In this episode of the "Collage" podcast, Rev. F. Willis Johnson interviews Rev. Aaron Rogers, director of the St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Ferguson, Mo.. Their conversation acknowledges the forthcoming 10-year remembrance of Michael Brown's death and the Ferguson uprising. Johnson and Rogers discuss the "pilgrimage" that introduced them to one another and impacted their vocational endeavors.
The U.S. flag, a certification of naturalization, and a U.S. passport.
“A profoundly dangerous and destabilizing thing.” That’s how Vice President J.D. Vance recently described America’s falling birthrate. Recently, the “inherently pronatalist” White House is considering a new set of proposals to address it—including government-funded menstrual cycle education and even a national medal for women who bear six or more children. But while Republicans may recognize the problem, their broader agenda actively undermines the most immediate and effective solution to population decline: immigration.
The Trump administration is enacting an all-out assault on immigration. Breaking from decades of Republican rhetoric that championed legal immigration, the current approach targets not just undocumented migration but legal pathways as well.
This includes suspending the refugee admissions program, revoking Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands, cancelling student visas, sharply increasing denials of high-skilled work visas, and calling to end birthright citizenship.
Even European and Canadian tourists have been detained for weeks. More recently, the administration terminated the Biden-era CHNV program, which had allowed vetted migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter legally. Overnight, thousands of legal entrants were rendered undocumented. Most alarming of all, the administration has denied due process to hundreds of migrants—some who entered legally or held valid protections—and shipped them indefinitely to a notorious El Salvador prison known for its human rights abuses.
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This hostile climate has shaken the business community, from agriculture and construction to tech. It has also driven down tourism and cross-border travel, with economic losses projected in the billions.
Even beyond legal and ethical concerns, these policies worsen the very problem that falling birthrates have exposed: the United States needs more people, not fewer.
The U.S. total fertility rate is now around 1.6—far below the 2.1 required to replace the population. That means fewer workers and taxpayers to support economic growth and the needs of a rapidly aging population. In 1920, there were about eight adults over age 65 for every 100 working-age residents. By 2000, that figure had risen to 20; by 2023, 29. It is projected to reach 37 by 2040. This growing imbalance will put increasing pressure on programs like Social Security and Medicare—and on the federal budget—in the years to come.
Countries like Hungary, Japan, and China have poured billions into cash incentives and fertility treatments, yet none have succeeded in sustainably raising fertility rates. Recent Republican proposals fall into this same ineffective category. Meanwhile, the few proven policies—like childcare subsidies and paid family leave—rarely get Republican support in the U.S.
Increasing fertility in the short term is unlikely. Raising the retirement age is a political third rail. That leaves immigration as the only realistic way to grow the population and sustain economic momentum. Without it, we would already be in population decline. Between 2022 and 2023, all U.S. population growth came from immigration—a first since the census began tracking nativity in 1850.
The country’s 55 largest metro areas recently reversed their shrinking trend, thanks almost entirely to immigrants. Census Bureau projections make the stakes clear: without new immigration, we will lose population every year through the end of the century. Researchers at the Wharton School estimate that to stabilize our aging workforce, we would need to more than triple current immigration levels.
Immigrants don’t just replenish our numbers—they help fund the government programs most threatened by demographic decline. In 2023 alone, immigrants contributed an estimated $650 billion in taxes, including more than $300 billion to Social Security and Medicare. This has a net positive impact because immigrants, unlike native-born Americans, pay far more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Yet despite this, the IRS has reportedly begun sharing immigrant taxpayer data with ICE—an unprecedented move that could deter compliance and cost the government billions in lost revenue, and one that has drawn bipartisan concern, including from the George W. Bush Institute.
But their economic impact goes far beyond what they contribute in taxes. Immigrants make up 38 percent of all workers in STEM occupations and 34 percent of all healthcare workers. Nearly half of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, and 60 percent of the top AI companies in the U.S. have at least one immigrant founder.
Given the chance, most countries would gladly welcome our demographic advantages. Nations like China and South Korea are facing even more dire population decline—with no influx of newcomers to offset the downturn. The U.S. is different: we have long attracted and successfully integrated people from around the world, making immigration a cornerstone of our economic, cultural, and geopolitical strength. But rather than protect this advantage, the Trump administration is actively dismantling it—shutting down legal pathways, vilifying newcomers, and poisoning public sentiment.
This is not just shortsighted. It’s a self-inflicted wound that undermines our long-term national interests.
Immigration policy will remain politically contentious. But if we care about economic growth, the solvency of Social Security, and national competitiveness, we need to stop treating immigration as a threat—and start treating it as the demographic lifeline it is.
This means that Congress must wrest back its legislative authority from an increasingly power-hungry executive branch. If congressional Republicans care about our long-term demographic and economic prospects, they need to work across the aisle to pass real legislation. Immigration cannot be fixed through executive orders, especially when policy shifts with each administration. Democrats, too, should be ready to collaborate.
To make meaningful progress, Congress should begin by restoring and reinforcing the legal pathways already in place. Lawmakers should act to protect long-term TPS holders and stabilize refugee admissions through legislation, as several existing proposals have already outlined. They should also provide a permanent solution for Dreamers, the nearly 600,000 young immigrants currently protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Created in 2012, DACA shields eligible immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and allows them to work legally. Trump attempted to terminate the program during his first term and has signaled he would do so again. A legislative fix would not only safeguard existing recipients but could also extend protection to many other undocumented young people who were excluded. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has warned that ending DACA would be “a nightmare for America’s economy,” and a recent poll found that large majorities of voters—including Republicans—support bipartisan legislation to provide Dreamers a path to legal status and eventual citizenship.
These actions are just the beginning. Our immigration system has not been meaningfully updated since 1986. Congress should ambitiously revisit the kind of comprehensive immigration reform that once drew bipartisan support—including, perhaps surprisingly, from then-Senator Marco Rubio. The 2013 “Gang of Eight” legislation would have modernized our legal immigration system to better reflect labor market needs, strengthened enforcement at the border, and provided an earned path to legal status for undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Though the bill ultimately stalled in the House, its framework remains a model for balanced reform.
In today’s climate, legislation and bipartisanship may seem like relics of a bygone era—but those are exactly the tools we need to solve a problem as complex as immigration. Reviving that approach would restore congressional leadership on national challenges and signal a serious commitment to America’s demographic and economic future.
Matthew Blanton is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology and demography at the University of Texas at Austin. His research on migration and demographic change has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals and news outlets like The Boston Globe and The Hill. Previously, he led a nonprofit organization in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, and worked for the National Immigration Forum on a bipartisan immigration reform campaign.
For decades, we have watched America wrestle with its demons. Sometimes, she has successfully pinned them down. Other times, the demons have slipped beyond her grasp. Yet, America has always remained in the ring. There is no difference right now, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
Across America, from small-town council meetings to state legislatures, there's a coordinated effort to roll back the clock on civil rights, geopolitical relations, and the global economy. It's not subtle, and it's not accidental. The targeting of immigrants and citizens of color has become so normalized that we risk becoming numb to it. For example, what happened in Springfield, Ohio, late last year? When national politicians started pushing rhetoric against Haitian immigrants, it wasn't just local politics at play. It was a test balloon, a preview of talking points soon echoed in halls of government and media outlets nationwide. Thus, this is how discrimination, intolerance, and blatant hate go mainstream or viral—it starts small, tests the waters, and spreads like a virus through our body politic and social system.
Sadly, I have studied and endured American politics long enough to recognize patterns, and this one's familiar. Every major stride toward equality in American history has faced pushback. After Reconstruction came Jim Crow. After the civil rights movement came the "law and order" era. After Obama's presidency came, we all know what came next. However, the difference at this moment is that we are not fighting these battles with the weaponry of our parents and grandparents. Once again, the tools of discrimination have gone digital but so have the tools of resistance.
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The next hundred days will set the trajectory for this fight, not because they'll end it, but because they'll determine how we fight it. We're at one of those inflection points where silence becomes complicity and inaction becomes endorsement.
Consider all that has happened with voting rights, DEI, immigration, First Amendment action, and the dismantling of government infrastructure. We continue to see a tsunami of executive actions, legislation, and litigation that, while carefully worded to appear neutral, disproportionately affect minority communities. These aren't your grandfather's literacy tests—these are sophisticated administrative hurdles dressed up in the language of election and homeland security, patriotism, balanced budgets, and the Meritus playing field. The intent hasn't changed; only the packaging has.
The attacks on diversity aren't just targeting the ballot box. They're showing up in school board meetings where discussions of American history are being sanitized, in housing policies that maintain segregation through bureaucratic sleight-of-hand, and in immigration policies that seem designed to preserve a demographic status quo that's already long gone.
Still, hope abounds! We are witnessing and encouraging greater and more strategic resistance than ever before. This generation of activists isn't marching—they're running for office. Civil rights organizations aren't just filing lawsuits but building databases to track discrimination patterns. Community groups aren't just protesting—they're creating alternative institutions.
The old divide-and-conquer playbooks are still employed, but new obstacles are yet to arise. When politicians try to pit ethnic communities against immigrant communities or working-class whites against urban Black and Brown people, they find that these groups are often already connected through informal yet intricately composed networks of social media, shared economic interests, and cross-cultural organizations.
Social and civilly conscious engaged actors must remain clear about what we are against. The forces pushing discrimination have deep pockets and sophisticated strategies. They are not just working through obvious channels like legislation and court cases—they're shaping narratives through think tanks, creating echo chambers in media, and using data analytics to identify and exploit social divisions.
We acknowledge this era of activists has advantages our predecessors couldn't have imagined. When discriminatory incidents occur, they are shared instantly. When false narratives emerge, facts are immediately corrected. When communities need to mobilize, they can do so within hours instead of weeks. However, it lacks tools, capabilities, focus, and coordination. Too often, populace movements are reactive rather than proactive, responding to each new crisis instead of building longitudinal strategic power. Emergent leaders and activists need to think broader and longer-term. I dare suggest a few things to consider:
First, democratic institutions necessitate strengthening at every level of American society, for instance, paying as much attention to local and municipal electoral matters as presidential races. It means supporting local journalism that can expose and unmask the reality of the truth in our backyards. It means building civic organizations that can outlast election cycles.
Second, a reframe of the conversation about American identity must commence. The myth of America as a white nation isn't just historically inaccurate—it's dangerous. America's story has always been one of the uniquely diverse and other-ed nation people, even when that diversity wasn't acknowledged nor celebrated. Our strength comes from our ability to expand our definition of "we the people," not restrict it.
Third, it is crucial to recognize that this isn't just a moral fight—it's an economic and geopolitical one. In a global economy, diversity is a competitive advantage. Countries that welcome and embrace differences tend to be more innovative, adaptable, and influential on the world stage. When we allow discrimination to flourish, we're not just betraying our values—we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
The next hundred days won't determine the outcome of this struggle but they will show us what "we, the people," are made of. Will we rise to meet this moment with the urgency it demands? Will we build the coalitions and institutions needed for lasting change? Will we finally learn that an attack on any American's rights is an attack on the American experiment itself? Only time will tell.
Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur, author, scholar-practioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied.
Two groups of people approaching each other over a chasm, ready to shake hands.
This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD) explaining in practical terms what the new administration’s executive orders and other official actions mean for all of us. Virtually all of these actions spring from the pages of Project 2025, the administration's 900-page blueprint for government action over the next four years. The Project 2025 agenda should concern all of us, as it tracks strategies already implemented in countries such as Hungary to erode democratic norms and adopt authoritarian approaches to governing.
Project 2025’s stated intent to move quickly to “dismantle” the federal government will strip the public of important protections against excessive presidential power and provide big corporations with enormous opportunities to profit by preying on America's households.
In Part 2 of this series, we address the Executive Orders (EO) and related actions aimed at eliminating any and all measures deemed to advance “diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).” That phrase lacks a precise legal definition but embraces all aspects of the legal and social infrastructure designed to fulfill the constitutional promise of equal protection for all. Despite the vigorous efforts to eliminate all traces of such measures from the federal government, these executive orders cannot repeal longstanding federal anti-discrimination laws, and many have been challenged in ongoing litigation.
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From Advancing Equality To Distorting Civil Rights Law
Since Inauguration Day, President Trump has unleashed an avalanche of moves meant to end lawful efforts to advance diversity and ensure a level playing field. In doing so, the administration seeks a wholesale rollback of efforts to eliminate historic and enduring inequalities. Its hastily implemented actions have included, for example,rescinding a host of recent and longstanding executive orders and actions promoting equal opportunity,ending programs that directly - or even by mere implication - advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI),terminating research projects, and calling forinvestigations and punishment oflaw firms andeducational institutions it accuses of clinging to DEI goals.
These actions are framed in neutral terms that speak of advancing “merit” and “fairness.” The real impact, however, is to erase the history of discrimination in this country and eliminate efforts to ensure fairness and a level playing field for historically marginalized groups.
Project 2025 – Calling For An End To DEI Programs
Project 2025 lays out a broad and detailed plan for the complete obliteration of DEI in the federal government, including mandates, training, policies, programs, and concepts at every level. This includes banning such words as diversity, equity, inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, reproductive rights, sexual orientation, and gender identity, in federal rules, regulations, contracts, grants, and legislation. Project 2025 also advocates for the investigation of DEI practices and calls for measures to ensure that race, gender, and other protected characteristics are not considered in hiring and other decision-making.
Why This Matters
This broad assault on DEI aims to undermine, if not eliminate, all laws, policies, and programs designed to advance equal opportunity and comply with established anti-discrimination laws. Alarmingly, the reach of these actions extends far beyond the federal government. Project 2025 also makes its way into the management of private law firms, universities, and cultural organizations, aiming to undercut laws and policies built up over decades to create a level playing field for everyone. Only Congress can create laws; the president cannot repeal laws by firing those who enforce them, cutting programs, and deleting information from websites.
The breathtaking sweep of these edicts should alarm anyone concerned about core democratic principles of free speech and fair treatment.
Here are just a few examples of how the actions:
Restrict knowledge by:
Threaten health and safety and limit scientific advances by:
Perpetuate inequality by:
Chill dissent and quash challenges to the administration’s approved viewpoints by:
Key Takeaway
These and related actions aim to eradicate decades of progress in eliminating historic inequality. In addition, they intrude on the right of free speech, a core tenet of our democracy.
Lawyers Defending American Democracy is dedicated to galvanizing lawyers “to defend the rule of law in the face of an unprecedented threat to American Democracy.” Its work is not political or partisan.
PRESENTE! A Latino History of the United States
The American Museum of the Latino faces more hurdles after over two decades of advocacy.
Congress passed legislation to allow for the creation of the Museum, along with the American Women’s History Museum, as part of the Smithsonian Institution in an online format. Five years later, new legislation introduced by Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) wants to build a physical museum for both the Latino and women’s museums but might face pushback due to a new executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
Advocacy for the National Museum of the American Latino began in 2003, with former Reps. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) introduced a bipartisan bill to create the museum. A report titled “To Illuminate the American Story for All” authored by a presidential commission created by former President George W. Bush’s administration in 2011 stated the creation of the museum is necessary.
“The Smithsonian American Latino Museum not only as a monument for Latinos, but as a 21st Century learning laboratory rooted in the mission that every American should have access to the stories of all Americans,” the report stated.
But legislation to officially create the museum did not pass until 2020. The National Museum of the American Latino Act of 2020 was passed in Congress and signed by President Donald Trump. The legislation was included under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, which includes a subsection authorizing the museum's creation.
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However, the National Museum of the American Latino is only online but has occasional in-person exhibits at its Molina Family Latino Gallery at the National Museum of American History. In February 2025, Malliotakis introduced the Smithsonian History of American Women and Latino (SHAWL) Act to build both Latino and women’s Smithsonian museums.
Malliotakis originally introduced the same legislation in August 2024 during the 117th Congress but reintroduced it for the 118th.
“The introduction of this critical bill brings us one step closer to fulfilling the dream of having both museums right where they belong — on the National Mall,” Rep. Tony Cárdenas, who joined Malliotakis in introducing the bill, stated in a press release.
According to documents from the National Museum of the American Latino, a physical museum would either be built on undeveloped land across from the National Museum of African American History and Culture or right northeast of the tidal basin.
The National Museum of the American Latino also stated that they do not comment on pending legislation.
Over at the White House on March 27, President Donald Trump recently endorsed the physical creation of the American Women’s History Museum. Still, he did not show support for the National Museum of the American Latino.
Trump endorsed building the women’s museum at an event associated with the Republican Women’s Caucus. He stated he would back Malliotakis’ legislation “100 percent.”
"The Republican Party today is the party of opportunity, security, and freedom,” Malliotakis stated in a press release.
But recently, the status of the American Museum of the Latino is uncertain as President Donald Trump signed a new executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
The executive order stated that the Smithsonian Institution is “under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.
“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” the executive order states.
President and General Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Thomas A. Saenz called the executive order “troubling” as in the past museums have been kept out of political debate.
“It seeks to introduce current political disputes into policy surrounding long-term preservation of history through museums and similar institutions,” Saenz said in reference to the executive order.
During his second administration, Trump has signed other executive orders seeking to eliminate “woke” initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion within government agencies.
Saenz said MALDEF, which supports the civil rights of all Latinos, wants the museum to have a permanent location on the National Mall. He also added that Latino advocacy organizations and historians should decide what exhibits go in the museum. Saenz said he hopes the museum’s exhibits show the full history and story of the community rather than playing along with stereotypes, like only showing American Latinos as immigrants.
“I hope that there will be consultation with such groups, which often have an understanding of the contemporary repercussions of exclusion patterns in our history and the way that history is taught and passed on in our country,” Saenz said.
Maggie Rhoads is a student journalist attending George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. At The Fulcrum, she covers how legislation and policy are impacting communities.
