The federal government plans to withhold $2.1 billion in congressionally authorized funds for a rail project in Chicago over allegations of “race-based contracting,” Donald Trump’s Department of Transportation announced Friday. That announcement followed a similar declaration about the administration’s plan to withhold $18 billion that Congress authorized for upgrades to the Hudson Tunnel project and Second Avenue Subway in New York City, based on what one top official referred to as “unconstitutional DEI principles.”
“Illinois, like New York, is well known to promote race- and sex-based contracting and other racial preferences as a public policy,” the Department of Transportation said in a news release. And in fact Chicago, like New York City, has initiatives to address the historical and enduring discrimination in government contracting. These are the sorts of programs conservatives claim discriminate against white men, even though there’s no evidence that programs in either city have engaged in such discrimination.
MAGA’s kvetching about these anti-discrimination efforts seems intended to harden the barriers that they are meant to tear down. The DOT’s news release even cites data from a news report that 21% of federal funds for one of the Chicago rail projects went to businesses registered with the feds’ minority business program — a stat that certainly doesn’t prove the government’s suggestion that such programs promote illegal race-based discrimination.
The administration’s threats to projects in Chicago and New York align with its wider threat to defund projects in liberal states during the government shutdown, but the political calculus here may prove wrongheaded. Liberals, of course, aren’t the only ones who benefit from modernized infrastructure in big cities. We’ve already seen some pushback (albeit rather gentle) from some Republican lawmakers, like Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, who represent liberal-friendly districts that stand to be affected.
The Trump administration appears to be betting big on the bigoted belief that Americans will support threats to infrastructure improvements in the name of killing programs that might allow businesses owned by women or nonwhite people to build parts of them. It’s also worth noting that Trump’s incessant assault on diversity programs that help nonwhite and female contractors stands in glaring contradiction to Trump’s campaign vow to save what he called “Black jobs.” The president in his second inaugural speech absurdly claimed to be a steward of Martin Luther King Jr.’s anti-racist legacy — part of a pattern of invoking King’s name in some rather odd ways. But as numerous observers have noted, his administration’s assaults on diversity and its willingness to placate actual bigotry shows the legacy he’s embraced is that of one of King’s biggest haters, ardent segregationist Bull Connor.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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