Trump's now infamous question to the black community -- "What have you got to lose?" if we voted for him -- was always apparent when he chose to staff his team with white supremacists and card-carrying Nazis. Never forget hoever that the reason these odious beliefs are tolerated by Trump is that he believes the same himself, and always has.
President Donald Trump signaled Friday that he may not implement a 25-year-old federal program that helps historically black colleges finance construction projects on their campuses, suggesting that it may run afoul of the Constitution.
In a signing statement on the $1.1 trillion omnibus government spending bill, Trump singled out the Historically Black College and University Capital Financing Program as an example of provisions in the funding bill “that allocate benefits on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender.”
Trump said his administration would treat those programs “in a manner consistent with the requirement to afford equal protection of the law under the Due Process Clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.”’
Previous presidents, including Barack Obama and George W. Bush, often issued such statements when they signed legislation to signal they may ignore or disregard parts of laws passed by Congress.
In his first signing statement, Trump outlines a range of provisions in the spending bill that he says would “unconstitutionally” limit his authority as commander in chief — and indicates that where the bill conflicts with the White House’s interpretation of the president’s powers under the Constitution, he will go with the Constitution.
If you need to ask yourself why Trump would choose to single out HBCUs as deserving of having their federal funding revoked because of "reverse racism", ask yourself who voted for him and why. It's one thing for a chief executive to harbor personal biases and understand that they still have to faithfully execute the law, but it's another thing entirely to make this clear to everyone that you believe this in public signing statement.
This is an open threat, mind you. It's one we should expect Trump to carry out.
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