Trump Admin Ends Wastewater Settlement For Black Alabama Town, Calling It DEI

We really didn’t need any more proof that President Donald Trump and his white nationalist administration don’t know or care what DEI actually is and how it works, and they’re really just moving to harm Black people and people of color under the guise of fighting fictitious anti-white discrimination, but the U.S. Department of Justice just ended a settlement agreement regarding wastewater issues in a mostly Black rural Alabama county, citing Trump’s anti-DEI directive, which, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with a court settlement. 

From The Associated Press:

Justice Department officials said they were ending the agreement reached with the state regarding wastewater issues in Lowndes County. Federal officials said the decision follows President Donald Trump’s executive order forbidding federal agencies from pursuing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.

“President Trump made it clear: Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria,” the statement said.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in February issued a memo rescinding a Biden-era directive to prioritize environmental justice cases.

Wastewater sanitation issues are well-documented in Lowndes County. Poverty, inadequate infrastructure and a type of soil that makes it difficult for traditional septic tanks to work have sometimes left some residents with sewage in their yards.

So, let’s be clear about this: there’s a town in Alabama that is experiencing well-documented sewage problems, creating a potential environmental disaster for the town’s residents, but because most of those residents are Black, Trump’s administration categorized it as a DEI initiative despite the objective fact that, again, a court-approved settlement is not a thing that can be brought about via a diversity, equity and inclusion program. Trump and his MAGA minions have decided it’s worth it for American citizens to suffer rather than allow a settlement to proceed because that settlement was reached to correct environmental racism, which would indicate that systemic racism against people other than white people exists, and Trump just can’t have that.

More from AP:

The Justice Department in 2023 said its probe found Alabama engaged in a pattern of inaction and neglect regarding the risks of raw sewage for county residents. The Alabama Department of Public Health agreed to take several steps as part of the settlement, including not fining people with inadequate home systems, creating a comprehensive plan for the region and other steps.

The agreement was the result of the Justice Department’s first environmental justice investigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the exact legislation the Trump administration has cited to justify the president’s bid to rid the federal government of all things DEI and threaten state and private institutions with defunding if they don’t do the same. These people had already taken legislation that was unequivocally meant to correct centuries of legalized anti-Black discrimination and used it to fight anti-white discrimination that doesn’t exist. Now, they’re actively harming and sacrificing Black people and Black health just to continue bending America to their ideological will. (Oh, and because they are unbelievably racist white supremacists.)

“It was about addressing a public health crisis that has forced generations of children and families to endure the health hazards of living in proximity to raw sewage, as the DOJ itself documented,” U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), whose district includes Lowndes County, said of the settlement, adding that the Trump administration “has put its blatant disregard for the health of my constituents on full display.”

Dr. Scott Harris, Alabama’s state health officer, told AP that the DOJ’s decision has put in jeopardy the federal funding necessary for the county to install much-needed new septic systems at homes in Lowndes, but he also said his department will continue to do its work in the region as best as it can.

“It doesn’t change our intent to help as many people as possible,” Harris said. “The real question is going to be what the funding situation looks like.”

MAGA America loves to roll its collective eye at us when we insist that the Trump administration is a white supremacist organization, but the administration just keeps on proving us right. Trump is out here toying around with the idea of paying reparations to white Americans allegedly affected by DEI, but he’s ending a settlement that absolutely has nothing to do with DEI just because the settlement would mostly help Black people live cleaner, healthier lives.

Calling these people white supremacists isn’t hyperbolic or inflammatory — we’re just citing observable truth. That’s it!

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