by Margaret Kimberley, published on Black Agenda Report
Trump begins his term delivering on promises, but compromised and colluding democrats have ready excuses for betraying their voters.
“Yet, with the return of Trump, opportunists in our communities and beyond are telling us that the real culprits in our oppression and the targets for opposition are Trump and republicans.”
Donald Trump is once again president of the United States. The man who was counted out politically after he was charged and convicted of felonies in cases that were legally dubious efforts to keep him out of the white house, once again emerged victorious and is the 47th president of the United States.
Trump is a significant figure in U.S. politics, having won two presidential elections when the odds were against him. His success is in large part due to racist appeals to white voters. But those clarion calls might fall on deaf ears were it not for Democratic Party collusion with a greedy plutocracy and its own racism, which consigns its most loyal constituency to opportunistic tokenism.
Trump is definitely true to his word. Beginning on his inauguration on January 20, 2025, Trump signed a flurry of executive orders, making real his campaign promises. He reinstated the state sponsor of terrorism designation against Cuba that Joe Biden had lifted just the week before. He pardoned the people convicted of offenses committed when they acted on his behalf and stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. He has set in motion some yet-to-be-determined visa restrictions reminiscent of his “Muslim Ban.” All federal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) staff have been placed on paid leave. While a constitutional amendment will prevent him from moving forward, he began an effort to end birthright citizenship.
It is difficult for Black people not to be concerned when a man committed to realizing many of the right wing policies they oppose is back in the white house with majorities in both houses of congress. But one must ask how well Joe Biden met their needs. Aside from making Juneteenth a federal holiday, a move republicans supported as well, how did Joe Biden fulfill their political goals?
When leaders of civil rights organizations asked him to use executive order authority in a December 2020 meeting he refused. “‘On Day 1, I’m gonna have an executive order to do this!’ Not within the constitutional authority. I am not going to violate the Constitution. Executive authority that my progressive friends talk about is way beyond the bounds.” Trump is less concerned about the possibility of challenges or court rulings which could overturn his policies. He is standing by his political commitments while democrats look for reasons to disappoint their voters.
The worst possible reaction to Trump’s actions would be to succumb to dejection and resignation. It is clear that ending the reliance on democrats and the electoral process itself is the first step to gaining some degree of political success. The Democratic Party is at a very low point with voters and only 33% of them have a favorable opinion of the wing of the duopoly that Black people still cling to with great devotion.
It is true that they may not be down forever. Trump may lose support, democrats may see lightning strike twice and find an Obama-like figure who can skillfully make the public believe that their desires for change have finally come true.
Whether they manage to do that or not, focusing on Trump alone is a losing proposition. Doing so stunts any political growth and makes the possibility of any change in the conditions of the masses of the people seem impossible. Independence from the Black political class and other misleaders is the only way to move forward. A new liberation movement has to be forged, one that eschews seeking approval from people who rely on the largesse of an oligarchic class.
Even so-called progressives, such as “the Squad” are of little use. In a conversation with journalist Michael Tracey, former congresswoman Cori Bush gave an astounding explanation for voting to send billions of dollars in public money to fund the proxy war in Ukraine. Bush claims that she did so because of the Biden administration assertion that U.S. troops would have to fight there if congress didn’t appropriate a bottomless pit of money. She said she wanted to keep “Black and brown bodies” safe from harm and to stop Russia.
Bush was defeated in her re-election campaign when the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) supported her opponent. AIPAC bragged quite openly about their effort to unseat her and she is seen as a progressive icon. Yet she expects a nonsensical explanation for supporting the military industrial complex and U.S. imperialism to be believed. Bush and other so-called progressives backed a dangerous and deadly project that they could have opposed on the merits. Bush’s colleagues still in congress may opportunistically wring their hands over every step of the Trump presidency but as long as they engage in double talking fakery they and their supporters will lose.
In the first two years of Biden’s presidency and the democrats’ control of congress they pretended to want what voters asked them to do. Instead they made excuses claiming that phantom parliamentarians prevented them from acting or expressed fear of court rulings that might go against them.
The truth is that they don’t work for the people. They work for defense contractors and Wall Street and wealthy donors. They cannot act on behalf of those interests and also help the people. It isn’t possible to back away from their true loyalty.
Donald Trump’s vow to take back the Panama Canal may seem foolish but is it different from pledging to fight a proxy war in Ukraine that will defeat Russia? It certainly is no worse than the Biden/Harris commitment to Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.
Trump won’t raise the federal minimum wage but Biden didn’t do that either. The Voting Rights Act enforcement provisions were eviscerated by Supreme Court decisions but Biden didn’t fight to restore them when he might have been able to.
No one should be fooled by Trump’s deportation plans when Obama and Biden deported more people than he did in his first term. It is democrats who are building “cop cities” around the country. It was Biden’s Justice Department which indicted the Uhuru 3. It was Biden who hatched a plan for yet another occupation of Haiti.
It may be difficult to ignore the theater surrounding Trump’s executive orders, but remember that Biden refused to do the same thing. More people were killed by police in 2024 than in any year that records have been kept. The faces of imperialism and neoliberal austerity and police brutality will periodically change, but their methods will not. No one can fight Trump who didn’t also fight his predecessors. The struggle during his administration will not be unique but it must be sustained no matter who comes after him. If not, all expressions of opposition are worthless. The history of Black struggle and movement building can be revived if we act as fearlessly as the ancestors we claim to respect.
*Featured Image: President Trump signs a series of executive orders at the White House on January 20. Photo: Jabin Botsford /The Washington Post via Getty Images
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter , Bluesky , and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at .