President Donald Trump’s sweeping orders to end the government’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts represent a sea change for the country, dismantling the decades-old priorities of the nation’s largest employer — the federal government — and broader efforts to push the private sector to ensure its efficiency. The workforce is also diverse and inclusive.
Mr. Trump, just days into his second term as president, has shown with his wide-ranging moves that he is willing to use all the tools of government to fulfill a long-standing campaign promise and create a profound cultural shift across the United States from promoting diversity to an exclusive focus on meritocracy.
Hours after being sworn in, the president signed an executive order ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government, which he and conservatives have long condemned as discriminatory.
Then his administration moved on January 21 to end affirmative action in federal contracting — a move first called for by President Lyndon Johnson — and ordered all federal employees working on diversity, equity, and inclusion to be placed on paid leave and eventually laid off.
The effort represents an escalation of a push Trump made in his last term as president, and relies on the same tools that his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, used to try to promote DEI programs throughout American life by incorporating the priority into rules for federal contractors and federal officials. Grant beneficiaries.
Mr. Biden and his supporters have viewed DEI efforts as a way to ensure inclusion and representation of historically marginalized communities. Trump has called the programs “discriminatory” and said he wants to restore hiring “based on merit.”
The government already hires and promotes based solely on merit, said Everett Kelly, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
“The results are clear: a diverse federal workforce that looks more like the country it serves, with the lowest gender and racial pay gaps in the country. We should all be proud of that,” Mr. Kelly said in a statement.
Kelly called Trump’s actions “a smokescreen to fire civil servants, undermine the apolitical civil service, and turn the federal government into an army of men who support only the president, not the Constitution.”
Mr. Trump’s order directs federal agencies to develop plans to deter DEI programs in the private sector and universities and lists potential civil compliance investigations that could be launched to achieve that goal. It’s a notable attempt to freeze DEI initiatives across the country, putting them in the federal government’s crosshairs so that even if done legally, private sector employers may have to answer to federal investigations.
Changing federal priorities between administrations of different political parties is nothing new. But the scale and speed of the country’s embrace of DEI programs and Mr. Trump’s systematic efforts to root them out are astonishing.
At the end of Trump’s first term, the Republican sought to bar federal agency contractors and recipients of federal funds from implementing diversity initiatives at companies.
Mr. Biden rescinded that order on his first day as president and issued two executive orders aimed at instilling sensitivity to bias and discrimination throughout the government and the workforce generally.
“I cannot tell you how impactful this executive order will be. “He really dictated the four years of Mr. Biden’s administration,” said Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation whose writings have included a focus on DEI programs. “The first thing Mr. Trump will do is rescind this executive order.”
Mr. Gonzalez said the breadth of Mr. Trump’s actions and the fact that they came so quickly was “a very sweeping statement.”
Mr. Gonzalez said DEI programs adopted across American society, from the federal government to private companies, are “dangerous, offensive and immoral,” and violate the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection under the law.
He called Mr. Biden’s actions on DEI “deeply misguided and unfortunate.”
“We’ve been down this road before as a society,” he said. “We decided that was something we didn’t want to do, either to promote or to hire based on race.”
Most Americans agree that being white and a man helps people’s ability to get ahead in the United States today, and that being black hurts people’s ability to get ahead, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll. They are also more likely to say that being a woman or Being Hispanic or Asian is more harm than good.
But another Pew Research Center poll in 2024 found that U.S. adults are more divided over the extent to which white people benefit from advantages that black people do not, or whether women still face obstacles that make it harder for them to get ahead than men. .
There are signs that Trump supporters are particularly concerned about the gains made by groups such as women and ethnic minorities at the expense of others. According to AP VoteCast, relatively few voters in the 2024 election overall — about 3 in 10 — said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that American society focused too much on women’s gains at the expense of men, but Mr. Trump He said he was concerned that American society had focused too much on women’s gains at the expense of men. Trump supporters were more divided. The majority were “not very concerned” or “not at all concerned” about the gains women make at the expense of men, but about 4 in 10 said they were at least “somewhat” concerned.
Even before Mr. Trump’s actions, a backlash over DEI programs was already underway in corporate America.
Dozens of prominent companies have begun to roll back, or even cancel, their DEI commitments in the wake of a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action on college campuses, a decision that unleashed a torrent of conservative-backed lawsuits against diversity efforts in the corporate world. This trend accelerated sharply after Mr. Trump’s election as companies anticipated his aggressive orders to dismantle DEI.
For example, Walmart announced in November that it would no longer consider race and gender when offering supplier contracts, a decision that reflects reforms the Trump administration will pursue through federal contracts.
Indeed, conservative lawsuits have succeeded in forcing some government agencies to stop considering race when awarding government contracts and funding.
Facebook owner META, McDonald’s and Boeing are among other companies that have dropped DEI obligations in response to the changing legal landscape and change in government.
However, several of the country’s largest companies have committed to their own DEI policies, including some on government contracts such as tech giant Microsoft and global consulting firm Accenture.
This story was reported by the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Amelia Thompson Defoe and Alexandra Olson contributed to this report.
