The Trump administration has launched a legal fight to block the United States’ first-ever reparations program which serves Black community members of Evanston, Illinois. The program was approved by Evanston city councilmembers in 2021, allotting some $20 million to Black residents who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969, or their direct descendants, over discriminatory housing policies and the lasting impacts of slavery. Robin Rue Simmons, who pioneered the program and now serves as the chairperson of Evanston’s Reparations Committee, denounced the Trump administration’s lawsuit as a “fear tactic.”