Trump repealed an Obama-era anti-segregation housing bill in a bid to regain support from the 'Suburban Housewives of America'

• President Donald Trump on Thursday repealed an Obama-era bill designed to prevent segregation in housing projects that receive federal funding.
• The move comes as Trump's support among suburban voters is crumbling, with many angry at his responses to the coronavirus crisis and the anti-racism protests.
• "Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better!" the president tweeted on Thursday night.
• Critics say the president's actions are "fearmongering and these racial dog whistles," and that educated suburban voters would not find that impressive.

President Donald Trump on Thursday repealed an Obama-era bill designed to prevent segregation in housing units that receive federal funding, in an apparent bid to win back the support of white suburban voters who polls show are abandoning him.

On Thursday the White House said that the president would repeal the Obama administration's Furthering Fair Housing rule, which requires states or cities seeking federal funding to formulate plans designed to stop patterns of racial discrimination.

In a statement on the repeal, the White House said it "ends the Federal encroachment on local communities that threatened our nation's suburbs."

Under the replacement bill, the White House said, "localities will continue to certify that they will affirmatively further fair housing, as required by law."

Around the same time the president linked to a New York Post article on the repealed rule, and appealed to the "Suburban Housewives of America" to read it.

In the article the author, a Republican and former Lieutenant Governor of New York Betsy McCaughey, claims that Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, would reimpose the anti-segregation rule if elected.

"The rule was one of the worst abuses of the Obama-Biden administration — a raw power grab masquerading as racial justice," McCaughey wrote.

Trump claimed in his tweet: "Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better!"

While in the early years of his career in real estate, Trump was sued in 1973 by the Department of Justice for violating civil rights laws designed to stop housing discrimination. He signed an agreement after a protracted legal battle pledging not to discriminate against people on the basis of their race, but not admitting to the allegations.

The move comes as virtually every major poll shows Trump's support in suburban areas crumbling. Back in 2016, suburban votes made up around 50% of Trump's support, NPR reported.

In response, Trump has sought to depict Biden as the puppet of left-wing radicals determined to defund the police and instigate chaotic protests, and cast himself as the champion of law and order.

Critics have accused the president of a thinly-veiled racist fear-mongering, which was unlikely to attract suburban voters.

"There seems to be a complete lack of understanding why he's been getting drubbed in the suburbs," Brendan Buck, a top aide to Republican officials including former House Speaker Paul Ryan, told The Washington Post.

"Educated suburban voters are not interested in — and are actually repelled by — his fearmongering and these racial dog whistles."