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Vernellia R. Randall, Weekly Racial Justice Update — August 23–29, 2026, Racism.org (August 30, 2026). 

 

This week showed the federal government using civil-rights law in two sharply different ways. The administration intensified enforcement against diversity programs while eliminating protections that address discrimination against communities of color. Medical schools and a major federal contractor faced investigations or financial liability for considering racial inequality. At the same time, the administration removed disparate-impact protections designed to prevent facially neutral rules from excluding Black and Brown communities.

Voting rights remained under direct attack. A federal court temporarily stopped the Postal Service from assuming an unprecedented gatekeeping role over mailed ballots, while officials in Tarrant County, Texas, considered eliminating nearly one-third of their Election Day polling places. Thousands returned to Washington to demand restoration of meaningful voting-rights protections.

The same struggle over government power appeared elsewhere. Armed federal agents accompanied border-wall contractors onto land the Tohono O’odham Nation says they had no authority to enter. Immigration arrests reached a new high, even though most people arrested had no criminal history. A federal court held that immigration provisions used against pro-Palestinian speech were unconstitutional as applied to protected speech, while Arab and Muslim American organizers demonstrated that communities ignored by political parties can build independent political power.

Table of Contents

  1. Federal Government Expands Its Campaign Against Medical-School Diversity
  2. Deloitte Pays $21.5 Million Under the Government’s Anti-DEI Fraud Initiative
  3. Voting-Rights Struggle Moves from the Courts to the Streets
  4. Removal of Disparate-Impact Protections Threatens Equal Disaster Assistance
  5. Black Family Continues Its Fight for Property Taken Through Racial Terror
  6. Armed Federal Agents Enter Tohono O’odham Land for Border-Wall Construction
  7. Immigration Arrests Reach a New High as Enforcement Becomes Less Visible
  8. Court Rules Deportation Policy Targeting Pro-Palestinian Speech Unconstitutional
  9. Arab and Muslim American Organizers Convert Protest into Political Power
  10. DHS Uses Customs Summonses to Investigate Journalists and Racial-Justice Organizations
  11. Bottom Line
  12. Search Note

1. Federal Government Expands Its Campaign Against Medical-School Diversity

On August 27, the Justice Department announced that it had found George Washington University School of Medicine intentionally discriminated on the basis of race in its 2024 and 2025 admissions. The Department alleged that essay questions were used to identify applicants’ racial or ethnic backgrounds after the Supreme Court restricted the consideration of race in admissions.

The Justice Department asserted that Black applicants were more likely than comparable Asian applicants to receive interviews and that some Black and Hispanic students were admitted over white and Asian applicants with higher standardized-test scores. These are the Department’s findings, not findings made by a court after an adversarial trial.

The following day, the Department of Health and Human Services announced compliance reviews of five additional medical schools. HHS said it had not reached conclusions about those institutions. Nevertheless, the reviews are part of a broader enforcement initiative directed at admissions, scholarships, fellowships, employment, contracting, and other programs that consider race or use criteria the government regards as racial proxies.

Why It Matters

The federal government is not neutrally enforcing civil-rights law. It is redirecting civil-rights enforcement away from the exclusion of Black, Latino, Indigenous, and other underrepresented communities and toward institutions that try to correct that exclusion.

The administration treats standardized-test scores as neutral measures of merit. They are not. Performance reflects unequal access to well-funded schools, test preparation, family wealth, professional networks, and the freedom to pursue unpaid educational opportunities. The government accepts the racially unequal results produced by those conditions while attacking efforts to change them.

This is also a health-equity issue. Like lawyers, physicians often return to or develop commitments to communities like those in which they grew up. When medical schools educate fewer physicians from communities of color, those communities remain underserved. Calling that result “race-neutral” does not make it neutral.

Sources

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2. Deloitte Pays $21.5 Million Under the Government’s Anti-DEI Fraud Initiative

Deloitte agreed to pay $21.5 million to settle federal allegations concerning its diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. The Justice Department alleged that Deloitte tracked demographic goals and considered contributions toward workforce-representation goals in some promotion evaluations.

The settlement was brought through the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, which uses the False Claims Act against federal contractors accused of falsely certifying compliance with antidiscrimination requirements.

Deloitte denied discriminatory conduct, and the settlement contains no admission or determination of liability. The American Alliance for Equal Rights, an organization founded by affirmative-action opponent Edward Blum, filed the whistleblower claim and will receive $4.3 million from the settlement.

Why It Matters

The False Claims Act was designed to protect the government from fraud. The administration is turning it into a weapon against racial-equity programs.

Federal contractors are being warned that monitoring racial disparities or holding managers responsible for workforce inclusion may bring federal investigations, multimillion-dollar liability, and privately filed whistleblower cases. Many employers will eliminate lawful equity programs rather than risk becoming the next target.

The most disturbing feature is the bounty. An organization devoted to attacking affirmative action will receive $4.3 million because it challenged Deloitte’s efforts to improve Black and Latino representation. The government is not removing race from employment. It is paying private organizations to protect existing racial inequality from deliberate correction.

Source

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3. Voting-Rights Struggle Moves from the Courts to the Streets

On August 27, a federal district court temporarily stopped the U.S. Postal Service from implementing portions of a new mail-ballot rule for the November midterm elections. The rule would have required state and local election officials to obtain Postal Service approval of ballot-envelope designs and upload voter information into a federal portal.

Without Postal Service approval, ballots could not be mailed. The temporary restraining order was an interim ruling while the parties litigated a preliminary injunction.

The next day, civil-rights organizations warned that Tarrant County, Texas, was considering eliminating nearly 30 percent of its Election Day polling locations. The Legal Defense Fund and other organizations said the proposal would disproportionately burden Black, Latino, Asian American, and Pacific Islander voters through longer travel, longer lines, and additional time away from work, school, and family responsibilities.

Also on August 28, thousands participated in the March on Washington 2026: Defend the Vote. The march connected present attacks on voting access with the unfinished work of the 1963 March on Washington and demanded restoration of effective federal voting-rights protections.

Why It Matters

Voting restrictions do not have to mention race to suppress Black and Brown political power. Closing polling places, restricting mail ballots, imposing complicated administrative requirements, and changing election procedures shortly before an election can accomplish the same result through facially neutral language.

The proposed Postal Service rule would have given a federal agency an unprecedented gatekeeping role over ballots administered by state and local governments. The threatened Tarrant County closures would force communities already burdened by unequal transportation, inflexible work schedules, and child-care responsibilities to travel farther and wait longer to vote.

The court’s order matters, but temporary relief is not voting-rights protection. We cannot preserve democracy by requiring emergency litigation every time public officials invent another way to make voting harder. That is why the March on Washington mattered. It made clear that voting rights must be protected through enforceable law, not left to the willingness of courts to intervene at the last minute.

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4. Removal of Disparate-Impact Protections Threatens Equal Disaster Assistance

The Legal Defense Fund and ten civil-rights, environmental-justice, and disaster-recovery organizations asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to explain how it will ensure equal access to disaster assistance after the Department of Homeland Security rescinded portions of its Title VI regulations addressing disparate-impact liability. FEMA is part of DHS.

Disparate-impact enforcement addresses policies that create unjustified racial barriers even when those policies do not expressly classify people by race. The administration has claimed that such protections are legally suspect.

The organizations warned that Black communities face disproportionate disaster risks while repeatedly encountering barriers to federal recovery resources.

Why It Matters

Requiring proof of conscious discriminatory intent leaves much modern racial discrimination without a remedy. Institutions learned long ago that they do not need to use racial language to produce racially exclusionary results.

A disaster-assistance rule can exclude Black families through property-document requirements, appraisal practices, internet-only applications, transportation barriers, or arbitrary deadlines. None of those rules has to say “Black,” even when officials know exactly which communities will be excluded.

Black communities are more likely to live in environmentally vulnerable areas, have less accumulated wealth, carry inadequate insurance, and encounter problems proving inherited ownership. Removing disparate-impact protection allows FEMA to treat those predictable consequences as legally irrelevant. That is not neutrality. It is a decision to protect discriminatory systems as long as no one admits to discriminatory intent.

Sources

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5. Black Family Continues Its Fight for Property Taken Through Racial Terror

A California court required descendants of Sidney and Iréne Dearing to amend important portions of their lawsuit against Piedmont, California, but allowed two key claims to be amended rather than dismissing the case in its entirety.

The Dearings were the first Black homeowners in Piedmont. According to the lawsuit, city officials used a fabricated public purpose to take their home in 1924 and later sold it to a white purchaser. The taking occurred amid threats of lynching, attempted bombings, and a mob campaign intended to force the family out.

The family alleges that the fraud was not discovered until 2025. The lawsuit seeks accountability, an apology, and compensation for the home, generational wealth, educational opportunities, and other benefits the family lost.

Why It Matters

Black land loss was not simply the result of private prejudice or unfortunate historical circumstances. Government action, fraudulent legal procedures, racial terror, and the refusal of public officials to protect Black families worked together to transfer property and wealth from Black people to white people.

The harm did not end when the Dearings were driven from their home. The property increased in value. White families gained access to the wealth, schools, security, and opportunities connected to the community. The Dearing family lost those benefits across generations.

That is why the remedy must include more than an apology. An apology without compensation would allow Piedmont to acknowledge the injustice while keeping the wealth produced by it. Structural racial harm requires structural repair, including visible accountability and material compensation.

Source

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6. Armed Federal Agents Enter Tohono O’odham Land for Border-Wall Construction

The Tohono O’odham Nation reported that approximately twenty armed and masked federal agents accompanied border-wall contractors into a disputed area early on August 25.

The Nation maintains that the contractors lacked authority to enter its land and that neither the Department of Homeland Security nor its contractors had obtained tribal consent. Tribal leaders previously posted no-trespassing notices and removed contractors attempting to enter the Nation.

Federal officials argue that the agents and contractors were operating under legal authority supported by congressional funding and a federal court order. The Nation disputes the government’s claimed access and warns that the project threatens sacred places, water, the environment, and the rights of O’odham people whose homeland predates the United States–Mexico boundary.

Why It Matters

The federal government continues to treat tribal sovereignty as something it may recognize when convenient and disregard when it interferes with federal plans.

Sending armed and masked agents to support contractors after a sovereign Nation denied permission is not consultation. It is an assertion that federal force matters more than Indigenous consent.

The United States–Mexico border divided O’odham territory; the O’odham people did not create that border. The government now invokes the boundary imposed on them to justify additional control over their land, water, sacred places, and movement.

This is not only a border-security dispute. It is continuing colonialism: the federal government claiming the authority to enter Indigenous land, damage Indigenous resources, and decide for itself whether Indigenous sovereignty matters.

Sources

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7. Immigration Arrests Reach a New High as Enforcement Becomes Less Visible

Newly released government data showed that immigration authorities arrested 49,571 people in July—the highest monthly total of the second Trump administration and a 15 percent increase over June.

For the first time during the administration’s second term, most people arrested—51 percent—had no criminal conviction or pending criminal charge. Nearly 34,000 people were removed from the country during the month. The Deportation Data Project cautioned that questions remain about the reliability of some removal data, although it expressed substantially less concern about the arrest data.

Immigrant advocates reported that enforcement has shifted away from highly visible mass raids toward traffic stops, required immigration appointments, airport arrests, and smaller operations that attract less public attention.

Why It Matters

The figures expose the dishonesty in the administration’s claim that mass deportation is primarily directed at dangerous criminals. Most people arrested in July had no criminal conviction or pending criminal charge.

Less visible enforcement is not less aggressive. It is harder for journalists, attorneys, families, and community observers to document. That allows the government to expand arrests while reducing public scrutiny.

Immigration enforcement has never operated separately from race. Latino, Caribbean, African, Asian, and Arab communities bear the consequences of government decisions about who looks foreign, who sounds foreign, who is questioned, and whose presence is treated as suspicious. Moving enforcement away from public raids and into traffic stops, airports, workplaces, and required immigration appointments does not eliminate racial profiling. It makes that profiling harder to see.

Sources

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8. Court Rules Deportation Policy Targeting Pro-Palestinian Speech Unconstitutional

On August 28, a federal district court held that the challenged portions of two Immigration and Nationality Act provisions violated the First and Fifth Amendments when applied to constitutionally protected speech.

The plaintiffs were Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation and an anonymous noncitizen student identified as Jane Doe. They challenged the administration’s use of visa-revocation and deportation authority against noncitizens expressing support for Palestinians or criticizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza. A second anonymous student was originally a plaintiff but was dismissed from the case in July 2026. The anonymous students were not members of The Stanford Daily.

The court granted declaratory relief. It denied an injunction against the deportation provision because federal law permits only the Supreme Court to grant that relief. It found a separate injunction against the visa-revocation provision unnecessary at this stage after declaring the challenged application unconstitutional. The administration may appeal.

Why It Matters

The administration attempted to create two levels of political freedom: protected speech for citizens and deportable speech for noncitizens.

That distinction would give the government extraordinary power over international students, immigrants, journalists, scholars, and organizers. A visa would become a tool for controlling political expression.

This policy was not enforced neutrally. Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and pro-Palestinian speakers were targeted because the government disapproved of their position on Israel and Gaza. The threat of detention or deportation was used to silence them.

Freedom of speech means little if it protects only positions the government finds acceptable. It must protect dissent—especially dissent by people whose race, religion, nationality, or immigration status makes them vulnerable to government retaliation.

Sources

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9. Arab and Muslim American Organizers Convert Protest into Political Power

Reporting published this week documented how organizers from the 2024 “uncommitted” campaign have turned protest over Gaza into electoral organizing.

Abbas Alawieh, a co-founder of the movement, won the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s Second State Senate District with 59 percent of the vote. Arab and Muslim American organizations have also helped candidates in Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, and other states build coalitions around Gaza, health care, housing, affordability, and racial justice.

The organizing includes deliberate coalition building with Black communities rather than relying solely on ethnic representation or party loyalty.

Why It Matters

Arab and Muslim Americans were treated as voters whose concerns could be ignored without political consequences. This organizing demonstrates that they are building the power to change that calculation.

Representation alone is not political power. Power means influencing candidates, party platforms, government spending, and which issues are treated as legitimate. It also means refusing automatic loyalty to political parties that expect votes while disregarding the communities providing them.

The coalition building is especially important. Organizers are connecting Gaza, anti-Arab racism, and Islamophobia with Black political power, housing, health care, economic inequality, and state violence. That approach rejects the idea that marginalized communities must compete against one another for limited recognition from institutions that have failed all of them.

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10. DHS Uses Customs Summonses to Investigate Journalists and Racial-Justice Organizations

An investigation published August 29 reported that the Department of Homeland Security used administrative summonses issued under a customs statute to demand private information concerning journalists, unions, nonprofit organizations, and people criticizing immigration enforcement.

Unlike a search warrant, the summonses did not require prior approval from a judge. DHS reportedly sought telephone or account information involving journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon, Democracy Now, unions, the Sunrise Movement, and Voices for Racial Justice.

None of the unions or nonprofit organizations identified in the report had been charged with crimes. Government lawyers have argued that the statute gives DHS broad investigative authority. Former DHS officials and civil-liberties lawyers dispute that interpretation, arguing that the statute concerns customs matters and does not create a general power to obtain records without judicial review. Companies may refuse an administrative summons, requiring the government to seek judicial enforcement.

Why It Matters

Government surveillance has repeatedly been directed at movements challenging racial hierarchy. The targets have changed—from civil-rights leaders and Black liberation organizations to Muslim communities, Indigenous organizers, immigrant-rights groups, journalists, and racial-justice organizations—but the purpose remains familiar: identify networks, discourage participation, and weaken organized opposition.

Obtaining telephone, social-media, and financial records reveals far more than information about one targeted person. It can expose confidential sources, donors, attorneys, colleagues, relatives, and entire organizational networks.

The use of a customs statute to bypass a judge is particularly dangerous. The government should not be able to avoid probable-cause requirements by choosing an administrative procedure that was never intended to create a general domestic-surveillance power.

People cannot freely report, organize, donate, or protest when the government may secretly obtain their records. The uncertainty is part of the harm. People censor themselves because they do not know whether they are already being watched.

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Bottom Line

The government is redistributing the protection of civil-rights laws and turning back the clock to the Jim Crow era.

Institutions that attempt to address racial inequality face investigations, lawsuits, and financial penalties. Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant, Arab, Muslim, and other marginalized communities are simultaneously losing protections against discriminatory voting rules, unequal disaster assistance, land theft, deportation, and government surveillance.

The administration calls its attack on diversity civil-rights enforcement. It treats efforts to protect communities harmed by structural racism as unlawful preferences, administrative burdens, or obstacles to government power. That is not consistent enforcement of equality. It is an inversion of civil-rights law.

Civil-rights law is increasingly being used to stop institutions from correcting racial inequality while the legal tools available to people harmed by that inequality are narrowed or removed. Existing racial hierarchy is treated as neutral. Attempts to change it are treated as discrimination.

This week also demonstrated that resistance matters. Courts stopped immediate voting restrictions and declared the use of immigration provisions against protected speech unconstitutional. A Black family continued seeking compensation for property allegedly taken through government fraud amid racial terror. The Tohono O’odham Nation defended its sovereignty. Arab and Muslim organizers converted political exclusion into independent power. Thousands marched for voting rights.

But communities should not have to organize an emergency response every time the government attacks a right. Rights that exist only when people can immediately find lawyers, obtain judicial relief, organize a march, or attract national attention are not secure rights. They are conditional privileges.

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Search Note

This update covers developments that occurred or were first substantially reported from Sunday, August 23, through Saturday, August 29, 2026.

I searched federal agencies, courts, national and regional reporting, civil-rights organizations, legal organizations, and independent Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, Arab and Muslim American, and immigrant-community sources.

The community-source search was not conducted merely to find additional commentary on stories already identified by mainstream sources. It was conducted to identify developments that general news searches overlooked and to include the perspectives of communities directly affected by government action.

No standalone Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander development located during the covered period was added merely to create demographic representation. Asian American and Pacific Islander interests are directly involved in the medical-school enforcement and mail-ballot litigation, including through OCA–Asian Pacific American Advocates.

I used primary court and government documents when available. I identified government allegations, advocacy claims, interim rulings, and unresolved legal questions rather than presenting them as established judicial findings. Wikipedia was not used as a final source.

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 Vernellia R. Randall, Professor Emerita of Law, University of Dayton School of Law. This article was drafted with the assistance of ChatGPT, an AI language model.  ChatGPT assisted with live source discovery, source comparison, organization, and drafting. Professor Randall retains responsibility for editorial review and publication decisions. Wikipedia was used, if at all, only to identify possible leads and was not used as a final cited source.