Trump Ramps Up Fight to Dismantle DEI From Corporate America

The signatories of these memos — the people enforcing Trump's war on DEI — are themselves civil servants. They are the high-level career bureaucrats currently running these various agencies. They are not Trump political appointees. In other words, federal employees are split: some particularly among the rank-and-file are mounting a resistance, while the acting directors at the top seem happy to do Trump's bidding,

Klippenstein wrote

Ultimately, these attacks on DEIA are just a smokescreen for firing civil servants, undermining the apolitical civil service, and turning the federal government into an army of yes-men loyal only to the president, not the Constitution."

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, wrote in a Wednesday statement

President Trump promised to terminate DEI in the federal government, protect equal opportunity, and force schools to end discriminatory admissions policies, and he delivered."

The White House Office of Communications said in a "fact sheet" emailed to Newsweek on Tuesday night

My plan is to be invisible for the next four years."

He said

So now an employee who’s going through a transition will have to figure out the entire process themselves — they’re creating the wheel over and over for each individual,

he said

When you decide to become a civil employee, your goal is to really help the American people. And anyone who’s in this line of work knows that the goal is to always help all people,

she said

People are going to be ill-informed about what discrimination is and what it looks like,

said Les Alderman, a DC-based civil rights lawyer who represents federal and congressional workers

The DEI jobs were underfunded, understaffed, the people doing the work were heroes with very few resources,

he said

They deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system,

the memo continued

The previous administration has embedded deeply unpopular inflationary, illegal and radical practices within every agency and office of the federal government,

Trump's own executive action reads

Send a notification to all employees of DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility) offices that they are being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately as the agency takes steps to close/end all DEIA initiatives, offices and program,

said a US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo posted on social media platform X by a CBS correspondent

Karoline Leavittpress Secretary

To every reporter asking about this: I can gladly confirm!"

said Leavitt on X, resharing the post from the CBS journalist

There’s this clear effort to hinder, if not erode, the political and economic power of people of colour and women,

Smikle said

Karoline Leavittpress Secretary

President Trump campaigned on ending the scourge of DEI from our federal government and returning America to a merit based society where people are hired based on their skills, not for the color of their skin,

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Tuesday night

I do not believe your information to be accurate.”

She added

We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based,

Trump said in his inauguration speech earlier this week

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,

said one executive order ending such initiatives

Federal agencies have deeply embedded policies and procedures that can’t simply be switched off overnight,

she added

We are taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump's executive orders titled Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions,

the template read

These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination,

it added