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The Cost

Topic

Civil Rights

Voting rights, DEI rollbacks, universities, and equal-protection enforcement - documented decisions and their effect on Americans' civil rights.

decisions
19
severe or critical
10
sources cited
86

All civil rights decisions, newest first

  1. Federal investigators sent to probe voting before midterms

    ICE's investigative arm launched a nine-state 'voter fraud surge' of field interviews through mid-October, including checks on naturalized citizens' voting histories.

  2. A federal push for one national voter file

    DHS threatened prison for election officials who 'choose not to participate' as DOJ sued 30 states and D.C. for voter rolls for a federal citizenship check.

  3. Turning 'far-left' into a terrorism designation

    Rubio convened ~65 nations and rolled out visa bans targeting 'far-left' groups, as Treasury pledged to scrutinize nonprofits' funding.

  4. Counterterror grants tied to election changes

    DHS withheld 20% of homeland-security grants until states adopted its election rules, including SAVE citizenship checks; a judge ruled the withholding unauthorized.

  5. Civil-rights enforcement, handed to the DOJ

    The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights handed its investigative and enforcement work to the DOJ Civil Rights Division.

  6. An order to control who gets a mail ballot

    EO 14399 orders federal citizen lists for every state and limits USPS ballot delivery; the Supreme Court let the lists proceed while parts of the Postal Service rule stay blocked.

  7. White House offers universities a funding compact

    The White House offered preferential funding in exchange for commitments on admissions, enrollment, tuition and campus viewpoints.

  8. Antifa labeled domestic terrorist group

    An executive order directs federal investigation of a diffuse movement; legal scholars say US law has no domestic-terror designation mechanism.

  9. Visas, jobs lost over Kirk posts

    Federal officials revoked visas and backed firings over comments about Charlie Kirk's killing, prompting First Amendment suits.

  10. Texas redraw challenged as diluting minority votes

    A DOJ-prompted mid-decade redraw shifted up to five Democratic-held, largely minority seats toward the GOP; a federal panel blocked it as a likely racial gerrymander, but SCOTUS reinstated it via an unsigned shadow-docket order.

  11. Trump seeks census without undocumented

    Trump directed a new census excluding people in the country illegally; a September 2026 proposed rule would exclude them from the decennial count.

  12. Grant freezes coerce university settlements

    Brown and Cornell settled to unfreeze funds; UCLA refused and beat the freeze in court.

  13. ABA drops law-school diversity standard

    After federal pressure, the legal accreditor repealed its law-school diversity requirement.

  14. Harvard $2.2B+ federal funding frozen

    Research funding was frozen hours after Harvard rejected government demands; a judge ruled the freeze unconstitutional retaliation.

  15. Columbia pays $221M after $400M cut

    To restore $400M in federal funding, Columbia agreed to pay $221M, overhaul protest rules and adopt the IHRA antisemitism definition.

  16. Education civil rights office guts enforcement

    Seven of 12 regional offices closed; about 90% of resolved complaints were dismissals.

  17. Over $3B in university research disrupted

    NIH and NSF grant terminations disrupted labs, cut PhD admissions and paused hiring.

  18. Federal DEI offices eliminated; courts clear the orders

    Executive orders closed diversity offices; an appeals court vacated the block on private-sector provisions.

  19. DOJ Civil Rights Division loses 70%

    Mass departures and redirected priorities sharply reduced traditional enforcement of voting, housing and policing law.