DEI on the Chopping Block
The mainstream media has been ignoring the biggest story of the decade.
Trump unleashed a package of executive orders last week including a slew of actions aimed at uprooting the politically entrenched DEI culture, with which the Biden administration poisoned the nation during the past four years.
The president’s directives targeting DEI in the federal government and the private sector acted as institutional dynamite, leveling an entire political landscape.
Top headlines, however, pretended not to notice, focusing instead on finding secret pro-Nazi bias in the arm-flailing of billionaire Elon Musk. One had to comb through a rash of hyped up articles about Musk’s alleged “Nazi salute” to find a mainstream news outlet that reported on the president’s game-changing executive actions (EOs).
These detailed executive orders drove a stake through the heart of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), and ended all DEI programs in the federal government and in any agency that receives federal funding.
The executive actions shut down all previous diversity and inclusion policies, calling them discriminatory, divisive and deeply harmful to America’s social fabric.
At its roots, DEI is racism masked as social justice. An offshoot of Marxism, its twisted doctrines have become the lynchpin of the left’s radical agenda bent on destroying society’s moral foundations in the name of “progress.”
DEI is obsessed with framing “white privilege” as the root of all evil, casting all minorities (except Jews) as “oppressed” victims of systemic racism deserving of restitution. This righting of injustice can only be achieved, leftists claim, by overhauling society’s entire infrastructure.
Biden’s ‘Action Plans’
The Biden administration poured billions of dollars into embedding DEI ideology and practices throughout the federal government. It mandated that all departments and federal agencies issue “Action Plans” that detailed how deeply they were implementing DEI practices.
This strategy succeeded to the point where most people came to see DEI, with its worship of “diversity” and “equity” and the dumbing down of educational and industry standards, as an unstoppable force.
Opposition to DEI had been steadily building even prior to Trump’s election victory.
In 2023, attorneys general in 13 states issued warnings to the top 100 companies on the Fortune 500 list about corporate policies such as race-based “employment preferences” as part of DEI programs.
One year later, in June 2024, Sen. JD Vance introduced a proposal to eliminate DEI policies from federal agencies. The Ohio Republican (and future vice president) called DEI a “destructive ideology that breeds hatred and division.”
Finally came the executive orders signed by Trump that with astonishing speed have all but sunk the DEI ship.
The presidential EOs informed all federal agencies last Tuesday that, by no later than 5 pm that same night, they must close all DEI offices, delete all DEI websites, cancel all scheduled DEI “training,” and terminate all DEI contractors.
In addition, they must place all DEI staff on paid leave, and then prepare for extensive staff layoffs by the end of business on the last day of this month, January 31st.
“We are taking steps to close all agency DEI offices and end all DEI related contracts in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders named “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI programs,” the memo that went out to all federal agencies stated.
“These programs divide Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars and resulted in shameful discrimination,” the directive said.
The order also required every federal agency to list their DEI employees as of November 5, 2024 —election day— just in case they were smuggled into other jobs after Trump’s victory, in a covert effort to shield them from being fired.
These executive orders were just the beginning salvos of a far-reaching, multi-pronged aggressive operation to end DEI programs and initiatives across the nation.
Closing the Loopholes
Anticipating that deep state bureaucrats might try to circumvent the EO by reshuffling DEI programs into departments bearing different names, Trump created a mechanism to foil that effort.
“We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language,” the executive order stated. “All agencies must send notices to all employees informing them of the closure and asking employees if they know of any efforts to disguise these now outlawed programs by using coded or imprecise language.”
“If you are aware of a change in any contract description since Nov. 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEI or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances to DEIAtruth@opm.gov within 10 days,” Trump’s executive order continued.
The directive closed with a warning that “failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.”
Trump’s executive action ordered all federal agencies to drop all “diversity” or “affirmative action” policies, and discard their “social justice” goals in hiring and promotions. Instead of aiming for social justice, agencies must prioritize efficiency, initiative, excellence and hard work.
The president’s EO included an order to the Department of Education to send an anti-DEI memo with the Trump administration’s message to all educational institutions receiving federal subsidies.
Headlined “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” the order explained the basis for the president’s executive action.
“Today, roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, financial institutions, the medical industry, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race-and-gender based preferences under the guise of DEI.”
“Those actions can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation,” the order read.
Eliminating Special Job Protection in Federal Workforce
In a further dismantling of the deep state, Trump signed another employment order creating a whole new category of federal employees called “Schedule F.”
Historically, federal employees can’t be fired until a slow-moving committee reviews the decision to terminate them, and offers the employees multiple appeal options. The appeals process is so drawn out and convoluted, it almost guarantees the bureaucrat in question will remain at his or her post until retirement age, or until they choose of their own volition to quit.
This has automatically created a category of bureaucrats who outlast many changes of White House leadership. These people often feel empowered to follow their own agenda or those of the political opposition, knowing they won’t suffer any consequences for non-compliance with the current administration’s policies.
Welcome to the deep state.
In a stroke of political genius, Trump’s “Schedule F” changes all that.
It creates a special “at will” category that allows federal employees to be fired in the same way that all Americans can be fired at their place of employment, for any one of a long list of possible faults or failures.
That list includes incompetence, insubordination, absenteeism, shirking, bad attitude—almost any reason whatsoever, except for race, color, gender and religious belief.
The new category, Schedule F, would apply to all federal employees in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating” positions. Agencies must now identify those politically-sensitive positions— and reclassify those positions as Schedule F.
Then, employees occupying those positions would slide down to the “ordinary American” employment tier, enjoying the same rules and protections as all other Americans who work “at-will”—in other words, at the whim of the employer.
Rooting Out DEI in the Private Sector
President Trump also encouraged the private sector to follow the federal government’s lead, to “end illegal DEI discrimination and comply with all federal civil-rights laws.”
The New York Times reported on this “alarming” development in a story headlined, “Trump’s DEI Order Causes ‘Chaos’ Among Corporate Leaders.” The article discussed corporate America becoming painfully aware that Trump’s executive orders taking aim at DEI stretch far beyond the federal government.
“Trump’s executive order signals that private businesses and organizations could be investigated over their diversity policies,” the article explained, quoting from the EO.
“As a part of this plan,” the executive order explained, “each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations 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.
The “investigations” referred to in the president’s executive action are for non-compliance with civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination in hiring practices based on color, race or religion. The racist anti-white employment choices promoted by DEI agendas will no longer hold sway.
Quite the opposite. In light of the new order promulgated by the Trump administration, DEI practices are now not only recognized as politically incorrect but in many cases illegal.
“That single paragraph mandating investigations by individual agencies was a strategic masterstroke that will drive the biggest and most influential institutions in the country to immediately revise their employment policies,” writes conservative columnist and attorney Jeff Childers.
“It will immediately shut down all internal and external DEI messaging at these institutions, as they scramble to get out of the administration’s crosshairs.”
As the NY Times admitted, DEI’s fortunes are in free fall and it’s happened with astonishing speed.
“Civil rights lawyers believe that the DEI programs that are the most legally vulnerable are those that give employment benefits like hiring and promotions to specific groups on the basis of their race,” the Times article said.
The article quoted a 2023 Supreme Court decision that struck down the race-conscious component in college admissions. This ruling was followed by a wave of lawsuits against companies governed by DEI imperatives.
By decentralizing or outsourcing the huge job of identifying potential discrimination lawsuits down to the individual agencies, the Trump administration has vastly strengthened its enforcement powers.
“With his executive order, Trump is putting the muscle of the executive branch behind the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision,” the article quoted a legal expert as saying.
Ending DEI was a Trump campaign promise, and one the voters demanded, writes the Daily Signal. “It was the sixth-highest priority in a recent Fox poll, following ending inflation, cutting taxes, strengthening national defense, deporting illegal immigrants, and cutting size of government.
“For a whopping 29% of the voters, eradicating DEI from American culture was the first priority,” the article attested.
Conservative Think Tank Helped Craft Trump Transition
Examining the rollout of Trump’s executive orders to abolish DEI highlights what might not be obvious at first glance: there is no way the tightly orchestrated directives, memos and emails could have been drafted in the last few days as the new Administration moved into their DC offices.
Trump’s Cabinet hasn’t even been approved yet. The operational plan could not possibly have been formulated overnight.
Swift management actions like placing federal DEI staff immediately on leave, directing the agencies to promptly terminate diversity-related programs as well as closing loopholes, demonstrate a coordinated strategy that had to be months, even years in the making.
In a place like DC where leaks are the norm, this meticulous plan was somehow kept under wraps until the moment it was rolled out. This secrecy turned out to be vital to the plan’s implementation.
The lighting speed in which all this happened—such as requiring things be done today— defeated the possibility of oppositional litigation aimed at thwarting the executive order. Much of these directives will have already been carried out before they can be brought in front of a judge.
A lot of the credit for the operation goes to a prominent conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, writes Daily Signal. Over the last four years, they’ve laboriously cataloged every federal post that needs to be changed and that can legally be changed.
They painstakingly drafted a variety of blueprints outlining and detailing many of what of what they projected would be Trump’s Day One executive orders. Informed sources say that President Trump relied on these materials in formatting his hundreds of executive actions after he was inaugurated.
Blackout At CDC, FDA, NIH As Trump Administration Moves In
It’s not just federal workers or DEI directors that are being targeted by the Trump administration’s determination to “drain the swamp.” In another nobody-saw-it-coming bombshell, President aimed his laser at the big health agencies.
Trump orders ‘blackout’ at CDC, FDA, NIH as agencies prepare for MAGA bloodbath,” a Daily Mail headline read. The article described how President Trump ordered a temporary communications blackout at America’s federal health agencies.
“HHS has paused mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health. This is a short pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization,” HHS deputy secretary Stephanie Spear told CBS.
The ban included regular CDC reports, like the bird flu alarms, press releases, published studies, and specific actions like grant approvals.
By cutting off their external voice, Trump put the agencies “in a virtual chokehold,” wrote conservative columnist Jeff Childers. “They can’t spin a narrative or plead their case to the public. It was like duct-taping their mouths shut while simultaneously handing them a performance review clipboard.”
“By banning their external communications, the Trump Administration is sending a clear, humiliating internal message: We’re in charge now.”
President Trump singled out the public health agencies in his inaugural address, observing they “do not deliver in times of disaster.” He was understood to be alluding to the Covid pandemic and how badly the agencies handled that — if not caused it to start with.
This pause, however long or short, isn’t just about communication bans or grant freezes, critics say. It’s about the rebuilding of trust in agencies that nobody trusts anymore.
According to a government website, the CDC receives about $24.9billion in public funding every year, while the FDA costs $8.4billion and the NIH costs more than $47billion annually.
Department of Defense Ends DEI in Military
The Department of Defense (DoD) is the latest agency that is disbanding all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs following President Donald Trump’s executive order terminating all federal DEI programs.
“The President’s guidance (lawful orders) is clear: No more DEI at Dept. of Defense,” newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in an online post.
One part of the order reinstates more than 8,000 service members who were discharged for refusing to get the Covid-19 vaccine.
In a handwritten note shared along with the post, Hegseth wrote: “The Pentagon will comply, immediately with the president’s guidance. No exceptions, name-changes, or delays.”
“Those who do not comply will no longer work here,” added Hegseth.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., echoed Hegseth, writing on own post: “The best way to stop discriminating against people on the basis of race or gender is to stop discriminating against people on the basis of race or gender. Let DEI die.”
Hegseth was sworn in on Saturday morning after he secured his confirmation to lead the Pentagon on Friday, following weeks of intense political drama as Democrats sought to block his appointment.
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Fulfilling One More Promise
“A Haitian illegal alien in Boston appeared very upset on Thursday that President Donald Trump allowed ICE’s elite Boston team to arrest him,” a Fox News correspondent observed.
The arrest was one of several that ICE conducted in Boston’s sanctuary jurisdiction, representing just one more promise Trump is keeping after taking office.
ICE arrested several illegal aliens, including an MS-13 gang member with an Interpol Red Notice for aggravated murder, a second MS-13 gang member facing gun charges, and many “aggravated assault” and “child assault” suspects.
Several of these individuals have been in jail but were released onto the streets by municipal authorities, a Fox News correspondent reported.
One of the MS-13 suspects had just been released by a sanctuary jurisdiction the day before. When ICE found him, he was hanging around with another man who ICE determined is also in the U.S. illegally.
ICE arrested both and are seeking to deport the two illegals in short order. “This is just the beginning,” newly appointed Department of Homeland Security warned. “Sanctuary cities are going to see a lot more of this.”
Republicans hailed the arrests as a positive start in what promises to be a daunting and herculean mission. Vice President JD Vance commented drily that while the illegal Haitian is “grateful to Biden for letting him come here, I’m glad we’re deporting him.”
