Trump’s War on DEI
Immediately upon his return to the White House Donald J. Trump went to war against DEI.
On January 20 and January 21, President Trump signed three executive orders related to DEI. Two addressed DEI initiatives in the federal government. The third was directed at DEI initiatives in the private sector.
In this blog, we examine the nature and impact of those executive orders and look at DEI in a broader context.
DEI Elimination in the Government
The governmentally focused executive orders were: Ending Radical and Wasteful DEI Programs and Preferences (Radical and Wasteful DEI) and Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Gender Ideology Extremism).
The Radical and Wasteful DEI Executive Order calls for:
the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.
The Gender Ideology Extremism Executive Order states:
It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality.
The Gender executive order is narrow in scope, aimed at reversing protections for transgender and non-binary people.
By contrast, the Radical and Wasteful DEI order is broad in range, encompassing all aspects of the federal government. More importantly, this DEI Executive Order is not merely words on a page with Trump’s signature. Because the DEI Executive Order is being enforced by Elon Musk and his DOGE Service musketeers, it has had and will have a substantial cross-cutting and long-lasting effect.
As a Washington Post team reported in an exceptionally well detailed February 15 article, DOGE has a 3-Phase Playbook for implementing a 180-day plan to eliminate DEI in the federal government:
- Phase 1 on January 20 was to rescind Biden administration executive orders related to DEI and shut down targeted agencies.
- Phase 2 from January 20 through February 19 was to place on leave employees who are “somehow tied to DEI” along with some other employees in non-DEI roles in offices required by law.
- Phase 3 was to move forward to “large scale firings” and other activities to be accomplished between February 20 and July 19.
The Post article reports that by February 15, the majority of the major activities planned for Phases 1 and 2 in the DOGE document had been accomplished. They included:
- Rescinding Biden DEI Executive Order and dissolving the Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council
- Rescinding Biden Gender Policy Council Executive Order and dissolving the Gender Policy Council
- Sending an administrative leave notice to those in DEI offices
- Shutting down all outward facing DEI office websites and social media accounts
- Terminating DEIA related contracts throughout the government (According to a post to the DOGE X account on January 29 — “85 DEIA related contracts totaling — $1B have been terminated…”)
- Canceling DEI training contracts (A DOGE post on February 10 stated that the Department of Education had terminated 29 DEI grants totaling $101M)
In sum, it’s apparent that the Trump Executive Orders for a DEI governmental search and destroy mission are being successfully executed, by and with the assistance of the DOGE executioners. It also appears the elimination of DEI outside the federal government is, and will be, on a fast track as well.
DEI Elimination Across the US
The Trump Executive Order pushing elimination of non-governmental DEI is titled Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity. This order is deliberately structured to compel compliance, and deter resistance, in all organizations in the private sector across the United States.
Section I of this order declares:
… roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, critical and influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.
Based upon that damning declaration about DEI, Trump in Section 2 states:
I therefore order all executive departments and agencies (agencies) to terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and requirements. I further order all agencies to enforce our longstanding civil rights laws and to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.
And Section 4, which is inaccurately labeled “Encouraging the Private Sector to End Illegal DEI Discrimination and Preferences,” spells out the consequences of not complying.
Section 4 begins by demanding that:
The heads of all agencies, with the assistance of the Attorney General, shall take all appropriate action with respect to the operations of their agencies to advance in the private sector the policy of individual initiative, excellence, and hard work identified in section 2 of this order.
From there it proceeds to call for a report that “shall contain a proposed strategic enforcement plan.” It dictates that:
As a part of this plan, each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars.
Needless to say, this Executive Order makes it clear that any pushback against eliminating DEI will not be tolerated, and any business or organization that defies the order will pay a heavy price now and in the future.
There was little need for the intimidating language in the private sector DEI executive order, because many major businesses such as McDonalds, Target, and Walmart had already retreated from — or abandoned — their initiatives well before the order was issued.
Rob Copeland of the New York Times writes that Wall Street has now joined the DEI departure. In his February 16 article, Copeland observes:
The retreat includes white-collar investment banks, consultancies, mutual funds and stock exchanges. The latest was Goldman Sachs, which said on Tuesday that it would drop a quota that forced corporate boards of directors to include women and members of minority groups. Others on Wall Street are curtailing efforts to recruit Black and Latino employees.
One international bank, BNP Paribas, even hit the brakes on programming new events for this month’s International Women’s Day.
DEI in Perspective
What is most astounding about the Trump DEI executive orders is the attempt to flip the script on civil rights in these United States. Before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2 of that year, he stated:
We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings — not because of their own failures but because of the color of their skin.
The reasons are deeply imbedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand — without rancor or hatred — how this all happened.
But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave birth to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, intended to correct past discriminations and bring the “blessings of liberty” to all.
Seven decades later in 2025, President Trump wants to reverse-engineer civil rights by saying that the need is not to bring the blessing of liberty to all, but to eliminate “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences” for those such as people of color, women, and the handicapped.
The President would have us believe that in the United States of America today, we live in a country in which there is no discrimination and everyone is treated equally. He would have us convert civil rights into civil wrongs. He would make civil wrongs the law of the land.
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times shares a perspective similar to ours. In his February 12 piece, Bouie writes:
His attack on D.E.I. isn’t about increasing merit or fighting wrongful discrimination; it is about re-imposing hierarchies of race and gender (among other categories) onto American society. And following the goals of its intellectual architects — one of whom is infamous for his supremacist views — Trump’s war on D.E.I. is a war on the civil rights era itself, an attempt to turn back the clock on equal rights. Working under the guise of fairness and meritocracy, Trump and his allies want to restore a world where the first and most important qualification for any job of note was whether you were white and male, where merit is a product of your identity and not of your ability. As is true in so many other areas, the right’s accusation that diversity means unfair preferences masks a confession of its own intentions.
In addition to the civil rights shape-shifting, the elimination of DEI is a political move to counteract the DEI executive orders that President Joe Biden issued upon replacing Trump in the Oval Office in 2021. There is definitely at tit-for-tat element to this war on DEI.
DEI Must Not Die
As a result of the Trump-initiated war on DEI, and the work of Elon Musk and his minions, DEI is on its deathbed.
Trump has already declared victory in the war on DEI. In his State of the Union address delivered to a joint session of Congress on March 4, he proclaimed:
We’ve ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government. And indeed the private sector and our military. And our country will be woke no longer.
Trump is undoubtedly quite pleased by this but Musk may be even happier.
We think that may be so because on December 15, 2023, before he became embedded in the Trump presidential campaign — and then the Trump presidency, Musk posted on X “DEI must die.” We began a blog we wrote in March 2024 on the status and future of DEI with that quote from Musk.
In our blog, we commented that the attack on DEI had begun in early 2021 with work done by the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank in California; was pushed forward by individuals such as Stephen Miller, Trump’s current deputy chief of staff; and assisted greatly by the Supreme Court’s ruling that race-based affirmative active violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
We reviewed research and concluded that “in general DEI appears to have had a somewhat positive effect in both higher education and in the workplace….” We opined that the assault on DEI had accelerated due to three primary reasons: the Supreme Court’s emphasis on equal protection rights; a determination to protect and maintain the privileges of those in currently advantaged groups; and the large amount of mis- and disinformation in the media.
Finally, based upon the evidence we examined, we concluded that DEI should not be allowed to die and ended our blog in March of 2024 as follows:
The Civil Rights Act provided the platform for giving birth to DEI initiatives, and concerned citizens brought them to life to make this nation a fairer and better place. Concerned citizens will keep DEI initiatives alive during these trying and troubling times.
Together they will say: DEI must not die.
In March of 2025, these are even more trying and troubling times. In these difficult days, it is helpful to recall the following words from President Johnson’s closing remarks before signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
My fellow citizens, we have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail.
Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our Nation whole…
It is a time of testing. And, we must not fail.
Concerned citizens must work to keep DEI initiatives alive and to prevail in the war against those who would kill DEI. By doing so, they will say DEI must not die. By doing so, they will help move our nation become a better and fairer place for all, and the more perfect union envisioned by our founders.
Originally published by the Frank Islam Institute for 21st Century Citizenship. For more information on what 21st century citizenship entails, and to see exemplars from around the world, please visit our website.
