Under Donald Trump, America begins its 251st year with racism front and center

America is now into its 251st year. Here's how the Trump administration started it off: Trump mocking five-year-old Muslim kindergartners, a cabinet secretary who couldn't bring himself to condemn a Nazi march, and federal agencies walking away from discrimination cases, all at his direction.

Three instances are not coincidences or one-offs. They are an ominous signal that America's 251st year will be one of overt, dangerous and explosive racism.

On Sunday, Trump reposted a disturbing video of Black Muslim kindergartners in hijabs at their graduation. With their faces exposed. He amplified the original caption: "Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten."

Another blatantly racist post, chilling in how it goes after children. Trump is tearing through the bottom of the barrel on racism when innocent kids are exposed. He's personally choosing to make small children the target of bigoted hate, because of how they pray and what they look like.

And the most galling part is that Trump has not taken the video down, because there are no limits, no apologies, no regrets, no condemnation anymore when it comes to racism.

It has spread through the administration to such a degree that it's hard to imagine we're in America's 251st year, and not its 51st, when racism was a deeply prevalent and institutionalized part of American society, and the country was actively built on the enslavement of millions of Black people.

While America was turning the page to a new year on the Fourth of July, hundreds of masked Patriot Front marchers, a white nationalist group, stormed through Washington, the kind of scene that, a decade ago, would've gotten unanimous and immediate condemnation from anyone in public office.

What was once "very fine people on both sides" is now, to Trump and his henchmen, very fine people on only one side.

Related: We now have solid proof that after Trump and Project 2025, the future of the GOP is Nazism

There was evidentiary proof when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum went on CNN on Sunday and said federal officials had no reason to intervene, because the marchers were exercising free speech. He allowed that the group's ideology was "nothing that I could possibly agree with,” and then wouldn't say whether he'd tell Trump to condemn them. Not "won't," not "can't." Just silence. He also pathetically added that democracy is "messy."

It was just as revealing that Burgum couldn't bring himself to strongly denounce these racist pigs. He conveyed no sympathy to the many people of color who had to endure the threat that invaded their personal space when the group took over a subway car, for example.

My colleague Christopher Wiggins spoke with Roswell Encina, who described feeling terrified and unsettled after being trapped on a D.C. Metro train surrounded by masked Patriot Front white nationalists during their repulsive Independence Day march.

Also telling: nobody in this administration is going to say "white supremacist" or "racist" or "white nationalist" out loud if they can help it. They're going to say "messy." They're going to say "free speech." They're going to say "context."

Related: Man in viral D.C. Metro photo says he was ‘terrified’ as masked white nationalists surrounded him

That's glaring, because it tells you exactly how Trump's thugs plan to talk about the next racist incident, and the one after that, and the one after that, and how they'll keep ignoring the victims, and the ones left traumatized.

And here's proof of that sentiment. On Monday, the New York Times reported that federal agencies are abandoning discrimination cases at Trump's direction. Interestingly, he hasn't issued one of his usual executive orders, since it appears he's been doing this quietly.

I wonder why?

This deviant administration is now declining to enforce anti-discrimination regulations that have been on the books for decades. According to the Times, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency literally created to protect people from discrimination, has been redirecting its energy toward cases brought by white men who believe they've been discriminated against.

See what I mean about only one side being very fine? Or counting, for that matter.

And in case you need one more example about how far this has traveled, there's the word itself. “Remigration.” Trump uses it, or a variation of it, “reverse immigration,” repeatedly on Truth Social. Over a year ago, declared it the official policy of his administration.

In May, it was revealed that an Office of Remigration was created about a year ago. And yet, barely a protest from anyone despite the word’s sinister history.

The term was popularized by Martin Sellner, an Austrian former neo-Nazi rebranded as an "Identitarian," and historians trace its lineage straight back to the 1930s, when the Nazi party floated mass-relocating Jews to Madagascar before landing on the Holocaust instead.

Last fall, the Department of Homeland Security posted the word "Remigrate" on its official X account. When a reporter asked the agency to explain itself, the DHS spokesperson mocked the reporter's ability to read English and cited a dictionary definition.

As if denying the word makes it go away.

So how much worse does this get? Every one of these incidents — the kindergarten post, "messy democracy," the abandoned discrimination cases, and remigration — follows the same sequence: deny or ignore, soften the language around it, obfuscate, and do it over and over and over again until these horrific incidents are normalized, or treated as “been there and done that.”

Queer and trans people should recognize this rhythm better than almost anyone, because we've already had a starring role in an earlier version of it. The bathroom bills, the military ban, the passport rollbacks, the attempts to write us out of federal civil rights protections and erase us from the history books.

If you are from a marginalized community, there’s a department of “expulsion” or “re-immigration” waiting for you. It’s systematic, it’s starting to become embedded in administration policy, and it is all real.

Right now the spotlight is on Muslim children and Black families. The machinery being built right now is a Justice Department that drops discrimination cases, an EEOC redirected away from the people it exists to protect, and a cabinet secretary who won't say "racist" out loud.

That's the real danger of a week like this one. It isn't just shocking; it's practice for something larger. These things always scale up, and that’s what is most frightening since there is neither an outraged Congress nor a citizenry right now to stop it.

America's 251st year didn't start with a bang. It started with a shrug, and that shrug is wide enough to eventually cover all of us. Anyone breathing easier right now because it's someone else's kids, someone else's rights, someone else's body under discussion should look closer at the shape of it.

There’s room in it for everyone this administration has ever treated as an inconvenience, illegal, or anything other than white and straight.

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