This is a report on the material consequences of federal “anti-DEI” policies on Black people in the U.S. It examines how the Trump Administration’s recharacterization of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as “illegal,” “wasteful,” and “immoral” has driven widespread dismantling of DEI initiatives across education and employment, producing disproportionate harms for Black individuals and communities. Although framed as efforts to enforce civil rights law and promote neutrality, these policies operate through funding threats, legal ambiguity, and administrative pressure to curtail programs designed to address longstanding racial inequality. By tracing the material consequences of these policies, the report demonstrates how the dismantling of DEI infrastructure has already constrained access to education, weakened employment pipelines and eroded critical community protections.

CLiME’s Guidance for Lawmakers on Investors and New Jersey Homes responds to the flood of proposed legislation in New Jersey to respond to the growth of institutional investors in single-family homes. This report describes the pending bills in New Jersey and offers expert recommendations on how legislators should understand the combined policy effects of a range of efforts, including bans, opportunity to purchase restrictions, tax strategies, and responses to various harms to renters through tenant-protection laws.

We offer four top level recommendations for New Jersey lawmakers:

1. Create an executive agency tasked with developing the infrastructure necessary to regulate institutional investors in single-family homes in New Jersey.

2. Prioritize a first-look law that mandates a wait period before investors may bid on a home once it goes on the market.

3. Impose limits on property-related tax deductions such as mortgage interest and depreciation to disincentivize investor ownership of single-family homes.

4. Prioritize various tenant protection bills aimed at responding to specific harms renters face from growing dominance of corporate landlords, including rapid rent increases, increased eviction actions, and habitability concerns.

This Update documents the Trump Administration's continued efforts to rewrite the meaning of racial equality in the United States. The administration’s efforts have kept pace with their first ten months, collected for CLiME’s November 2025 report presented as a four-pronged strategy aimed at: 

• Redefining race discrimination through a theory of antidiscrimination doctrine developed by the overwhelmingly white conservative legal movement, which has resisted racial progress through the courts since the at least the 1970s;

• Dismantling the federal institutions responsible for civil rights enforcement by eliminating people and offices committed to the work of restorative justice and racial equity and repopulating those spaces with a sparse few ideological loyalists who selectively enforce civil rights laws through this redefined, ahistorical understanding of antidiscrimination;

• Enforcing this colorblind, reverse-race discrimination ideology by weaponizing the federal checkbook to coerce institutions into ideological compliance and to defund any program or research that may document ongoing, system racial inequalities or support Black, Latino and Indigenous communities in any way; and

• White washing racial gerrymandering efforts through political gerrymandering, while the Court ends the Voting Rights Act as we know it by subverting claims of racial discrimination to achieve policy goals–the effects of which often involve civil rights retrenchment–all the while knowing that the Supreme Court is ideologically and doctrinally aligned.

Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) are contracts between developers and communities that exchange community support for development projects for material benefits. New Jersey became the first state to statutorily require CBAs in tax incentive programs in 2021 through its EMERGE and ASPIRE programs, though significant workarounds undermine the mandate’s force. This memorandum examines a number of CBAs executed under both programs and argues that, in their current form, these agreements fail to achieve the purpose of ensuring that economic development benefits existing residents and communities. Analysis through dual frameworks of distributive justice and regulatory capture reveals fundamental contract law deficiencies, including vague performance standards, inadequate benefit-to-subsidy ratios below 1%, and missing enforcement mechanisms, rendering agreements aspirational rather than binding. Workforce provisions are entirely absent from an employment-focused program, and enforcement is limited. These failures prevent CBAs from being equity-centered or protective of local residents. Recommendations outline how the state legislature, NJEDA, municipalities, and community coalitions can modify CBA content and enforcement through contract formation requirements, including establishing appropriate parties, incorporating mandatory substantive terms with quantifiable metrics, implementing actual enforcement mechanisms, and enacting statutory reforms to eliminate municipal workarounds. These reforms can transform CBAs from symbolic documents into enforceable instruments that deliver equitable outcomes while ensuring communities receive actual, feasible benefits from publicly subsidized development.

CLiME’s inaugural evaluation of 12 of New Jersey’s most populous cities reveals striking trends that reverse many of the last century’s assumptions about life in the Garden State. Despite dynamic changes in urban-suburban demographics, housing and job growth, one overriding fact prevails: economic inequality has hardened between cities and suburbs and within and across cities. We looked at social and economic trends in the state’s 12 most populous cities – Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Hoboken, Union City, Hackensack, Asbury Park, New Brunswick, Trenton, Camden and Atlantic City – and found:

• Urban population growth and residential development now outpaces the rest of the state.

• The 12 cities are home to many working-class and immigrant residents, and more than half households struggle to make ends meet.

• The 12 cities are home to the state’s poorest children, with poverty rates as high as 48 percent.

• A lack of affordable housing is a problem statewide, but it’s especially pronounced in the gentrifying cities of the NY metro.

Read more to learn how these factors play out differently in different parts of the state and our recommendations for enhancing the economic prospects of New Jersey residents.