If you click on the link below, you’ll go to Trump’s executive order, signed in his first day in office, ending DEI positions in the government and describing the dismantling of DEI programs.
As readers know, I’m not a fan of Trump, whom I see as dangerously unstable, and I’m not a MAGA-ite. Regardless, neither will I damn everything his administration does as harmful or evil, for that’s simply not the case, and those determined to do that from the outset have a problem. In this case, the action seems salubrious.
Here’s the whole thing; I’ve put in bold part that I see as especially important:
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose and Policy. The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military. This was a concerted effort stemming from President Biden’s first day in office, when he issued Executive Order 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.”
Pursuant to Executive Order 13985 and follow-on orders, nearly every Federal agency and entity submitted “Equity Action Plans” to detail the ways that they have furthered DEIs infiltration of the Federal Government. The public release of these plans demonstrated immense public waste and shameful discrimination. That ends today. Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.
Sec. 2. Implementation. (a) The Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), assisted by the Attorney General and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), shall coordinate 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. To carry out this directive, the Director of OPM, with the assistance of the Attorney General as requested, shall review and revise, as appropriate, all existing Federal employment practices, union contracts, and training policies or programs to comply with this order. Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements.
(b) Each agency, department, or commission head, in consultation with the Attorney General, the Director of OMB, and the Director of OPM, as appropriate, shall take the following actions within sixty days of this order:
(i) terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and “environmental justice” offices and positions (including but not limited to “Chief Diversity Officer” positions); all “equity action plans,” “equity” actions, initiatives, or programs, “equity-related” grants or contracts; and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for employees, contractors, or grantees.
(ii) provide the Director of the OMB with a list of all:
(A) agency or department DEI, DEIA, or “environmental justice” positions, committees, programs, services, activities, budgets, and expenditures in existence on November 4, 2024, and an assessment of whether these positions, committees, programs, services, activities, budgets, and expenditures have been misleadingly relabeled in an attempt to preserve their pre-November 4, 2024 function;
(B) Federal contractors who have provided DEI training or DEI training materials to agency or department employees; and
(C) Federal grantees who received Federal funding to provide or advance DEI, DEIA, or “environmental justice” programs, services, or activities since January 20, 2021.
(iii) direct the deputy agency or department head to:
(A) assess the operational impact (e.g., the number of new DEI hires) and cost of the prior administration’s DEI, DEIA, and “environmental justice” programs and policies; and
(B) recommend actions, such as Congressional notifications under 28 U.S.C. 530D, to align agency or department programs, activities, policies, regulations, guidance, employment practices, enforcement activities, contracts (including set-asides), grants, consent orders, and litigating positions with the policy of equal dignity and respect identified in section 1 of this order. The agency or department head and the Director of OMB shall jointly ensure that the deputy agency or department head has the authority and resources needed to carry out this directive.
(c) To inform and advise the President, so that he may formulate appropriate and effective civil-rights policies for the Executive Branch, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy shall convene a monthly meeting attended by the Director of OMB, the Director of OPM, and each deputy agency or department head to:
(i) hear reports on the prevalence and the economic and social costs of DEI, DEIA, and “environmental justice” in agency or department programs, activities, policies, regulations, guidance, employment practices, enforcement activities, contracts (including set-asides), grants, consent orders, and litigating positions;
(ii) discuss any barriers to measures to comply with this order; and
(iii) monitor and track agency and department progress and identify potential areas for additional Presidential or legislative action to advance the policy of equal dignity and respect.
Sec. 3. Severability. If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its provisions to any other persons or circumstances shall not be affected.
Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 20, 2025.
Although I feel that the government (and its citizens) need to give people in the underclass a hand up, I think in general that has to be through the creation of a system of equal opportunities from birth rather than equal representation in colleges and hiring (“equity”). Inequities are often imputed to structural racism acting right now, but, at least in academia, that doesn’t seem to be the case. If racism or misogyny is a cause, it was bigotry in the past whose effects persist in the present, reducing equal opportunity. While it’s a lot harder to effect equal opportunity, as that means effacing the environmental differences that, say, hold back black and Hispanic children from accessing good educations and decent resources. Rectifying this also involve effacing cultural differences, for example the attitude that I’ve seen that smart minority kids, and those who study hard, are somehow “acting white”—something to be denigrated. Fixing this entails a herculean task which will cost money (even worse, creating cultural changes, for we know that simply throwing more money at schools doesn’t improve education). But it’s the only way to help those who, for no fault of their own, lack opportunity.
That said, the solution is not DEI programs, which have not done anything to equalize opportunity, and have effaced the idea of merit, replacing it with identity. By the time DEI programs kick in, usually in or after college or in hiring after high school, it’s too late. Further, it’s widely recognized that DEI training does not change people’s attitudes.
Finally, there is a sense of palpable unfairness with aspects of DEI that are racist in the sense that people are advanced at high levels because of their ancestry. One example in science are grants that are either given out preferentially to investigators from minority groups or, especially, grants given out with DEI aims: grants designed to show that structural racism is responsible for inequities X, Y, and Z. (See this post on how National Science Foundation grants studying DEI issues have gone from 0.29% of all grants in 2021 ($14,280,928) to 27.21% of all grants ($289,593,584) in 2024. All scientists are aware of this, and of the paucity of anything useful coming from such funding.
Under the new order, not only will all DEI positions and programs be terminated in the government, including jobs relabeled to hide the fact that they were DEI positions. As section ii(E) suggests, this would also include federal grant money used to further equity, which presumably means federal grants to science.
These are early days, and it’s not clear to me whether public universities or schools with DEI programs will have to terminate them or surrender government funding, but if that’s the case, places like the University of Michigan are going to lose a lot of jobs.
And it looks as if the requirement of including DEI statements for job applications is on its way down the drain. That is good because I consider this compulsory speech that is prima facie illegal, though almost nobody’s challenged this in court.
I’m not sure how we are defining DEI these days. When I was in academia, I was on a grant from NSF that funded “underserved” students with great academic potential in STEM fields. It was partly marketed as a DEI project because it did increase ethnic diversity at my school. Of course, the grant targeted low income (but academically talented) students. We had students of all racial backgrounds, but the group was less white than the general population because of course, whites have lower poverty levels, on average. This program seems like the right one, especially since systematic racism from the past does still affect economic well being of people today. I can say that 95% of those students graduated and all of those are either working full time or furthering their education. I hope we don’t lose these types of programs that do increase diversity, make the playing field more level, and include people that might have been excluded because of their financial status because these types of (what were once DEI programs) have real benefit to society.
I agree with you that it’s okay to target low-income students; after all, that’s what a lot of colleges do to get talented students who couldn’t afford the price of college. If that increases ethnic diversity, that’s okay so long as there are no racial preferences with the criterion staying on talent AND low income.
I agree with PCC(E). At one time, the combination of ‘talent AND low income’ was disproportionately Jewish. These days it is more likely to be Asian. The changing enrollment at the Bronx High School is a measure of this.
Right off the bat, this is what I wanted to get to about this issue.
Student admissions, University employment, and other government funded positions, are a critical road into the middle class for people who are economically disadvantaged. So I would like to see some degree of help in the admission and hiring of competent people from the lower classes into those areas. That said, one must also continually watch for signs of over-reach. Admittedly, I don’t know how to implement these things, but it seems like a desirable thing. The American Dream and all that.
This should result in racial diversity, and I do think that is a good thing too. It is of course good for the ones who are benefited, and it’s also good for others to see people who look like them moving up the economic ladder.
Any discussion of the genuinely harmful phenomenon of “acting white” is considered, by many, to be highly “problematic”, despite considerable evidence for its being a hindrance to educational achievement by some minorities (obviously, not those of South Asian or East Asian ancestry).
It will be interesting to see, first, if the Trump Administration can really get a handle on grant money. It appears that in some cases the money goes to NGOs for purposes that aren’t explicitly DEI, and the NGO then turns around and gives it to groups for DEI initiatives. Second, it will be interesting to see if DEI can survive without U.S. government funding. There are still States that will fund it, as well as foreign NGOs and interests. My impression is that DEI is basically living off public funding.
One avenue is civil rights law. Racial discrimination is illegal, and I believe cases could be brought against entities practicing it, even if no federal body is funding it.
There is a kind of diversity issue distinct from giving relatively poorer kids who need it a hand up. When I was at Swarthmore, the Admissions people took a special interest in increasing the proportion of entering students who didn’t come from Boston, New York and Philadelphia. They would look out for kids from a rural high school in Michigan, for example, so entering students did not just meet students with backgrounds very like their own. That college is a time to learn what people unlike yourself are like is a kind of diversity issue which may be easier for private colleges to advance, but it is certainly a diversity issue which is important though not connected with DEI.
Agreed, so long as there is indeed an educational advantage to geographic diversity, which I think there is.
Geographic diversity is fine. You can reverse-discriminate in a zero-sum game on any criterion you like as long as that criterion is not one of the criteria prohibited in civil rights law and, as Jerry says, we should encourage this if there is some educational value in diversity of that criterion. Since gender identity is not a prohibited criterion, a school could legally bar all trans applicants, or it could preferentially admit them, as long the applicants agreed to obey sex-based rules on campus, as all other students must, and not claim their trans identity gave them any special rights. Whether there would be any educational value in doing either I would leave up to the college.
“Since gender identity is not a prohibited criterion…”
Discrimination on the basis of gender identity is, in fact, illegal in some states. It has been brought under the umbrella of sex/gender.
It is in New York state. Trantifa, including ACLU, HRC, Lambda Legal, piggybacked trans nonsense on an abortion-rights bill. As I said in another comment, gender ideology can’t survive on its own. It must parasitize genuine civil-rights movements.
https://womensliberationfront.org/news/how-the-new-york-equal-rights-amendment-fails-women?rq=New%20York .
So the task for those states is to legislate that neither gender identity nor gender expression is to be considered as “sex”. “Sex/gender” shall not a conflated thing, the legislation needs to say for further clarity. Someone’s gender identity, nor another person’s non-violent response to it, shall not be the business of the state, any more than what hand she writes with or whether he likes or loathes pineapple on pizza.
“Whether he likes or loathes pineapple on pizza” is considered fighting words where I come from.
“So the task for those states is to legislate that neither gender identity nor gender expression is to be considered as “sex”. ”
Considering the list of features that cannot be discriminated against in many states, from race to religion, I’m not sure that unlinking sex and gender (which I regard as important) would achieve much. A state legislature would simply tack “gender” on to the list.
Considering the rather small number of transgendered people in he U.S., I am more interested in the conflation of “race” and “ethnicity” in many of these states, which might have some parallels to sex versus gender: we think of race as biological and immutable, but “ethnicity” is acquired as a cultural repertoire through long participation in an “ethnic group”, and presumably many features of “ethnicity” are mutable — my Scottish ancestors would not recognize me as a member of their ethnic group, yet I have many of the stereotypical physical characteristics of Scots. Just an idle thought!
I am no fan of DEI programs, and especially of requirements which mandate those seeking employment to explain how they will advance DEI objectives through their hiring. These I regard as compelled speech, and part of why I became a member of FIRE several years back.
I am confused by some of the language found in the executive order, specifically the repeated references to “environmental Justice”. It’s not at all clear to me what those are about, and I am hoping some of you here can enlighten me.
I also wondered what “environmental justice” meant.
Yes I was wondering about “environmental justice” too. What is it?
Edit:
I found a Wikipedia article on it:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_justice
I don’t have time to more than skim right now. Does anyone know if Trump’s executive order will stop the NIH from issuing grant calls with DEI built into them? That matters a lot. If that wasn’t in the executive order, a scientist needs to whisper this in Elon’s ear.
(Unlike Ceiling Cat, I’m a fan of both Elon and Trump, Trump even more so after watching The Apprentice.)
I’ll come right out and say, this is FANTASTIC! I’m no fan of Trump either, but I support this and am breaking out the popcorn for the next four years.
Asd a third party I do notice a crazy thing with it. I’d say it started with the intent of insuring that those who’re usually intentionally overlooked are at least given the chance to prove themselves, it was seen as all about quotas and such and in overcompensation became that and ended in a tit-for-tat 💩 slinging contest.
I know all too well what it is to be brushed aside for being autistic. I’ve been seen as a mad retard and brushed aside for it and never given the simple chance to prove myself.
That motive of giving all a chance to prove oneself and the respect of those different is quite reasonable. The catch is they overcompensated.
I see on X that Trump has signed an order stopping all funds to UNRWA. If this is true, this is such a relief. Even more than funding DEI – which is hateful enough – the fact that we have been funding a group that provably encourages children to demonize and kill Jews has been the most troubling kind of moral insanity.
Excellent! UNWRA must be utterly destroyed. More than anything else in the world they are responsible for aiding the self-immiseration of the Pals.
Without them Pal “refugees” would have been resettled and started life anew like tens of millions of ordinary refugees worldwide.
UNWRA has kept the gaping wound the Pals they themselves caused open and festering. See my article, here at Jihadwatch and republished in two other websites
https://jihadwatch.org/2024/07/kindergarten-jihad-who-plays-the-beheaded
All this is the work of and financed by UNWRA.
On this topic…Trump’s other target – the WHO – has changed and is now a PRC simp. Those commie pukes have been keeping out Taiwan (when it mattered, COVID) and promoting the dreadful “Traditional Chinese Medicine” for the last few decades for geopolitical cred, soft power and money.
D.A.
NYC/Florida
Thanks for sharing that, Brooke.
I found proof: https://www.thejc.com/news/world/trump-halts-funding-to-unrwa-and-revokes-sanctions-on-settlers-in-executive-orders-wa1t0qek
I agree
The speed that this was done is amazing. I expected that he would address this but that it would take months or even years of wrangling and that the result would be watered down.
I lead off a lot of things with, “I’m no fan of Trump but…”, and it’s time to put that phrase on the shelf for things like this. Strunk and White would probably want me to eliminate it anyway as being unnecessary extra words. Hopefully this will extend out to the corporate sector as I’m scheduled to go to a brainwashing / strike that / I mean “What DEI Means To Me” workshop for four hours on Monday.
I salute you on trashing the fallacy of DEI. I wish you had doen it earlier. It was difficult back then, but the pendulum has swung far enough the other way that this commentary is now acceptable in the mainstream pretty much overnight. Sometimes we just get lost in our own tribes noise.
Section 1 of the 14th amendment seems unambiguous to me. Then again, many people argue that the 2nd amendment was never intended to include modern day assault rifles and the like.