When Donald Trump most just lately ran for president, he made scores of guarantees to the American folks — however he’s solely stored one.
In 2024, political pundits and operatives noticed affordability as the important thing subject of the presidential marketing campaign. Trump actually performed it up: On the marketing campaign path, he pledged that he would convey down inflation and make groceries cheaper once more, and when he received, observers credited that technique for his victory.
However that’s as a result of the president’s actual marketing campaign promise wasn’t concerning the financial system. As an alternative, it was all about racism.
He spouted dehumanizing lies about immigrants, dabbled in eugenics and pledged to conduct mass deportations. “Once I win on November 5, the migrant invasion ends, and the restoration of our nation begins,” Trump mentioned at a rally in October 2024.
When he received again to the White Home, he instantly started delivering on each the specific guarantees and the tacit implications.
Within the final yr, Trump has deported immigrants with out a lot as a trial, defunded authorities applications devoted to range and inclusion, and deployed 1000’s of federal brokers to blue cities to wreak havoc on folks of colour and their allies.
“That is the federal government weaponizing the social and political opinions of the president,” William Roberts, the senior vice chairman for rights and justice on the Heart for American Progress, a suppose tank that promotes liberal insurance policies, informed HuffPost.
“It’s not simply ‘Donald Trump is a racist,’” Roberts mentioned. “It’s Trump’s authorities participating in policy-making to hurt sure folks.”
Illustration: HuffPost; Images: Getty
There was a transparent through-line between Trump’s marketing campaign rhetoric and the worst excesses of his second time period: In the course of the 2024 presidential marketing campaign, a viral declare about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio — the place roughly 10,000 Haitians had arrived in recent times — additionally caught Trump’s consideration. He repeated the racist rumor throughout a presidential debate along with his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris.
“In Springfield, they’re consuming the canines,” Trump mentioned. “The folks that got here in, they’re consuming the cats. They’re consuming the pets of the folks that stay there.”
Trump’s working mate, JD Vance, repeated the rumor and added claims of his personal, together with saying Haitians had been bringing illnesses to Ohio. However Vance additionally primarily admitted that he was mendacity.
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“If I’ve to create tales in order that the American media really pays consideration to the struggling of the American folks, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he mentioned in a September 2024 interview with CNN.
Instantly, Haitian immigrants throughout the U.S. had been targets. Springfield, Ohio, college youngsters had been subjected to bomb threats, and in small cities in Pennsylvania and Alabama with vital Haitian populations, residents fearful for his or her security.
The truth that Trump confronted no penalties and as a substitute was rewarded with one other shot on the presidency has enabled much more blatant lies about marginalized, usually immigrant, populations — with lethal outcomes.
In December 2025, a viral video alleging fraud at Somali-run day cares within the Minneapolis space caught the eye of the Trump administration. Nick Shirley, the right-wing agitator who made the video, claimed that he had uncovered $100 million price of fraud. (Minnesota officers investigated his claims and, throughout shock inspections, discovered that each one the day cares featured in his movies had been working as anticipated.) However nonetheless, Trump despatched federal officers to “examine.”
Earlier than the surge of federal brokers into Minnesota, Trump had been referring to Somalis, together with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), as “rubbish.”
“We might go come what may, and we’re going to go the unsuitable manner if we hold taking in rubbish into our nation,” he mentioned at a Cupboard assembly final November.
“The administration needs this nation to be extra white. These are white nationalist beliefs.”
– Seth Levi, chief technique officer on the Southern Poverty Regulation Heart
However as president, Trump doesn’t merely need to pay lip service to racist web rumors. He can use the total power of the federal authorities.
The Division of Homeland Safety deployed 1000’s of immigration brokers to Minneapolis, which has the biggest Somali inhabitants within the U.S. Simply two days into what DHS known as its largest immigration operation ever, 37-year-old Renee Good, a white mom of three who seemed to be participating in protest, was shot and killed by Jonathan Ross, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, whereas sitting in her automotive.
She was solely the newest particular person to be shot by federal officers — becoming a member of folks like Kevin Porter, who was fatally shot in Los Angeles, and Marimar Martinez, who survived a capturing in Chicago — however her demise sparked widespread protests in Minneapolis and past.
ICE doubled down after Good was killed. Federal brokers have been noticed throughout Minneapolis, focusing on folks, dragging them from their vehicles and utilizing pepper spray and different chemical irritants. Town’s public college system shut down for 2 days and is now providing distant studying for any households who’re too fearful to ship their youngsters to high school.
And the federal government doesn’t make any secret of the philosophy behind the crackdown. The official X account of the Division of Homeland Safety recurrently posts memes and songs in style with white nationalists and Nazis.
“Calling every thing you dislike ‘Nazi propaganda’ is tiresome,” a DHS spokesperson informed HuffPost in an emailed assertion. “DHS will proceed to make use of all instruments to speak with the American folks and hold them knowledgeable on our historic effort to Make America Secure Once more.”
“The administration needs this nation to be extra white,” Seth Levi, the chief technique officer on the Southern Poverty Regulation Heart, informed HuffPost. “These are white nationalist beliefs that we’ve seen within the fringes going again many years however it’s turning into mainstream thought by the administration.”
In Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Charlotte, immigrant communities and their allies have additionally been subjected to an unprecedented blitz, all previewed by Trump on the marketing campaign path.
In 2024, Trump mentioned that Aurora, Colorado, a Denver suburb, was a “struggle zone” being run by members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-based legal group. However even Republican officers within the metropolis mentioned that the claims had been false and that Aurora was protected for households.
“It’s like an invasion from inside, and we’re going to have the biggest deportation within the historical past of our nation,” Trump mentioned in September of that yr. “And we’re going to begin with Springfield and Aurora.”
Trump continued on with the fiction in his second time period by focusing on Latino males throughout the nation and accusing them of being gang members, even when the proof was skinny. In March, the Division of Homeland Safety despatched tons of of largely Venezuelan males to a jail in El Salvador identified for its human rights abuses. The lads had not obtained trials or sentences, and plenty of had no legal data.
When advocates filed a lawsuit accusing immigration officers of illegally focusing on folks primarily based on their race, the Supreme Court docket — the place a full one-third of the justices have been appointed by Trump — dominated 6-3 to permit it. Ethnicity, wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his opinion, “generally is a ‘related issue’ when thought of together with different salient elements.”
Picture by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Photographs
Past the violence that Trump has the facility to allow as president, there are trickle-down results.
“It does create a permission construction to say this stuff out within the open,” Levi mentioned. “These aren’t new emotions or beliefs, however folks used to acknowledge them as taboo and stored them to themselves.”
There’s proof that racist rhetoric from the higher echelons of presidency can affect the common American as properly. Hateful and bigoted rhetoric on-line elevated after the 2024 election, and a December 2025 Gallup ballot discovered that almost all People consider that political rhetoric has gone too far.
As Trump ramps up his deportation efforts, on a regular basis persons are attempting to help him. There have been a number of cases of individuals publicly serving to deportation officers, together with by directing them towards immigrants.
“Jim Crow wasn’t held up solely with coverage but additionally by common folks,” Roberts mentioned, referring to the set of racially discriminatory legal guidelines, violence and social buildings that oppressed Black folks within the U.S. South for practically 100 years after the abolition of slavery.
In some ways, it might be too late to place this genie again within the bottle. Immigration enforcement is barely probably the most seen and most up-to-date manifestation of the administration’s agenda.
Throughout his first days in workplace, Trump signed an govt order banning range, fairness and inclusion within the federal authorities. The administration shortly went to work to fireside workers who did range work and dismantle applications that didn’t align with their worldview.
Though the chief order didn’t apply to non-public firms, leaders within the sector adopted go well with and started pulling again from their DEI pledges as properly.
The assault on the federal government dealt an particularly large blow to Black employees, who’re overrepresented as federal workers as a result of public sector jobs have been historically extra welcoming to folks of colour.
Trump additionally signed orders that dismantled DEI in Ok-12 public faculties and better schooling institutes, whereas demanding elite faculties flip over their race and admissions knowledge. The administration has been utilizing allegations of antisemitism or claims race is being illegally used as an admissions issue to strain faculties into favoring a extra right-wing agenda, even because it places comparable pressures on college students themselves. 1000’s of worldwide college students have misplaced their capability to check within the U.S.
And DHS officers started focusing on faculty college students with opinions it didn’t like, together with Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia College graduate scholar who led pro-Palestinian protests on campus and was arrested over his beliefs final March.
It’s all occurring with not less than the excuse, if not real perception, that Trump has a mandate from the folks. He made it very clear all through his marketing campaign that mass deportations, demonizing the opposite and accepting bigotry would dominate his second time period.
That is what they voted for. And that’s what has occurred.
“It’s actually emboldening folks to deal with of us nonetheless they need to,” Roberts mentioned. “[His policies] will resurrect lots of the racial animus that has at all times lived in America.”
Regardless of his lofty guarantees concerning the financial system, reasonably priced groceries and ushering in a brand new golden age, there seems to be just one true fixed of the Trump administration.
“Folks generally generally tend to overthink and overanalyze as a result of we don’t need to settle for the obvious clarification that’s proper in entrance of us,” Levi mentioned.
“However when the administration is tweeting out Nazi memes and songs, I don’t actually suppose there’s a nuanced sizzling tackle that,” he continued. “They’re being fairly clear about what a few of their beliefs are.”
