The following report was given to the CPUSA National Committee by the leadership of the African American Equality Commission on October 11, 2025.

The fascist offensive by the Trump administration continues its assault on African Americans, with the latest situation being the federal indictment of New York State Attorney General Letitia James. Since January, Trump 2.0 has launched a deep political assault on African Americans, beginning with the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. Since then, over 300,000 Black women have been put out of work, and the same number of white men have been put to work. Some are calling this an affirmative action moment for white men. Trump’s racist attack is a crisis of democracy.

The anti-DEI and AI attacks

Not only did the attack on DEI remove large numbers of Black workers from the federal government, close agencies, shutter grant funding for state and local projects, and attack Black history in the Smithsonian museums, but it also affected private industry. Big businesses like Target and dozens of others joined MAGA in dropping their DEI policies, with few holding the line like Costco.

The response from the African American community was to launch a boycott of Target, primarily because Target is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minn., the city where George Floyd was murdered. Since the boycott, Target’s stock has lost over $12 billion in value, foot traffic in Target stores has been reduced by an estimated 500 million, and the company’s CEO has announced his resignation. This example shows that when the whole working class and its allies fight back, we can ensure that racism is unprofitable. An important development here has been the role of the Black church, especially the leadership from Rev. Jamal Bryant in Atlanta, Ga., who led the mobilization of Black faith leaders around this issue. This is something that probably has not been done on this scale since Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH.

Furthermore, since the Kirk assassination, many Black creatives and journalists saw themselves forced out of major roles. For example, Washington Post journalist Karen Attiah was fired for honestly reporting on and rejecting Kirk’s reactionary politics. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) around the country also received several bomb threats in retaliation for the murder. MAGA and Trump claimed that the shooter was of the political left, while facts showed otherwise. Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, has since been visiting HBCU campuses trying to recruit students to the group “Blexit.” The name “Blexit” refers to a movement, originally launched by Candace Owens in 2019 to convince Black youth to leave the Democratic Party, and has since been bought out by Turning Point USA. Both Turning Point USA and Blexit are financed by billionaire Trump donors. Kirk’s politics and the political repression following his murder must be rejected — full stop.

The attack on DEI has been compounded by the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. AI chatbots are creating confusion for people every day with “deep fakes” about what is real and what isn’t. Further, the energy needed to sustain data centers that support AI is causing a serious environmental crisis in Black communities. For example, Elon Musk’s xAI corporation chose to build its AI data center in Memphis, Tennessee. The nearly three dozen unpermitted gas turbines that power the data center are causing health problems for the residents there and have led to a major fightback by groups like the NAACP and Poor People’s Campaign. An effort was just killed to expand a data center in a predominantly Black community in Landover, Md., near Washington, D.C. This crisis of AI data centers is eerily similar to the “Cancer Alley” epidemic in Louisiana, where oil and gas companies intentionally built the largest concentration of pollution-causing facilities in the Western Hemisphere in Black and poor communities, leading to disastrous health outcomes for area residents. New AI-related data centers are also leading to huge increases in electricity and water bills in local communities, and the companies building them encourage us to think we have to choose between poisoning poor Black communities or giving up modern technology.

Occupation

In addition to the economic and environmental impacts of Trump 2.0 on African Americans, Trump has ordered a full-on political assault against cities with Black mayors. He started with Los Angeles, where Karen Bass presides; then Washington, D.C., headed by Muriel Bowser; Chicago, led by Brandon Johnson; and most recently, Memphis, Tenn., whose mayor is Paul Young.

Trump and his MAGA administration have sent surges of ICE agents and military troops into these major metropolitan cities. The terror this has inflicted upon communities is fascist in nature and is intended to instill fear and zero fightback. Just recently, ICE rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter onto an apartment building on the south side of Chicago, raided every single apartment, and detained families, including children, separating them from their parents. The fascist administration claims they were searching for a “Venezuelan gang,” but this action was really intended to terrorize the community.

We call on the party to revisit the triple concentration approach to rebuild our connections in major communities of color, including the African American community. We call on party clubs to help expand and intensify the No Target campaign to let big business see there are consequences to caving to fascist assaults.

We pledge every effort to help make Black History Month 2026 a contributor to the effort to strengthen the resistance and advance the fight for real democracy.

Image: People march to demand an end to Trump’s occupation in D.C. by Free DC / @billleephotography (Facebook)