The Trump administration is reviewing a “racial equity” plan released by Mayor Zohran Mamdani – with a top Department of Justice official calling the city’s proposal “fishy.”
The assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, in a statement to The Post, threatened to “bring enforcement actions if necessary” over the long-delayed report unveiled by Mamdani on Monday.
The “preliminary citywide racial equity plan” aims to get dozens of local agencies involved to “solve decades of neglect and discrimination” against black and Hispanic and Latino New Yorkers — including through mandated “anti-racism” training and pay equity for city workers.
The “preliminary citywide racial equity plan” was unveiled by Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post“The Black Lives Matter movement has galvanized a new generation of activists, who continue to demand not only the end of police violence, but also the dismantling of all forms of systemic racism that pervade every aspect of life in New York City,” it states.
“This has all led us to the creation of this moment, right here, right now, to operationalize racial equity into every aspect of City life.”
Assistant AG Harmeet Dhillon claimed Tuesday the plan “appears to be another example of divisive, race-based policymaking that the United States Supreme Court has routinely held to be unlawful.”
“Racist and illegal DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] has no place in our society,” she said in a statement.
“The Civil Rights Division is reviewing the plan and will bring enforcement actions if necessary.”
The report was legally mandated under a 2022 voter referendum and was released by City Hall at the same time as a separate study on the “True Cost of Living” in New York City.
The preliminary racial equity plan involved 45 agencies and more than 200 city workers in an effort to “build a more equitable, inclusive and just city,” following the intense protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota in 2020, said Mamdani’s Chief Equity Officer Afua Atta-Mensah on Monday.
Mamdani had promised to make the plan public within his first 100 days in office, after his predecessor Mayor Eric Adams repeatedly pushed back the release of the report, with his administration even being sued for failing to meet the 2024 deadline.
It comes as President Trump’s admin targets diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in liberal havens like New York.
President Trump’s admin is targeting DEI initiatives in Democrat-led cities like New York. Yuri Gripas – Pool via CNPThe document, which explicitly does not use the controversial acronym DEI, includes the following policy suggestions:
- Increasing the number of city teachers who “receive professional learning in implicit bias and culturally relevant pedagogy.”
- Calls for a public school curriculum that reflects “the diversity of the families and communities.”
- Demanding “anti-racism training for City government staff” to help workers “combat racial discrimination in the workplace.”
- Requiring the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to “ensure racial equity is considered in evaluating 100 percent of new proposals” for construction projects.
“New York’s history has been one of colonization, exploitation, and racial oppression,” the plan states.
The report quickly sparked blowback from conservatives online, with Dhillon sounding the alarm.
“Sounds fishy/illegal. Will review!” she wrote on X Monday.
Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) said she was looking forward to the results of the DOJ’s review.
“The mayor made it clear that he was going to go after white communities during his campaign, and this seems like his first step toward making that goal a reality,” she told The Post.
Mamdani, during his campaign, pledged to shift the property tax burden from outer borough homeowners to ‘more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods.”
Councilman David Carr (R-Staten Island) called the equity report a waste of time and money.
“We didn’t need to waste more than three years and spend who knows how much taxpayer dollars on a useless report to ‘discover’ why black families, or any other families, are fleeing New York,” he said in a statement.
“It’s because of the same disastrous Democratic policies the mayor wants to double down on, which have made this city so unaffordable.”
The report found roughly 200,000 black New Yorkers were forced out of the Big Apple between 2000 and 2020 because they could no longer afford day-to-day expenses.
Mamdani called it “the first step in developing a whole-of-government approach to tackling that reality.”
New Yorkers were invited to provide comments on the report over the next 30 days through an online portal.The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Dhillon’s statements.
— Additional reporting by Hannah Fierick
