A little more than a month after Donald Trump was inaugurated on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the famed civil rights leader’s youngest daughter, Bernice King, worries some of the worst fears about the president’s second term appear to be in motion.
“We’re about to see or witness a country we’ve never seen before,” King said during a virtual call last week from her Atlanta home. “I think it’s going to be devastating to so many people.”
The 61-year-old CEO of The King Center in Atlanta was reacting to news of the Trump administration’s cost-saving effort that resulted in layoffs of thousands of federal employees — including about 700 local Centers for Disease Control and Prevention workers — when she spoke with Capital B Atlanta.
She acknowledged the effectiveness of Trump’s “flood the zone” political strategy, and expressed surprise at how quickly the president and his allies have moved on their conservative plan to reshape America. She also reflected on Trump opponents’ seeming inability to effectively push back on his agenda.
Much of that plan, King noted, was outlined in Project 2025. The political playbook spearheaded by leaders of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and their allies was widely covered in the media last year after its April 2023 unveiling. However, King said it’s clear to her, based on the early days of Trump’s second term, that the plan has been in the works for a long time.
Democrats and other Trump opponents, in contrast, haven’t demonstrated a plan for cohesive opposition to the president’s agenda, according to King and other political observers, despite activist-led protests opposing Trump and Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk taking place in Atlanta and across the country. Hundreds of demonstrators rallied against Musk and Trump outside the Gold Dome on President’s Day.
Following an Election Day loss for Kamala Harris in November, Georgia Democrats acknowledged the disconnect the party has developed with a growing number of Black voters who didn’t show up in support of the former vice president the way they did for former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
In January, Georgia House Minority Leader Carolyn Hugley announced plans for a related voter listening tour that has unfolded throughout the month of February.
“What got us to this place is lack of strategy, but also … a strategy in the absence of a [counter strategy],” King said. “You had one group of people who created a strategy quietly for years to put the right people in the right places to carry out a plan. … They’re playing chess. We’re playing checkers.”
One of those chess moves, according to King, has been the rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which she said threatens the race-related progress the country has made since the Civil Rights Movement. But King also noted many of the societal gains made through DEI programs haven’t gone to Black people, a point that has created some division about the merits of advocating for DEI policies.
King suggested advocating for a new, more effective approach to addressing racial disparities that hamper Black people.
“Sometimes, are we fighting the wrong battle?” she said in reference to defending DEI policies, echoing concerns raised on social media and in academia. “Some people are thinking outside the box, but more and more of us have to do that. And we need to do it more in a collective, thought-out sense.”
One of King’s suggestions was for Democrats to focus more on the plight of the working poor like her father did famously, implying that lack of attention to the plight of the underprivileged is one of the reasons some “disgusted voters” lost faith in political advocacy.
“Nobody deals with poor people on their platforms,” King said. “I would encourage [Democrats] to consider … the agenda of those people who live in impoverished communities or live impoverished lives. [There’s] going to be a whole lot more, unfortunately, because of everything that’s going on with the current administration.”
