Jonathan Kozol
The Republican Party has embraced the Heritage Foundation’s handbook, Project 2025. The Project’s handbook’s DEI recommendations fit into four main categories: (1) Abolishing DEI offices and personnel; (2) Ending the government’s participation in DEI initiatives; (3) Amending laws to align with a conservative vision of nondiscrimination; (4) Taking enforcement action against organizations that engage in DEI.
These goals have also seeped their way into state and local legislation. Since the Supreme Court’s blow to affirmative action in higher education admissions in 2023, state lawmakers have introduced more than 106 anti-DEIA bills. Now, President Donald Trump’s administration is working to eradicate DEIA initiatives and civil rights protections with executive orders that would reverse decades of federal anti-discrimination policies.
What is Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Accessibility?
Diversity ensures representation among qualified persons across race, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, socioeconomic status, military status, shared ancestry, parental status, persons who live in rural communities, and more so that institutions reflect the communities they serve.
Equity recognizes that inequalities exist and works to dismantle the barriers that disproportionately harm marginalized communities, ensuring fairness in access to resources and opportunities.
Inclusion ensures that institutions are not just diverse, but that all individuals, especially those historically excluded, can fully participate and contribute without fear of discrimination or bias
Accessibility expands opportunities for individuals of all abilities by removing physical, technological, and systemic barriers that may prevent full participation in society through reasonable accommodations, inclusive work and public spaces, and more.
On the one hand, DEI is a broad-brush term that refers to the policies and measures that organizations use to prevent discrimination, comply with civil rights laws and create environments more welcoming to people from marginalized backgrounds. The scope of DEI programs goes far beyond leveling the playing field for black and brown people. Other groups benefitting from DEI: White women, LGBTQ+ people, families who need IVF, disabled people and veterans.
Supporters of these diversity programs say they help companies hire and retain top talent and boost innovation and profits.”Talk to any CEO of a major Fortune 500 company. They’ll tell you that their bottom line, dollar wise, does better when there’s more diversity in the room,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a former civil rights lawyer and a Democrat, recently told the New York Times.
In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious college admissions. The ruling didn’t have direct implications for companies but it energized conservative groups led by Stephen Miller, now White House deputy chief of staff for policy, and anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, who have targeted corporate “wokeism” at nearly four dozen companies from Apple to Pizza Hut-owner Yum! Brands.They took aim at controversial measures such as setting hiring targets, which they say are illegal racial quotas, for women and people of color.
The organization that Miller co-founded, America First Legal, recently called on the Labor Department to investigate federal contractors, like Meta and Lyft, with DEI policies that it says may violate federal law and Trump’s executive order. Another activist, Robby Starbuck, wrung concessions from corporations like Walmart and Target through pressure campaigns on social media.
A growing number of prominent companies have scaled back or set aside the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that much of corporate America endorsed following the protests that accompanied the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in 2020.Facebook and Instagram owner Meta canceled DEI programs altogether to align themselves with the Trump administration. The Companies Rolling Back DEI Programs as of April 11, 2025 – IBM, Gannet (nation’s largest paper publisher), United Health Group, MLB, Victoria Secret, Warner Bros, Goldman Sachs, Paramount, Bank of America, Black Rock, Citigroup, Pepsi, Coca -Cola, Disney and more. Several U.S. retailers that publicly scrapped diversity, equity and inclusion programs — including Target, Amazon and Tractor Supply — are maintaining certain efforts behind the scenes.
The Republican Administrations Anti-DEI Actions
Since Trump took office, the National Park Service —- an agency charged with preserving American history —- has changed how its website describes key moments from slavery to Jim Crow.
Earlier administrations investigated whether Native American school mascots were discriminatory. The Trump administration defends them, reflecting a broader shift.
K-12 schools must sign certification against DEI to receive federal money, administration says. “Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. He said many schools have flouted their legal obligations, “including by using DEI programs to discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another.“The use of certain DEI practices can violate federal law,” the administration wrote in the certification, adding that it is illegal for programs to advantage one race over another.
Trump executive order on Smithsonian targets funding to programs with ‘improper ideology’. “Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,”
Frustrations, fear of erasing history voiced after artifacts returned from African American history museum. The removals come after the Trump administration issued an executive order to remove certain pieces of history from the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., one of which is the NMAAHC..
Colleges Must Eliminate DEI Programs to Receive Research Funding, NIH Says The N.I.H. has terminated hundreds of diversity grants awarded to young researchers, many of whom come from the very places that supported Trump. The push to end D.E.I. has been a blunt instrument, eliminating highly competitive grant programs that defined diversity well beyond race and gender. Those who have lost grants include not only Black and Latino scientists, but also many like Mr. Dillard, who are white and from rural areas, which are solidly Trump country. The administration has denounced universities as hotbeds of liberal elitism, inhospitable to viewpoint diversity. The canceled diversity grant programs were intended to make science less elite, by developing a pipeline from poorer areas of the country that tend to be more conservative.
Legal Responses
A lawsuit was filed that challenges constitutionality of Anti-DEI orders. The plaintiffs are the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, the American Association of University Professors, the Restaurant Opportunities Center United, and Baltimore’s mayor and city council. They argue that the executive orders undermine efforts to correct historical discrimination against women, racial minorities, and LGBTQ individuals.
A coalition of civil rights organizations, including the National Urban League, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Lambda Legal, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging recent executive orders aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives within federally funded institutions.
The Trump Administration’s Department of Education recently issued a “Dear Colleague” letter, which threatens federal funding cuts for education institutions for engaging in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.The NEA and ACLU have filed a lawsuit challenging the letter, arguing it imposes unfounded and vague legal restrictions and limits academic freedom.
Judge issues temporary injunction against Trump administration cancellation of humanities grants. In reaching her decision, the judge said the “defendants terminated the grants based on the recipients’ perceived viewpoint, in an effort to drive such views out of the marketplace of ideas. This is most evident by the citation in the Termination Notices to executive orders purporting to combat ‘Radical Indoctrination’ and ‘Radical … DEI Programs,’ and to further ‘Biological Truth.’”
Federal judge strikes down NIH directives against DEI research. A federal judge on Monday vacated the National Institutes of Health’s directives to eliminate research funding for diversity, equity and inclusion-related projects.
Community Responses
Boycotting large corporations over DEI rollbacks. Consumers across the country are trying to hit large corporations where they hurt: their bottom line. The group People’s Union USA is urging buyers to stop shopping at major companies like Walmart, Target and Amazon in protest of corporate control and following the rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The National Urban League backed last month’s economic blackout by urging consumers to be intelligent about how they spend their money.
Fast-food giant, Mc Donald’s is facing a weeklong boycott over corporate DEI rollbacks. The boycott is a show of economic resistance against McDonald’s abandonment of DEI goals, including leadership diversity targets and supplier inclusion programs. McDonald’s Responds to Nationwide Boycott
A coalition of civil rights groups have launched a weeklong initiative to condemn Donald Trump’s attacks on Black history, including recent executive orders targeting the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC.
State & Local Government Responses
In New Jersey, a bill was introduced that would require diversity, equity, and inclusion offices in all state agencies
New York Warns Trump It Will Not Comply With Public School D.E.I. Order
Mass. schools boss defies Trump DEI edict: State will ‘continue to promote diversity’
Democratic-led cities and states push back on threats to cut US school funding over DEI
What Else You Can Do
The League of Women Voters created an excellent resource on How DEI Impacts Us – And Democracy.
Join your local League to get involved in advocacy within your community.
Call or email your federal, state and local representatives , and insist they remain committed to DEI .
Far-Right Candidates Are Trying To Take Over Public Schools Across The Country. Consider serving your community as a volunteer member of your local board of education. Each state has a school board association which will guide you through the steps. Or attend your local school board meetings to confirm curriculum decisions do not reflect the anti-DEI initiatives.
Become involved with your local library. Book banning is not new to this country. It’s just on a whole other level Local libraries are generally controlled by a local government entity, often with oversight from a library board or commission. Across the South over the last decade, control of what happens on bookshelves has turned into a pitched battle, with white supremacist and Christian nationalist groups on one side facing off against an unlikely coalition of progressives, educators, Black leaders and drag queens on the other.
Donate and/or volunteer with organizations committed to fighting the Republican’s anti-DEI goals:
Legal Defense Fund – NAACP
Next Post: The Assault on Colleges
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