Trump seeks to gut a minority business agency decried by white conservatives

An enforcement bid signed by President Donald Trump connected Friday names respective national agencies helium efficaciously intends to unopen down, including a number concern section falsely portrayed by achromatic conservatives arsenic discriminatory toward achromatic people.

The enforcement bid lays retired Trump’s plans to axe 7 authorities entities, including the Minority Business Development Agency, saying they each “shall beryllium eliminated to the maximum grade accordant with applicable law.”

The different agencies connected the database are the United States Interagency Council connected Homelessness; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars successful the Smithsonian Institution; the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund; and the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees the Voice of America quality organization. My MSNBC workfellow Steve Benen wrote a large portion astir Trump’s gutting of VOA and his broader onslaught connected pro-democracy media outlets.

The Minority Business Development Agency was created during the Richard Nixon medication and has a self-described ngo “to beforehand the maturation and planetary competitiveness of Minority Business Enterprises successful bid to unlock the country’s afloat economical potential.” Such programs person been nether battle by achromatic conservatives for immoderate time, and Trump’s closure of the bureau tin plausibly beryllium seen arsenic portion of his perverse vow to code “anti-white feeling” arsenic president, contempt it not existing successful immoderate systemic form.

A twelvemonth ago, I wrote astir a Trump-appointed judge’s ruling that the program, which helps minority-owned businesses that person agelong faced favoritism and marginalization, indispensable service achromatic radical due to the fact that it was efficaciously discriminating against them. And past week, I wrote astir the Trump administration’s request that the metropolis of Asheville, North Carolina, amend its Hurricane Helene draught betterment program to region a notation to assistance for businesses owned by minorities and women.

This wholly predictable scenario, successful which Trump and his allies kneecap cardinal authorities programs meant to assistance nonwhite people, is precisely wherefore I took an involvement successful reporting connected Black philanthropy portion penning for The ReidOut Blog backmost successful 2021. Private giving and intra-communal concern among nonwhite radical is not, successful my view, an effectual stand-in for the national assistance that minority-owned businesses deserve. Especially since minority-focused philanthropic organizations person faced “lawfare” from achromatic conservatives, too.

But philanthropy and backstage concern are apt to go adjacent much captious for minority-owned businesses nether a Trump medication seemingly dormant acceptable connected dismantling national tools that assistance these businesses past and thrive.

This nonfiction was primitively published connected MSNBC.com