In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded our nation of “the fierce urgency of now.” “Now is the time,” he said, “to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice; now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood; now is the time to make justice a reality for all God’s children.” 

Witnessing the inauguration of Donald J. Trump on the same day we honor Martin Luther King, “now” seems about as fiercely urgent as it can get. With a bunch of billionaires close at hand, the re-upped president promised better times. How? By cutting back, closing doors, threatening the use of military force, saying no.

This does not appear to be an administration intent on stopping unauthorized border-crossing while allowing legal immigration. Trump would shut down legal immigration. Among the administration’s first acts was to cancel legally made appointments with immigration authorities and to suspend refugee resettlement.   

In Trump’s heady resumption of power, he proclaims the end of birthright citizenship, despite its authorization in the 14th amendment to the Constitution. In Trump’s inaugural speech, he talked about making Dr. King’s dream come true. It is highly unlikely that autocratically denying citizenship to people born here would be the stuff of Dr. King’s dreams. 

President Trump promises to freeze the hiring of federal workers to “end the onslaught of useless and overpaid DEI activists buried into the federal workforce.” That is his excuse to get rid of federal employees who are following the law and trying to serve the public. He has signed orders to end Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives in federal agencies, including an end to environmental justice investments to address the disproportionate harmful impact of environmental hazards to water, air, land and homes experienced by communities of color and low-income communities. This administration will no longer seek to redress the harms caused by racial injustice; its proclamations will instead perpetuate those harms. Similarly, Trump’s executive actions to dictate rules of gender unrelated to human realities is a giant step backward likely to enshrine harm rather than redress it. 

President Trump will attempt to stop the historic beginnings of progress in renewable energy. He will try to undo unspecified “burdensome” regulations and will encourage oil and gas drilling and use. He threatens tariffs, insisting that foreign nations will pay them, not U.S. consumers. Will these plans lower prices for most Americans? Most economists think the opposite. Economists at the Tax Policy Center estimated that 20 percent tariffs on most nations and 60 percent tariffs on China would cost U.S. households an average $3,000 in 2025. Over the past four years, encouraged by the Biden administration, regulatory agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Food and Drug Administration have saved consumers billions of dollars in unfair fees and lending practices as well as the start of limits on prescription drug prices. Who will be helped by ending subsidies for renewable energy and protections against exorbitant interest, fees, and drug prices – corporate interests or average households? We’ll find out.   

Will this be an administration intent on curbing the wasteful spending of lavish corporate contracts in the Pentagon and elsewhere? Or will it gut consumer protections, letting corporations profit at average people’s expense, and reduce taxes on the ultra-wealthy? Seeing huge corporate contributions to the inauguration events (and even more undisclosed contributions), it is hard to believe these contributors do not expect to get something in return.   

We at the Coalition on Human Needs joined in wondering who these undisclosed inaugural donors are, and so have called on the House Oversight Committee to investigate. In our email asking people to join with us in seeking daylight on these lavish contributions, we again quoted Martin Luther King, whose understanding of the struggle of money versus justice endures: 

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” 

Yesterday was an inauguration, but not a coronation. This nation was founded on the premise that it must be governed by the rule of law, and over the decades we have made halting progress towards applying the rule of law to everyone. Trump’s pardoning or commutations of sentences for all the January 6 violent insurrectionists is shocking, as is his attempt to end birthright citizenship and the firehose of rejections of existing law and regulation. When Trump’s proclamations flout the rule of law, they must and will be contested. We all have a right and a duty to demand that people are more important than profit, and that laws protecting people are not swept away.