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Federal DEI employees had to figure out what would happen when President Donald Trump began his historic second term on Monday by rescinding the executive order with which President Biden began his term in 2021 — one that ordered racial preferences to be reinforced throughout his administration.
But they probably had no idea that Trump was just getting started, and that they would be furloughed at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.
Trump's executive office rescinded the signature Biden signed on his first day, January 20, 2021, titled “Promoting Racial Equity and Supporting Disadvantaged Communities through the Federal Government,” which became a harbinger of a four-year obsession with race and gender preferences.
Then, over the next 48 hours, Trump proceeded to systematically dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices throughout the vast federal bureaucracy, federal contractors, and federal grant recipients.
It was a policy analogous to the Romans salting Carthaginian fields after reducing their enemy, the Mediterranean city-state, to rubble: the eventual reinforcement of racial preferences was the hallmark of the defeated and despatched Biden administration.
Later Monday, Trump signed his second anti-DEI executive order, titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Favors,” or EO 24. But he wasn't finished. The next day, Trump signed a third executive order titled “Ending Unlawful Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” Then his administration issued a deadly memorandum.
Trump's DEI move was the political equivalent of the Romans salting Carthaginian fields after reducing their Mediterranean enemy to rubble: the eventual reinforcement of racial preferences was the hallmark of a defeated and despatched Biden administration.
The second Executive Order, No. 24, detailed what departments and agencies would need to do to evict DEI. Mainly, they will have to coordinate with Office of Management and Budgett (OMB), the Attorney General, and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) suspended all DEI activities.
Voters support ending DEI programs, poll shows, as federal deadline approaches
For example, the EO called for the following actions:
“Terminate, to the fullest extent permitted by law, all DEI, DEIA, and Environmental Justice offices and positions (including, but not limited to, Chief Diversity Officer positions), all Equity Action Plans, and Fairness Actions; “Equity-related” initiatives, programs, grants or contracts and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for employees, contractors or beneficiaries.
The third executive office signed on its second day in office under the title “End Unlawful Discrimination and Restore Merit-Based Opportunity,” and rescinded years of racial preferences. It even rescinded Executive Order 11246 signed by Lyndon Johnson in 1965, famous for being the first government action to require federal contractors, in effect, to agree to racial quotas.
As my dear friend and colleague at the Heritage Foundation Giancarlo Cannabaro Recently posted on
Gian Carlo added that LBJ's order requiring contractors to create affirmative action plans soon became quotas, because LBJ and future administrations “forced contractors to report their racial composition.”
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There is no move by Trump or anyone else to rid the country of… The scourge of racial preferences It will succeed as long as Executive Order 11246 remains in place.
It's a testament to the new enthusiasm for this second term that Trump's EO craftsmen knew 11,246 had to go.
But Trump is not finished yet. An OPM memo attached to the third executive order told agency heads that by 5 p.m. Wednesday, they were to “send notification to all DEIA office employees that they have been placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately as the agency takes steps to close/ Termination of all DEIA initiatives, offices, and programs.”
Federal workers had already begun receiving memos from their departments and agencies near closing time on Wednesday alerting them that DEI activities would cease immediately. A friend sent me a message, and it was clear and to the point.
Certainly some agencies will try to rebrand DEI activities and of employeesAnd we started to see some of that late Wednesday. But the long-standing battle has only just begun.
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Ending DEI was one of Trump's campaign promises, and it's what voters demanded. This was the sixth priority in a recent Fox poll, after ending inflation, cutting taxes, strengthening national defense, deporting illegal immigrants, and reducing the size of government. It was the top priority for a whopping 29% of voters.
DEI was a more important element for him President Biden. He had to go.
