In September, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was ordered to identify and cut funding for "critical race theory," or federal worker-diversity trainings intended to expose and prevent bigotry and systemic bias within government institutions and agencies.
That same month Trump delivered a speech at the National Archives at which he announced the formation of the "1776 Commission" intended to discredit The New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning "1619 Project" dedicated to chronicling the country's history beginning the year Europeans shipped the first enslaved Africans to American shores.
And who can forget his instructing the white supremacist group "The Proud Boys" to "stand back and stand by" when pressed to denounce the hate groups who support him during a debate with then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden?
This is by no means a complete list.
Last month, acting Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf released his department's annual assessment of violent threats to the nation, stating:
"[I am] particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years. [They] seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction."
Donald Trump's own hand-picked DHS acting secretary is admitting what FBI director Christopher Wray confirmed to Congress in February:
"Racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists [have become the] primary source of ideologically motivated lethal incidents [in the US]."
The Associate Press reported Monday, according to an FBI report, American hate crimes climbed last year to the highest in more than a decade--7,314.
The year before that number was 7,120.
Federal officials also recorded the highest number of hate-motivated murders since the FBI started compiling data thirty years ago.
Religious-based hate crimes are up seven percent--953 targeting Jews and Jewish institutions last year, an increase from 835 in 2018.
Anti-Hispanic hate crimes were up to 527 in 2019.
They were 485 in 2018.
20 more hate crimes against LGBTQ men were reported.
These numbers could be higher since 2,172 out of approximately 15,000 participating law-enforcement agencies reported their hate crime data to the FBI, motivating advocacy groups like the Anti-Defamation League to demand Congress and law enforcement to improve collection of hate-crime statistics.
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