In First Days, Trump Deals ‘Death Blow’ to DEI and Affirmative Action

President Donald Trump has directed the federal government to end dozens of programs that give preference to minorities and women, some of which have been operating for decades.
17:33 JST, January 25, 2025
In the first 48 hours of his second term, President Donald Trump moved to eviscerate the surviving remnants of affirmative action, swiftly upending decades of policy – actions observers say are sure to touch every aspect of American life.
The newly signed executive orders to end “illegal discrimination” and restore “merit to government service” were so sweeping and aggressive that even conservative activists – ones who had been waging a multipronged attack to end diversity initiatives in the private and public sectors – were shocked by their scope and intensity.
“I can’t believe he’s going this far,” said Dan Lennington, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which for years has led a relentless legal campaign to invalidate diversity programs. “It still is sinking in, because I’m thinking of all the ways in which this affects the average American.”
The flurry of executive orders was meant to put a hard stop on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs throughout the federal government. The administration ordered U.S.-run diversity offices to close and scores of their workers to be put on administrative leave by Wednesday. It also suspended dozens of contracting programs aimed at minorities and women, some of which have been operating for decades.
But the orders go far beyond the federal government. Trump also directed agencies to draw up lists of public companies to investigate over their DEI policies – a move that legal experts said could send chills through the private sector.
The Justice and Education departments also were required to issue guidance to educational agencies and universities on ways to comply with the Supreme Court’s landmark decision banning race-conscious admissions.
And in a move that scholars underscored as a historic turning point, Trump revoked an executive order signed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 directing federal contractors to take “affirmative action” to end discrimination at their firms, a landmark policy viewed as a major step in the federal government’s effort to foster racial equality. In 1985, the Reagan administration tried to replace the order, but backed off after widespread backlash from business leaders and members of Congress.
“The equal employment principles embodied in EO 11246 have stood the test of time and remained in place through both Democratic and Republican administrations,” the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s three Democratic members wrote in a joint statement. Rescinding it removes “a source of protection against discrimination for the millions of Americans working for companies that receive federal dollars. We should be standing up for working Americans, not weakening their civil rights.”
Trump’s actions come more than a year after the Supreme Court overturned race-based affirmative action at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a ruling that touched off an intense legal campaign to end DEI in the private and government-contracting sectors. Since then, diversity programs and their proponents have largely been in retreat, with Fortune 500 companies such as Meta and Walmart proactively paring back their programs, and federal initiatives for minority-owned business being forced to undo fundamental aspects of their missions.
Now, the Trump administration is building on the Supreme Court’s decision and, in some ways, attempting to take it further, according to legal experts.
“The Trump administration is trying to give the death blow to diversity in legal and in political cultural terms,” said Noah Feldman, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School.
The order issued Tuesday evening, which directs the attorney general and heads of federal agencies to identify places to end DEI, is testing the boundaries of the high court’s affirmative action ruling by applying its logic to private employers, Feldman said. If the Justice Department follows through, it “would be a new development, and would be significant in how corporate America would have to respond to the evolution of the constitutional and the statutory doctrine.”
Feldman cautioned, however, that government actions take time to trickle through culture and society – and the belief in diversity as a fundamental good won’t go away overnight.
“Lots of people still take the idea of diversity super seriously and deeply,” Feldman said. “But the writing is on the wall for the use of the justification of diversity in a range of spaces.”
By Wednesday afternoon, Trump’s actions were already being felt across the federal workforce. A memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned State Department officials that they will face “adverse consequences” if they fail to report on colleagues who have concealed or obscured existing DEI programs at the department.
“The Administration is aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs,” the memo says. “There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.”
Employees were asked to send any information regarding such efforts to an email address containing the term “DEIA Truth.” (The “A” stands for “accessibility.”)
Similar messages were sent to staff at the Education and Homeland Security departments, according to emails reviewed by The Washington Post.
But Interior Department employees were told Wednesday that some civil rights programs are still required regardless of the executive orders, according to emails reviewed by The Post. These programs “should not be categorized as DEIA as they predated the executive orders in question and are mandated by law,” wrote Jennifer Koduru, the agency’s principal diversity officer and director of the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Civil Rights. Interior’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The executive orders stand to reach deep into the private and government-contracting sectors, said Jason Schwartz, a partner at Gibson Dunn and co-chair of the law firm’s labor and employment group. The attorney general and agency heads have been tasked with identifying as many as “nine potential civil compliance investigations” of publicly traded corporations; large nonprofits or associations; foundations with assets of $500 million or more; state bar associations; medical associations; or universities with endowments over $1 billion.
Schwartz described the order as “go find nine big whales and make examples of them.”
He also highlighted new prohibitions on federal contractors and grant recipients from participating in many affirmative action or DEI measures. Violations are subject to the False Claims Act, which can bring heavy financial penalties – while lawsuits could be filed either by the government or private actors.
“They are handing out sheriff’s badges to private citizens to sue about government contractor DEI programs,” Schwartz said.
Legal experts said parts of the executive order are sure to be challenged in court.
“It’s going to be a really crazy ride,” said Susan D. Carle, a law professor at American University, who predicted there would be “a lot of litigation.”
“We’re going to see whether our system of checks and balances holds,” she added. “We’re going to see what separation of powers means. He’s testing all kinds of boundaries.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has previously pledged to challenge Trump administration policies aimed at dismantling DEI, said it was weighing its options. Ricardo Mimbela, an ACLU spokesman, said the organization is “analyzing Trump’s EOs right now, their potential impact, and how we can protect people’s fundamental rights in the face of these attacks.”
But ReNika Moore, director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, cast the administration’s position as extreme – one that goes “far beyond what we’ve seen from prior Republican administrations.”
Though much uncertainty remains about how Trump’s directives will be enforced, “it’s clear they’re trying to create a chill and really make both the private sector and public-sector actors really think twice about efforts that are absolutely legal,” Moore said.
The flurry of orders marks a sharp turnaround from the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd ushered in widespread calls for racial equity and prompted corporate America to double down on policies meant to increase opportunity for historically marginalized groups. DEI encompasses a wide range of practices designed to diversify companies, schools and organizations, including recruiting and mentorship programs, as well as anti-bias training and employee resource groups. But critics contend that such policies come at the expense of nonminorities, and that the real goal should be race neutrality.
One striking aspect of Trump’s actions against DEI and affirmative action, Moore noted, is the argument that laws and programs implemented to eliminate historical barriers to opportunity for underrepresented groups are being accused of advancing discrimination themselves.
“The efforts to recast those with a broad brush as discriminatory is really galling,” Moore said. “It flies in the face of history and the laws themselves.”
But Lennington, the legal activist, said he believes that the executive orders will be effective. “There is no hiding from this,” he said. “You can roll the dice and think that maybe a court someday is going to hold that this is unconstitutional or illegal – but that is a hell of a business decision.”
The order also brings a lot of uncertainty for universities, said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement for the American Council on Education.
He said it was very telling that the order indicates there will be a report within 120 days with guidance about how to comply with the Supreme Court ruling banning the use of race in college admissions. That’s a clear tip-off that a more expansive definition is coming, he said, one that could go well beyond admissions to include things such as race-based scholarships, leadership programs for women, and affinity housing.
Fansmith questioned the provision about agencies identifying up to nine examples of the worst actors. “It’s a little bit frustrating and confusing. Why nine? Not entirely clear.”
And restricting that scrutiny to universities with an endowment of $1 billion or more doesn’t make sense, he said; schools believe their diversity programs are beneficial and serve a huge variety of students, including those with disabilities, veterans and rural students. But if the argument is that they are discriminatory and harmful, limiting the investigation to a tiny subset of the 4,000 or so colleges “certainly lends itself to being taken as a political maneuver rather than a real effort to address concerns.”
That’s not to say the provision won’t have real, practical implications, he said. “There’s a clear effort to chill activities on campuses to try and incentivize schools into some sort of pre-compliance.”
Christopher Rufo, an anti-DEI activist who participated in the campaign to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay in January 2024, marveled at the force of the order.
“This is a sea change and my sources in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and the Ivy League are confirming that the institutions are adapting to the new reality,” he said in an email to The Post. “We won. The next four years are going to be about making these changes permanent.”
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