizing their maximum fighting capacity.

In the same vein, the increased militarization of police and enabling of racist police and vigilante violence are carefully crafted policies. In conjunction with the demonization of diversity, equity, and inclusivity, these murderous policies are intended to dehumanize Black folks and normalize violent, often lethal brutalization. It is also intended to strengthen the prison industrial complex, where companies are allowed to perpetuate modern day slavery by paying prisoners pennies per hour. The intent is to maximize the extraction of super profits through slave wages! As we know, Black people are disproportionately represented in prisons and thus are subjected to these modern day slave-like conditions — a continuation of chattel slavery.

The pardoning of Derek Chauvin would be an indictment of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, and the many other Black Americans who were extrajudicially murdered by racist vigilantes and police. This reality is one that the Communist Party USA wholeheartedly condemns and rejects. It is a reality that must be vigorously resisted and fought against by the same forces that were mobilized in 2020, the year Derek Chauvin condemned himself to being the face of police violence. The working class and progressive masses must be mobilized in defense of our lives, including Black lives.

This mobilization cannot cease once Chauvin is brought to justice, or when Trump leaves office by whatever means. The working class and progressive masses must continue to be mobilized for a future where police violence is unacceptable and racism is impermissible; a future where working people are unified across racial, national, and gender lines; where they are fighting not against each other but against the billionaire class that has infected our politics, media, institutions, and whole of society with the bigoted fascist ideology that carried Trump to the office of the presidency in the first place. We must be unified and mobilized for an anti-racist future, a democratic future, an equal future, a peaceful future, a socialist future.

Image: The George Floyd mural outside Cup Foods at Chicago Ave and E 38th St in Minneapolis, Minnesota by Lorie Shaull (CC BY 2.0); Terrence Floyd, George Floyd’s brother speaks at his brother’s memorial, Ibid.