President Donald Trump declared February 2026 as National Black History Month on Feb. 3. This announcement follows the extensive dismantling of diverse and educational frameworks that have come to define his second presidential term.
Since his induction in January 2025, Trump has made sweeping actions to reduce the presence of diversity-focused programs and federal holidays.
On June 19, 2025, Trump failed to acknowledge Juneteenth, which is a day celebrating the complete removal of slavery in the United States. The day was named a federal holiday in 2021 under the Biden administration. When Juneteenth arrived last year, instead of acknowledging the holiday, Trump instead took to Truth Social to claim that there are too many non-working holidays.
In January of the same year, the Department of War (DOW), at the time called the Department of Defense (DOD), released a public memo stating that identity months were dead within the department. This includes Black History Month, alongside Women’s History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month, among others. The DOW stated the following as the motivation behind distancing from these months.
“Efforts to divide the force – to put one group ahead of another – erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution. Going forward, DOD components and Military departments will not use official resources, to include man-hours, to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months…”
On Feb. 5 of this year, Donald Trump posted and then deleted shortly after a video where former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama had their faces digitally applied over apes.
Although the video was deleted, Trump has not apologized, claiming that he failed to watch the whole video before posting and telling reporters, “I didn’t make a mistake.”
The video faced criticism from the Republican Party, which rarely contends with President Trump’s actions.
Senator Tim Scott, the Senate’s only Black Republican, went to X to state the following in regard to the video.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
In a seeming attempt to mimic Franklin D. Roosevelt, Donald Trump has quickly taken a liking to Executive Orders to push his agenda and policies without checks and balances.
President Trump has situated himself above the congressional oversight and management to directly attack DEI through a myriad of Executive Orders.
On Jan. 29, 2025, Trump attacked “behavior modification techniques,” denoting methods developed through over a century’s worth of evidence-based operant conditioning practices as “discriminatory equity ideology.” This phrase is one of many examples of the administration’s attempts at being clever with the DEI acronym.
March 27, 2025, demarcates another direct challenge to diversity initiatives through a misframing of Smithsonian exhibits and organizational training as “corrosive ideology” that must be dismantled to preserve America’s history.
The Smithsonian exhibit the President took issue with pertained to the language the museum chose to describe the atrocities surrounding colonialism, enslavement, and its lasting institutional impressions.
On April 23, 2025, Trump denounced and urged to eliminate the Civil Rights Act and Fair Housing Act era term “disparate-impact protection” in policy and the law.
Congress.gov defines disparate-impact discrimination as “a seemingly neutral policy or action causes a disproportionate and unjustified negative harm to a group, regardless of intent.” Trump cites a favoritism to meritocracy, neglecting to consider why a consideration towards factors in a demographic’s ability to achieve merit would be written into congressional bills.
The same day, Trump cited instances of “unlawful” applications of DEI through referencing the infamous Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College Supreme Court case, which deemed race-based considerations in admission to be unconstitutional. This order threatened the accreditation status of institutions that continued to consider demographic qualities in applicants.
It should be noted that many conservative donors contribute the majority of the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) group, which serves as under-the-table lobbyists. Readers can look into SFFA’s monetary history, as well as other affinity groups of interest here.
Natalie Schwartz of HigherEd Brief reported an update to Trump’s legal battle to lambaste higher education funding on Feb. 11.
Schwartz wrote that “the federal government has fiercely attacked DEI initiatives in higher education, including by canceling vast numbers of grants for diversity-related research and threatening to pull federal funding from colleges over such efforts.”
Democracy Watch, the plaintiffs fighting against Trump’s demands, believe the orders are “unconstitutionally vague,” but the 4th Circuit court pushed back, greenlighting the orders once again.
Before higher education can be considered, many families rely on programs such as HeadStart to supplement their children’s early learning, health, nutrition, and a myriad of other irreplaceable initiatives to help them succeed.
President Trump targeted the language of grant applications for HeadStart in early January, placing extreme parameters in the syntax of the documents in the name of free speech.
Some words barred from being used in grant applications included “race,” “women,” and “belonging” in any usage or context.
The Record would like to note that this article would be considered against Trump’s new provisions for grant writing and under federal pressure for revision after the first word of the title.
At the near-halfway point of Black History Month 2026, President Donald Trump seems to have pulled every stop to leave a lasting legacy of disparagement towards diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in America, and the trajectory does not seem to be letting up any time soon.
