The current US political climate is spurring a 'reclaim' and rallying on the MLK holiday

As communities across the country on Monday host parades, panels and service projects for the 40th federal observation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the political climate for some is more fraught with tensions than festive with reflection on the slain Black American civil rights icon's legacy.

In the year since Donald Trump's second inauguration fell on King Day, the Republican president has gone scorched earth against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and targeted mostly Black-led cities for federal law enforcement operations, among other policies that many King admirers have criticized.

One year ago, Trump's executive orders, “Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” and “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” accelerated a rollback of civil rights and racial justice initiatives in federal agencies, corporations and universities. Last month, the National Park Service announced it will no longer offer free admission to parks on King Day and Juneteenth, but instead on Flag Day and Trump's birthday.

The fatal shooting this month of an unarmed Minneapolis woman in her car by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents sent there to target the city's Somali immigrant population, as well as Trump recently decrying civil rights as discrimination against white people, have only intensified fears of a regression from the social progress King and many others advocated for.

Still, the concerns have not chilled many King holiday events planned this year. Some conservative admirers of King say the holiday should be a reminder of the civil rights icon's plea that all people be judged by their character and not their skin color. Some Black advocacy groups, however, are vowing a day of resistance and rallies nationwide.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Trump said he felt the Civil Rights Movement and the reforms it helped usher in were harmful to white people, who “were very badly treated.” Politicians and advocates say Trump's comments are what are harmful, because they dismiss the hard work of King and others that helped not just Black Americans but other groups, including women and the LGBTQ+ community.

“I think the Civil Rights Movement was one of the things that made our country so unique, that we haven’t always been perfect, but we’ve always strived to be this more perfect union, and that’s what I think the Civil Rights Movement represents,” Gov. Wes Moore, Maryland’s first Black governor and only the nation’s third elected Black governor, said this week in an interview with The Associated Press.

Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, one of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights coalitions, said the Trump administration's priorities make clear it is actively trying to erase the movement.

“From health care access and affordable housing to good paying jobs and union representation," Wiley said, “things Dr. King made part of his clarion call for a beloved community are still at stake and is even more so because (the administration) has dismantled the very terms of government and the norms of our culture.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The conservative Heritage Foundation think tank is encouraging the holiday’s focus to stay solely on King himself. Brenda Hafera, a foundation research fellow, urged people to visit the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta or reread his “I have a dream” speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington nearly 63 years ago.

But using the holiday as a platform to rally and speak about “anti-racism” and “critical race theory” actually rejects King’s ambition for the country, Hafera argued.

“I think efforts should be conducted in the spirit of what Martin Luther King actually believed and what he preached. And his vision was a colorblind society, right,” Hafera said. “He says very famously in his speech, don’t judge by the color of your skin, but the content of your character.”

The NAACP, the nation's oldest civil right organization which had a myriad MLK Day events planned for Monday, asserted that the heightened fears among communities of color and in immigrant communities mean King Day observances must take a different tone. People will have to put their safety first, even if their government isn't, said Wisdom Cole, NAACP senior national director of advocacy.

“As folks are using their constitutional right to protest and to speak out and stand up for what they believe in, we are being faced with violence. We are faced with increased police and state violence inflicted by the government,” Cole said.

The Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of organizations affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, has planned its events under the banner “Reclaim MLK Day of Action.” Organizers planned demonstrations in Atlanta, Chicago and Oakland, California, among other cities, over the weekend and Monday.

“This year it is more important than ever to reclaim MLK’s radical legacy, letting his wisdom and fierce commitment to freedom move us into the action necessary to take care of one another, fight back, and free ourselves from this fascist regime,” Devonte Jackson, a national organizing director for the coalition, said in a statement.

For the first time in its 60-year history, Indiana University in Indianapolis canceled its annual Martin Luther King dinner. Over the years, the event drew notable guest speakers including Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, and activist Angela Davis.

The reasoning was “budget constraints,” according to a social media post by the school's Black Student Union. However, the group said it was worried this was “connected to broader political pressures.” A few students have since organized smaller community dinners or “eat-ins” to fill the void, WTHR-TV in Indianapolis reported.

Meanwhile, the St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Westbrook, Maine, canceled a MLK Day service due to “unforeseen circumstances,” according to the parish website. But a member of the church's “social justice and peace committee” told NewsCenterMaine.com that the pastor was concerned about people's safety amid rumors of ICE agents being in the area.

Overall, there have been few reports of King Day events being majorly scaled down or canceled altogether.

In Memphis, Tennessee, the National Civil Rights Museum is going about its annual King Day celebration as normal. The museum is located on the site of the former Lorraine Motel, where King was shot on April 4, 1968. The museum is offering free admission on the holiday, an annual tradition.

“This milestone year is not only about looking back at what Dr. King stood for, but also recognizing the people who continue to make his ideals real today,” museum President Russell Wigginton said.

Tang reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Matt Brown in Washington, Adrian Sanz in Memphis, Tennessee, and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed to this report.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. seen at Contra Costa College ahead of his lecture in San Pablo, Calif. on Feb. 14, 1964. (Pete Breinig/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

FILE - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers a speech in Selma, Ala., Feb. 12, 1965. (AP Photo/Horace Cort, file)

FILE - The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial during the 9th Annual Wreath Laying and Day of Reflection and Reconciliation, in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2020. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

FILE - A visitor pauses as she visits the memorial "Landmark for Peace" commemorating the site where Robert Kennedy delivered his immortal words on the night of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination in Indianapolis, Wednesday, April 4, 2018. The park where Kennedy called for peace and unity just hours after the assassination of King is being designated a National Historic Site. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

FILE - A crowd marches across the Lefty O'Doul Bridge during the MLK Day March in San Francisco on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (Dan Hernandez/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, File)

FILE - A marcher holds up a sign at a march and rally at the South Carolina Statehouse to honor Martin Luther King Jr. on his holiday on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins, File)

LONDON (AP) — Tens of millions of dollars are on the line as Prince Harry returned to court Monday for the third and final chapter in his legal quest to tame the British tabloids.

Harry, also known as the Duke of Sussex, is among a group of seven high-profile plaintiffs who accuse the publisher of the Daily Mail of invading their privacy by using unlawful information-gathering tactics to snoop on them for sensational headlines.

Harry, Elton John and actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost and others allege that Associated Newspapers Ltd. hired private investigators to bug their cars, obtain their private records and eavesdrop on phone calls.

The publisher has denied the allegations and called them preposterous.

Attorney David Sherborne opened his case by saying there was a culture at Associated Newspapers that spanned decades to unlawfully dig up dirt “that wrecked the lives of so many.”

He said the company’s vigorous denials, destruction of records and “masses upon masses of missing documents” had prevented the claimants from learning what the newspapers had done.

“They swore that they were a clean ship,” Sherborne said. “Associated knew that these emphatic denials were not true. … They knew they had skeletons in their closet.”

The trial in London’s High Court is expected to last nine weeks and will see the return of Harry to the witness box for the second time since he made history in 2023 by becoming the first senior member of the royal family to testify in more than a century.

Harry, wearing a dark blue suit, waved cheerfully at reporters and said “good morning” as he entered the court building via a side entrance. He took a seat in the back row of the courtroom near Hurley and Frost.

The case was one of many that had emerged from the widespread phone hacking scandal in which some journalists began intercepting voicemail messages around the turn of this century and continued for more than a decade.

Harry won a court judgment in 2023 that condemned the publishers of the Daily Mirror for “widespread and habitual” phone hacking. Last year, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship U.K. tabloid made an unprecedented apology for intruding on Harry's life for years, and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.

Harry's self-proclaimed mission to reform the media is more personal and goes far beyond headlines that attempted to document his party boy youth and romance ups and downs.

He holds the press responsible for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi in Paris. He also blames them for persistent attacks on his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, that led them to leave royal life and move to the United States in 2020.

The trial comes as Harry tries to repair a damaged relationship with his family since he moved to America and burned the bridge behind him by penning a scorching 2023 memoir, “Spare,” and airing other family grievances in a Netflix series.

Frosty relations with his father, King Charles III, appear to be thawing a bit after the two met for tea last fall when Harry was last in town.

But a reunion this time looks unlikely.

The start of the trial coincides with Charles' trip to Scotland and Harry's visit is expected to be limited to the opening of the trial and his early testimony.

Defense lawyer Antony White said the lawsuits were based on inferences from trying to connect investigator payments to various articles. But he said “leaky” friends of the celebrities were a major source of the stories.

“This is in reality little more than guesswork — it involves jumping to conclusions based on insufficient evidence, or worse, artificially selecting and presenting evidence to fit the preconceived agenda," White wrote in his opening statement. “It also ignores the fact that references in articles to a ‘friend’, or similar, as a source can be accurate."

He said witnesses, from editors to reporters who have worked for the newspapers for decades, were “lining up” to dispute the allegations and explain the source of each article.

Associated Newspapers also argues that the claims, dating as far back as 1993, were brought too late when the suits were filed in 2022. Judge Matthew Nicklin refused to throw out the cases on those grounds but will reconsider that defense after hearing the evidence.

A private investigator whose name is on a sworn statement supporting the claims of Harry and the celebrities has filed another statement denying he ever snooped on them.

During an early hearing in the case, Sherborne said his clients were not aware they were phone hacking victims until Gavin Burrows and other investigators came forward in 2021 to “do the right thing” and help those he targeted.

Burrows said he “must have done hundreds of jobs” for the Mail between 2000 and 2005, and that Harry, John and his husband, David Furnish, and Hurley and Frost were “just a small handful of my targets.”

But he has since signed another statement saying he had not been hired by Associated Newspapers to do any unlawful work.

It's unclear what impact his conflicting statements will have on the case.

The other claimants are anti-racism activist Doreen Lawrence and former politician Simon Hughes.

Britain's Prince Harry waves as he arrives at London's High Court to lead a group, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, accusing the Daily Mail's publisher of privacy invasion through unlawful tactics in a trial that is part of a wider phone hacking scandal in London, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Britain's Prince Harry arrives at London's High Court to lead a group, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, accusing the Daily Mail's publisher of privacy invasion through unlawful tactics in a trial that is part of a wider phone hacking scandal in London, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Prince Harry arrives at London's High Court to lead a group, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, accusing the Daily Mail's publisher of privacy invasion through unlawful tactics in a trial that is part of a wider phone hacking scandal in London, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Britain's Prince Harry arrives at London's High Court to lead a group, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, accusing the Daily Mail's publisher of privacy invasion through unlawful tactics in a trial that is part of a wider phone hacking scandal in London, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Lawyer David Sherborne arrives at London's High Court to lead a group, including Britain's Prince Harry, Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, accusing the Daily Mail's publisher of privacy invasion through unlawful tactics in a trial that is part of a wider phone hacking scandal in London, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Britain's Prince Harry arrives at London's High Court to lead a group, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, accusing the Daily Mail's publisher of privacy invasion through unlawful tactics in a trial that is part of a wider phone hacking scandal in London, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Britain's Prince Harry arrives at London's High Court to lead a group, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, accusing the Daily Mail's publisher of privacy invasion through unlawful tactics in a trial that is part of a wider phone hacking scandal in London, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Britain's Prince Harry waves as he arrives at London's High Court to lead a group, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, accusing the Daily Mail's publisher of privacy invasion through unlawful tactics in a trial that is part of a wider phone hacking scandal in London, Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

FILE - Prince Harry waves as he leaves the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Wednesday, April 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali, File)