There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
DEI and the Rise of Ideological Tyranny During the Biden Years
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, large-scale protests using slogans and manufactured concepts such as “systemic racism” prompted many major U.S. corporations to rapidly adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, embedding DEI goals into hiring, promotion, and retention policies.
These programs were framed as responses to public pressure and moral urgency, positioning DEI as both a social responsibility and a corporate priority. Over time, however, DEI moved beyond equal opportunity into ideological enforcement and introduced a new vocabulary that reinforced a specific political framing. Between 2014 and 2020, a series of slogans and manufactured concepts entered widespread use and were incorporated into mandatory training programs, corporate communications, and academic requirements.
Slogans such as “Black Lives Matter,” which became widespread after Ferguson, “Defund the Police,” “Believe All Women,” “Silence Is Violence,” “Say Their Names,” “No Justice, No Peace,” and “The Future Is Female” evolved from protest rhetoric into enforced speech norms. Corporations placed these slogans on their websites and in official communications to signal compliance and moral alignment, while companies and individuals who refused were often marginalized, ostracized, or professionally disadvantaged.
At the same time, a parallel set of manufactured concepts reshaped everyday language and institutional policy. Terms such as white privilege, white fragility, unconscious or implicit bias, microaggressions, intersectionality, positionality, racial humility, and systemic racism were embedded into workplace and academic life.
Other concepts, including anti-racism redefined as active ideological participation, cultural appropriation with an expanded scope, lived experience elevated above objective evidence, whiteness treated as a distinct moral category, and acronyms such as BIPOC, further codified the framework.
Language surrounding allyship, decolonization, centering marginalized voices, safe and brave spaces, trigger warnings, emotional labor, tone policing, and settler colonialism migrated from activist and academic contexts into corporate policy and professional evaluation. Together, these slogans and concepts functioned as compelled speech, shaping acceptable belief and expression within institutions.
Given so many slogans, concepts, and vocabulary, corporations needed to hire people to ensure that these agendas were being enforced. Chief diversity officer positions grew by 168.9 percent between 2019 and 2022. DEI job openings increased 55 percent in the first three months after Floyd’s death, and DEI-related positions rose 60 percent nationwide by 2020. NPR reported that 78 percent of its 2021 new hires were non-white. Condé Nast reported that in 2021 only 25 percent of new hires were male and 49 percent were white. Vox Media shifted from being 82 percent male and 88 percent white in 2013 to 37 percent male and 59 percent white by 2022. At the Los Angeles Times, only 7.7 percent of interns hired since 2020 were white men.
These changes were accompanied by restrictive policies and systemic injustices. Training programs compelled ideological conformity, with employees required to attend sessions teaching that they were inherently racist based on skin color and that America was systemically racist. Acceptance of concepts such as white privilege and racial guilt was often mandatory. Critics argue that such programs created hostile work environments for white employees.
Multiple legal challenges followed. At Pennsylvania State University, a white male professor sued over training that attacked race neutrality, equal opportunity, colorblindness, and merit. In Diemert v. City of Seattle, a former employee claimed diversity initiatives created a hostile work environment. In another case involving a Washington medical center, an employee alleged termination for failing to adhere to race-conscious DEI principles.
Documented hiring practices reinforced these claims. Wells Fargo was accused of conducting sham interviews with diverse candidates for positions that had already been filled, leading to shareholder lawsuits. The NFL faced accusations of conducting fake interviews with minority candidates. Disney’s Writing Program awarded 107 writing fellowships and 17 directing fellowships without a single award going to a white man.
Hiring managers quoted in multiple accounts stated openly that they were not hiring the best candidate and that excluding white men was routine. University hiring statistics in California reflected similar patterns. Since 2020, UC Irvine hired three white men out of 64 tenure-track positions. UC Santa Cruz hired two white men out of 59 humanities positions. Brown University hired three white American men out of 45 humanities and social sciences positions since 2022.
Racial segregation also expanded through the use of affinity groups. Conservative critics documented mandatory segregated training sessions organized by race and “whiteness accountability” groups required for white employees. At Stanford University, Jewish staff reported pressure to join whiteness accountability groups, effectively erasing Jewish identity by categorizing them solely as white. At the federal level, the Trump administration responded in September 2020 with Executive Order 13950.
The order banned federal agencies and contractors from conducting training involving “divisive concepts,” including teachings that one race is inherently superior, that individuals are inherently racist or sexist based on race or sex, that moral character is determined by race, or that merit and hard work are racist concepts. Enforcement mechanisms included the threat of contract termination and a hotline operated by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. Contractors were required to certify compliance or risk losing federal funding.
The Biden administration immediately rescinded the order. Federal DEI requirements were expanded, and diversity officers were required across federal agencies.
Corporate environments increasingly restricted speech. Employees reported fear of questioning DEI policies, citing termination, blacklisting, public shaming, and career destruction. In Savage’s reporting, every interviewee demanded anonymity, fearing being labeled racist. Questioning diversity metrics became grounds for professional retaliation, and self-censorship became standard.
Meritocracy was abandoned in favor of explicit racial targeting that, while unofficial, was enforced in practice. Diversity was prioritized over qualifications, and white applicants were automatically disadvantaged. Procurement and supplier mandates reinforced the same framework. Retailers faced pressure to adopt policies such as the “15 Percent Pledge,” allocating shelf space to Black-owned businesses. Supplier diversity requirements expanded, with non-diverse suppliers increasingly excluded.
Education systems reflected similar patterns. K–12 schools and universities implemented mandatory courses on systemic racism and required students to acknowledge white privilege. In some cases, grading was influenced by adherence to ideological positions. States such as California and Washington enacted laws mandating diversity reporting, LGBTQ+ curricula, and other identity-based requirements.
These policies produced economic, social, and cultural harms. Institutions declined in quality, media trust eroded, and decision-making shifted from merit to race. Racial division increased, young men were excluded from career paths, family formation was delayed, and mental health crises intensified. Colorblindness was abandoned in favor of explicit racial consciousness, individual rights were weakened, and group identity replaced merit.
Corporations also engaged in performative actions, including mandated Black Lives Matter statements, black squares on social media, rainbow logos during Pride month, land acknowledgments, preferred pronouns in email signatures, and product rebranding campaigns affecting long-standing brands and media content.
These developments constitute violations of civil rights law, compelled ideological speech, collective guilt imposed on individuals, career destruction based on immutable characteristics, institutional corruption, and social engineering. The George Floyd moment triggered a moral panic that led to institutional overreach, discrimination against white Americans, particularly men, and long-term institutional decline.
SiriusXM’s Megyn Kelly told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith on his show Wednesday that the push for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has “created more of a divide” between races in the U.S.
Over the years, DEI initiatives have expanded into both the education and business sectors, with the Biden-Harris administration allocating over a trillion dollars to implement the agenda across federal agencies. On “The Stephen A. Smith Show,” Smith asked Kelly about her opposition to DEI.
“If this nation — whether it’s corporate America or beyond — was exercising fairness and truly looking for the best candidates and not engaging in favoritism that favored primarily white males then there would have never been any need for DEI,” Smith said. “Just like there would not have been any need for affirmative action or other things. So for me when I think about it, that’s what I believe folks who speak against DEI, specifically on the right, obviously, are missing. They don’t bring up that element. To that you say what?”
“Well, I think it’s mixing a lot of things. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with diversity, and if I were remaking America I would make sure we had it in all forms in all places. I’d make sure we have lots of different people with lots of different backgrounds and lots of different ideological views running different corporations. But that’s not really what DEI is,” Kelly said.
A study published in March by the Functional Government Initiative and the Center for Renewing America said the Biden-Harris administration spent $1.1 trillion implementing 460 DEI-related programs across 24 federal agencies. Kelly said her issue with the push stems from its heavy emphasis on the “equity” aspect, calling out how her children have been taught about the push in their schools.
WATCH:
“DEI is mostly focused on the ‘e’ the ‘equity,’ which is just a joke. Equity means you have the right to end up in the same place, irrespective of how much effort goes into it. That is not an American value. That is not something I value in or share in at all,” Kelly said. “Diversity is a different story, and I think we really were working toward it, and we were doing pretty well as a country.”
Kelly said that during her time in college in the 90s, “race was being diminished” and becoming less of a focus. She said, however, the setback came when race became “the top thing that we were supposed to notice about other people,” which she believes “created a wall between us.”
“By the way, most of DEI hiring and firing and whatever practices are illegal. It is illegal to even count race as a factor in hiring or firing. All these companies and these banks who are like, ‘Well, in the end, it tips the scales if she’s a woman or if he’s a black man.’ Wrong,” Kelly said.
“You just violated the law. You’re not allowed to consider it at all. But we lost our minds after George Floyd. We decided we were gonna throw the law out the window or just not enforce it and start living and dying by immutable characteristics,” Kelly added. “Like I should get extra points because I have a vag or you should get extra points because your skin is brown. It’s just utter madness.”
Since reentering office in January, President Donald Trump has dismantled DEI initiatives across government and education. One of his first actions included a Jan. 20 executive order declaring an end to “radical and wasteful government spending” on DEI programs and preferencing.
(Featured Image Media Credit:Screenshot/YouTube/”The Stephen A. Smith Show”)
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
The following is a lightly edited version of a speech that was delivered to university administrators at the annual meeting of the Higher Learning Commission on April 7, 2025, in Chicago, Illinois. These administrators heard the moral case against DEI policies (some for the first time). Many walked out while others screamed or booed.
Public opinion has turned against DEI. It is tempting for DEI advocates to wish this reality away and call the DEI rollback part of the “white backlash.” Or claim that people just don’t want to learn real history. Or keep DEI in place under another name. Some administrators in academia are simply rebranding DEI as “community engagement” or “belonging centers.” But we all know what you are doing—it’s the same thing with a slightly different label.
DEI advocates are no doubt convinced of their position. They do not want to change. Their jobs depend on DEI policies. They think the DEI cause is righteous and central to the mission of higher education.
A majority of Americans find DEI policies objectionable, however. My home state of Idaho recently banned DEI policies, joining many states in passing sweeping bans. The recent dismantling of DEI at the University of Michigan may be a watershed moment for DEI in higher education. Michigan had been a leader in DEI advocacy, when measuring its funding of DEI initiatives and the number of DEI administrators on its payroll.
Something is happening here. What it is, is rather clear.
Let’s face facts: DEI advocates are increasingly in the minority. They are fighting rear-guard actions against a majority of people in the country, and in many states. They are fighting against democracy to preserve their DEI domain.
Might it not be better to understand why Americans are increasingly frustrated with the DEI regime? Might it not be better to recognize why DEI is so unpopular in America? There is common sense in the anti-DEI position that should be appreciated and understood.
The public philosophy implicit in DEI policies is traceable to what was once our reigning civil rights ideology—the disparate impact regime. Disparate impact ideology traces all disparities between groups—between blacks and whites, between men and women, for instance—to systemic discrimination.
When blacks do not attend a university in the same numbers as whites, that university is thought to be discriminatory. Perhaps it is admissions tests, a lack of role models, or insufficient marketing. The list goes on. DEI advocates promise to lessen these disparities by adopting race-conscious policies. Special scholarships are introduced to hire or admit more blacks, and programming is added that’s expressly aimed at attracting black faculty.
One interesting fact about DEI policies is that they do not work all that well on their own terms. I have written a number of articles about how inclusion policies, for instance, make people of all races feel that they do not belong on campus and how equity policies do not lead to equity. This happens at university after university, yet no one in the DEI industry seems to care.
My conclusion is that DEI policies are about cultural revolution, not results. This new culture—call it the diversity persuasion—is bad for the university.
Standards
Many have made the legitimate argument that the diversity persuasion detracts from merit-based institutions. It is difficult to maintain high standards of achievement and learning when an institution’s goal is erasing racial or sexual disparities. The result is grade inflation, lower levels of learning, and a host of other problems. For many, the attack on standards is the main problem with DEI.
DEI Lie
The problem with DEI goes deeper than just the compromising of standards. The idea that all disparities are traceable to discrimination is an obvious untruth—a lie. The greatest book proving this is Thomas Sowell’s Discrimination and Disparities. Sowell shows that different groups with somewhat different subcultures value and prioritize different things. Different groups have, on the whole, different talents, interests, and abilities. The world is multivariate, not unicausal.
Disciplinary Corruption
Disciplinary corruption is not the same thing as DEI policies. Disciplinary corruption is when DEI or critical theories become sown into a discipline’s professional standards. DEI policies are top-down demands from university administration.
The attempt by universities to impose a false ideology leads to intellectual corruption. When the diversity persuasion conquers a discipline, its findings and research concerns become increasingly corrupt and far removed from reality. Disciplines like history and English—which, when they focus on history and literature, are among the most vital studies in the world—become corrupt and lose their intellectual vitality when they focus on gender and race.
Social Harmony
DEI as an official policy makes social peace impossible to accomplish. Americans want to live in social harmony with one another, to tolerate one another. Reasonable attachment to our country and civilization must be cultivated. A reasonable patriotism—as opposed to a blood-and-soil patriotism—must be based in reality. We must all know and appreciate how the country serves our interests and makes good things possible.
DEI is an accusation against the country. It makes reasonable accommodations impossible, because it is a philosophy of endless accusations and endless demands.
Social Engineering
University administrators under the spell of DEI demand that the world conforms to a theory that is, at most, only partly true. This has much to do with the DEI lie. People and groups are somewhat different, which leads to disparities or gaps. That is the way of the world, which DEI fights against at every step.
For DEI advocates, since disparate impact is a problem the world over, everything ultimately must be brought under the control of the state or the university to eliminate disparities. Everything is presumptively illegal. Everything must be brought under the control of clumsy administrators who promise to make things right through tinkering and social engineering. This is why we have gotten an increasingly racialized set of bureaucratic and judicial edicts that impose handicaps and confer privileges based on race, sex, or group identity rather than the protection of individual rights. This is why the University of Michigan and other universities had DEI officials overseeing nearly every aspect of university operations.
Living the lie of DEI makes it necessary to remake the world to reflect its lies. Living according to a lie creates the need for endless, frustrating social engineering.
Decline in Trust
The rise of disparate impact ideology coincides with a terrific decline in public trust and mutual trust in our society. We have, under its auspices, gone from a high-trust to a low-trust society. This makes sense. DEI is based on a rejection of our heritage. It is anti-Enlightenment. It is anti-individual rights. It ultimately demands the control of thought and speech. It prefers a multicultural country, where we emphasize and celebrate our differences and try to make heritage Americans feel guilty about our colorblind constitutional principles and social norms. It emphasizes oppression so that people will become attached to a new, as-yet-to-be-seen country. And nowhere does this multicultural country embody the freedom, goodwill, and affection necessary to hold a people together in happy and peaceful coexistence.
Americans increasingly recognize this problem and are saying “enough.” Public servants should listen to those Americans as fellow citizens who want to achieve a workable social harmony in our country.
DEI and University Mission
The university’s chief missions are to promote workforce education, to promote professional education, to pass on an appreciation of our civilization, and to ensure basic numeracy and literacy. DEI is tangential to these missions. In fact, it compromises them. It teaches that workforce education is not honorable. It lowers standards for admission into professional schools. It undermines our civilizational heritage. It gives people excuses for not achieving basic numeracy and literacy.
The diversity persuasion is a bad public philosophy. It makes a reasonable patriotism difficult to cultivate. It promises a future of endless social engineering to bring about equal outcomes. It undermines America’s traditions of freedom, individual rights, and the rule of law. It undermines social harmony and public trust. Since DEI is based on a lie, it misshapes our minds, our laws, and our country, and makes our future worse. It is a cause of polarization. It is a solvent on social bonds. Things will only get worse in this country if we continue down the DEI road.
The alternative is a colorblind future. We should seize it. It’s what our laws and our culture demand. It is a workable solution. Gaps will still exist, but they will always exist. Universities should be open to all, of course, because that is precisely what is needed for a workable social harmony to emerge.
The diversity, equity, and inclusion project, often seen as a major element of the so-called “woke” creed along with green fanaticism, keeps popping up as a possible subtext in a variety of recent tragedies.
In the case of the Los Angeles fires, Mayor Karen Bass, who cut the fire department budget, was warned of the mounting fire dangers of the Santa Anna winds and parched brush on surrounding hillsides. No matter—she junketed in Uganda. When furor followed, on cue, her defenders decried a racialist attack on “a black woman.”
Her possible stand-in deputy mayor for “security” was under suspension for allegations that he called in a bomb threat to the Los Angeles city council—a factor mysteriously forgotten.
The fire chief previously was on record mostly for highlighting her DEI agendas rather than emphasizing traditional fire department criteria like response time or keeping fire vehicles running and out of the shop.
One of her deputies had boasted that in emergencies, citizens appreciated most of all that arriving first responders looked like them. (But most people in need worry only whether the first responders seem to know what they are doing.) She further snarked that if women allegedly were not physically able to carry out a man in times of danger, then it was the man’s fault for being in the wrong place.
The Los Angeles water and power czar—culpable for a needlessly dry reservoir that could have provided 117 million gallons to help save Pacific Palisades—was once touted primarily as the first Latina to run such a vital agency. But did that fact matter much to the 18 million people whose very survival depended on deliverable water in the otherwise desert tinderbox of greater Los Angeles?
In all these cases, the point is not necessarily whether the key players who might have prevented the destruction of some 25,000 acres of Los Angeles were selected—or exempted—on the basis of their race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Rather the worry is that in all these cases, those with responsibility for keeping Los Angeles viable, themselves eagerly self-identified first by their race, gender, or sexual orientation—as if this fact alone was synonymous with competence and deference.
In fact, racial or sex identity has nothing to do with whether a water and power director grasped the dangers of a bone-dry but vital reservoir; whether the fire department must know how many fire hydrants remain in working order; or whether a mayor understood that in times of existential danger she must stay on the job and not fly on an optional junket to Africa.
As of yet, we have no idea exactly all the mishaps that caused a horrific air crash at Reagan Airport in Washington. The only clear consensus that has emerged is that the horrific deaths could have been easily preventable—but were not because, in perfect storm fashion, there were multiple system failures. In that sense, both the Los Angeles and Washington, DC, disasters are alike.
When a military helicopter crashes into a passenger jet in Washington, DC, airspace—an area that has not seen such a disaster for 43 years—the likely cause is either wrongly altered protocols or clear human error, or both.
So, it is vital to discover what the causes of the disaster were to prevent such a recurrence. As in the Los Angeles cataclysm, the role of DEI—the method of hiring regulatory agency administrators, air traffic controllers, or pilots on bases other than meritocracy—becomes a legitimate inquiry.
To dispel such worries, authorities must disclose all the facts as they do when there are no controversies over DEI. Yet we never learned the name of the Capitol police officer who fatally shot unarmed Ashli Babbitt for months, nor received evidence of his spotty service record. The same initial hesitation in releasing information marked news about the ship that hit the Francis Scott Bridge near Baltimore and why traffic barriers were not up in the French Quarter before the recent terrorist attack in New Orleans.
In the Washington, DC, crash, two questions arise about the conduct of pilots, air traffic controllers, and the administrators responsible for hiring, staffing, and evaluating such employees.
The first issue is whether hiring, retention, and promotion in the airline industry or the military is not fully meritocratic. That is, were personnel hired on the basis of their exhibited superior education, practical experience, and superb scores on relevant examinations in matters relating to air travel? Or were they instead passed over because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation?
Was the shortage of controllers a direct result not of an unqualified pool of applicants but rather because of racial restrictions place upon it to reduce its size?
Second, were the promoters of DEI confident that they could argue that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were as important criteria for the operation of a complex aircraft system as the past traditional criteria that had qualified air traffic controllers, pilots, and administrators?
Not only did DEI considerations often supersede past traditional meritocratic requirements for employment, but DEI champions had also argued that “diversity” was either as important to, or more important than, traditional hiring and retention evaluations.
The answers to these first two questions make it incumbent to ask further whether DEI played a role in the Washington, D.C., crash, similar to how it may have in the Los Angeles wildfires.
It is not racist, sexist, or homophobic to ask such legitimate questions, especially because advocates themselves so often give more attention and emphasis to their race, gender, and sexual orientation than their assumed impressive expertise, proven experience, and superior education. In other words, had one’s race, sex, or orientation been incidental to employment rather than essential, such questions from the public might never have arisen.
Finally, what are the problems with DEI that have not just lost its support but put fear into the public that, like the Russian commissar system of old, it has the potential to undermine the very sinews of a sophisticated, complex society?
DEI is an ideology or a protocol that supersedes disinterred evaluation. In that regard, ironically, it is akin to the era of Jim Crow, when talented individuals were irrationally barred from consideration due to their mere skin color. Like any system that prioritizes identity over merit—whether Marist-Leninist credentials in the old Soviet Union or tribal bias in the contemporary Middle East—a complex society that embraces tribalism inevitably begins to become dysfunctional.
DEI does not end at hiring. Rather, once a candidate senses he is employed on the basis of his race, sex, or sexual orientation, then it is natural he must assume such preferences are tenured throughout his career. Thus, he will always be judged by the same criterion that led to his hiring. In other words, DEI is a lifetime contractual agreement, an insurance policy of sorts once DEI credentials are established as preeminent over all others.
The advocates of DEI rarely confess that meritocratic criteria have been superseded by considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Instead, to the degree that they claim such criteria are not at odds with meritocracy, they argue that the methods of assessing talent and performance are themselves flawed. Tests then are unsound and systemically biased and therefore largely irrelevant. Few DEI advocates make the argument that diversity is so important that it justifies lowering the traditional standards of competence.
Once DEI tribal protocols are established, they are calcified and unchanged. That is when supposed DEI demographics are overrepresented in particular fields such as the postal service or professional sports, then such “disproportionality” is justified on “reparatory” grounds or ironically on merit. If other non-DEI groups, by DEI’s own standards, are deprived of “equity” and “inclusion” or “underrepresented,” it is irrelevant. DEI is, again, a lifetime concession, regardless of changes in status, income, or privilege. An Oprah Winfrey or a Barack Obama—two of the most privileged people on the planet—by virtue of their race, at least as it is defined in the Western world—are permanently deserving of deference.
DEI is also ossified in the sense that it makes no allowance for class. Asian Americans, when convenient, can be counted as DEI hires even though, in terms of per capita income, most Asian groups do better than so-called whites. Under DEI, the children of elites like Barack Obama or Hakim Jeffries will always be in need of reparatory consideration but not so the children of those in East Palestine, Ohio.
Because DEI is an ideology, a faith-based creed, it does not rely on logic and is thus exempt from charges of irrationality, inconsistency, and hypocrisy. The belief system feels no obligation to defend itself from rational arguments. For example, are not racially separate graduations or safe spaces contrary to the corpus of civil rights legislation of the 1960s? There is no such thing as DEI irony: the system contrived to supposedly remedy the de jure racism of some 60-70 years ago itself hinges on de jure racial fixations as the remedy—now, tomorrow, forever.
As in all monolithic dogmas such as Sovietism or Maoism, skeptics, critics, and apostates cannot be tolerated. So, in the case of DEI, logical criticism is preemptively aborted by boilerplate charges of racism, sexism, and homophobia. And the mere accusation is synonymous with conviction, thereby establishing DEI deterrence, under which no one dares to risk cancellation, de-platforming, ostracism, or career suicide by questioning the faith.
DEI is also incoherent. It is essentially a reversion to tribalism in which solidarity is predicated on shared race, sex, or sexual orientation, not through individual background, particular economic status, or one’s unique character. No DEI czar knows why in the pre-Obama era, East Asians did not qualify for DEI status, though they seem to now, or when and how the transgendered were suddenly not statistically still traditionally .01 percent of the population but, in some campus surveys, magically became 10-20 percent of polled undergraduates. No one understands what percentage of one’s DNA qualifies for DEI status, only that any system of the past that fixated on ascertaining racial essentialism, such as the one-drop rule of the old South or the multiplicity of racial categories in the former South Africa, or the yellow-star evil of the Third Reich, largely imploded, in part by the weight of its own absurd amorality.
DEI never explains the exact individual bereavement that justifies preferentiality. All claims are instead collective. And they are encased in the amber of slavery, Jim Crow, or homophobia or sexism of decades past. Social progress does not exist; the malady is eternal. The candidate for DEI consideration never must ascertain how, when, or where he was subject to serious discrimination or bias. And that may explain all the needed prefix adjectives that have sprouted up to prove these -isms and -ologies exist when they otherwise cannot be detected, such as “systemic,” “implicit,” “insidious,” or “structural” racism rather than just “racism.”
DEI never envisions its demise or what follows from it, much less whether there are superior ways to achieve equality of opportunity rather than mandated results. The beneficiaries of DEI seldom ponder its efficacy, much less whether resources would be better allotted to K-12 education during the critical years of development. And they certainly show little concern about those often poorer and more underprivileged who lack the prescribed race, gender, or orientation for special DEI considerations.
In sum, because of these inconsistencies, Donald Trump may well be able to end DEI with a wave of an executive order—simply because its foundations were always built of sand and thus any bold push would knock over the entire shaky edifice.
LTRP Note: The following is posted for informational and research purposes.
By Casey Chalk The Federalist
DEI is a calamitous, insidious evil that, if not systematically expunged from American institutions, will destroy them and us.
Aslew of companies in the last year have backtracked on their “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives. McDonald’s and Meta were the most recent to fall, with activist Robby Starbuck claiming credit for persuading Mickey D’s to abandon DEI because diversity quotas discriminate against white applicants and diversity goals punish companies not sufficiently “diverse.” As the Los Angeles wildfire catastrophe shows, diverting funds to DEI causes can also result in less money for essential services such as firefighting.
These accusations against DEI are accurate and reason enough to end their influence over corporate America and federal, state, and local governments. But as someone who recently completed his employer’s DEI training, I can tell you DEI is much, much worse than a system that, ironically, is prejudicial against whites, males, and “cisgenders.” It is a calamitous, insidious evil that, if not systematically expunged from American institutions, will destroy them and us. Click here to continue reading.
Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler
Hegseth and Noem confirmed: Pete Hegseth was confirmed as the new U.S. secretary of defense on Friday, though Vice President JD Vance was forced to cast the tiebreaking vote after three Republican senators sided with the Democrats, deadlocking the decision at 50-50. Former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell joined Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins in opposing Hegseth. After his confirmation, Hegseth committed to reestablishing the U.S. military’s focus on “lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards, and readiness.” Also confirmed over the weekend was Donald Trump’s choice for DHS secretary, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. She received votes from all 53 Republicans as well as six Democrats. Noem will have a lot of work to do — namely, refocusing the department on actual immigration enforcement and border security. Thus far, the Senate has confirmed four of Trump’s picks.
Cotton urges Trump to “revisit” his decision to pull protective details off people targeted by Iran (Daily Wire)
Chinese app DeepSeek hammers U.S. stocks with cheaper open-source AI model (Fox Business)
CIA now favors lab leak theory on origins of COVID (WSJ)
Colombia caves to Trump: With apologies to Juan Valdez, this ain’t your grandfather’s Colombia. For a few hours this weekend, the country’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, was feeling froggy — so much so that he refused to accept two generous military planeloads of his countrymen, whom President Donald Trump was helpfully repatriating. “The US cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals,” he posted. “I deny the entry of American planes carrying Colombian migrants into our territory.” Petro also demanded “dignified treatment” of these Colombian criminals, after which Trump promised an immediate 25% tariff on all Colombian goods and a raising of that tariff to 50% after a week. Trump also ordered visas revoked and future travel banned for Colombian government officials. He said, “We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to … the Criminals they forced into the United States!” In response, Petro caved with head-snapping speed, dispatching his presidential plane to scoop up the illegals. So, how goes Trump’s “shock and awe” deportation strategy more broadly? Immigration and Customs Enforcement reports it made “nearly 1,000 new arrests Sunday, bringing the four-day total to nearly 2,400.”
Feds round up 50 Tren de Aragua members in Denver (NY Post)
Emergency C-sections as a birthright citizenship workaround? Donald Trump issued more than 200 executive orders last week, but none of them stirred the flurry of oppositional activity quite like his order banning birthright citizenship. Not the Bee reports on perhaps the most shocking case in point: “Those on visiting visas and presumably others in the country legally and illegally are frantically trying to give birth in the United States ASAP so that they can drop anchor with an anchor baby, using their child as leverage to stay in the country.” The anchor baby angle is nothing new, of course, but we tend to think of it mostly in terms of immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Central America, but many Indian immigrants take the same approach. With the Trump administration’s enforcement deadline less than a month away, the Times of India reports: “Now, pregnant women who are due by March or April are seeking premature delivery before February 20. Sounds bizarre? While women often route for normal delivery across the world, Indian women in America are deliberately opting for C-sections just to ensure that their kids get US citizenship” before Trump’s executive order can deny them.
Big moments in the pro-life movement: The annual March for Life took place last Friday in Washington, DC. Speaking at the event was Vice President JD Vance, who pledged that the Trump administration would uphold the right to life at all stages of development. Noting Trump’s recent pardon of pro-life activists who were convicted of FACE Act violations by the Biden administration, Vance stated that the Trump administration would protect pro-life advocates against prosecution for protesting and praying in front of abortion facilities. Furthermore, the Trump administration will prioritize pro-family policies. In that vein, it has shut down Team Biden’s “abortion rights” website. Recall that in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Biden set up reproductiverights.gov, which pushes a pro-abortion agenda. Now it is no more.
Good news: DOJ drops politicized trans case: Donald Trump’s Justice Department has dropped its Biden-era case against Dr. Eithan Haim, the Texas doctor who blew the whistle against Texas Children’s Hospital over its violating a state law forbidding “gender-affirming” procedures on children. When the Texas attorney general launched an investigation into Texas Children’s Hospital over Dr. Haim’s allegations, the Biden administration responded by targeting him and another whistleblower, a nurse, with its own investigation over dubious concerns about HIPAA violations. Then, last June, the Biden DOJ indicted Dr. Haim on four counts of HIPAA violations for his passing of internal hospital records to the Texas government. Biden’s DOJ went even further by sealing all documents related to the case and getting a gag order placed on Dr. Haim. Now, those indictments have been dropped.
Trump’s Ed Department drops school book bans investigation: After reviewing 11 complaints against schools over so-called book bans, Donald Trump’s Department of Education has dismissed them as “meritless.” Attorneys within the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) determined that “books are not being ‘banned.’” Instead, school districts have implemented “commonsense processes by which to evaluate and remove age-inappropriate materials,” the department noted. “The complaints alleged that local school districts’ removal of age-inappropriate, sexually explicit or obscene materials from their school libraries created a hostile environment for students — a meritless claim premised upon a dubious legal theory.” The Education Department also noted, “Effective Jan. 24, 2025, OCR has rescinded all department guidance issued under the theory that a school district’s removal of age-inappropriate books from its libraries may violate civil rights laws.” Additionally, the OCR “will no longer employ a ‘book ban coordinator’ to investigate local school districts and parents working to protect students from obscene content.” Parents will once again be recognized as the primary directors of their children’s education.
“Clever” Trump executive order shrouds DOGE from public scrutiny (The Dispatch)
Trump orders massive overhaul of FEMA (Daily Mail)
Costco affirms DEI while Target dumps it: Is the Seattle-based wholesaler Costco a bizarre outlier amid a nationwide movement away from racially discriminatory corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives? It sure seems so. Last week, Costco shareholders voted against a proposal urging it to reevaluate its DEI policies. But the shareholders didn’t merely vote against the proposal; they voted 98% against it. It’d be one thing if shareholders narrowly approved or overturned Costco’s DEI programs, given that DEI is a political proxy and ours is a narrowly divided country. But 98%? That’s just plain weird. Meanwhile, Minneapolis-based big-box retailer Target, of the grotesque “tuck-friendly” swimwear, recently announced that it’s dropping both its DEI program and its race-based vendor-preference practices.
A grim remembrance: Auschwitz at 80: Today, January 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and this particular date marks 80 years since Soviet Red Army troops arrived at Auschwitz and uncovered its atrocities. As NBC News reports, “Inside the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the soldiers liberated roughly 7,000 prisoners who had been brutalized by a Nazi regime hell-bent on exterminating the Jewish people. The horrors there defied comprehension.” Never again. That’s the two-word phrase most closely associated with the Holocaust. But remembering alone isn’t enough. As NBC adds, “Even given what has been established about the Third Reich’s crimes against humanity, some of the most vital information has still not been uncovered. Notably, the names of more than a million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis are still unknown.”
Trump floats plan to “clean out” Gaza, send Palestinian refugees to Jordan, Egypt (National Review)
Trump releases weapons to Israel that Biden withheld for political reasons (Daily Wire)
Impeached South Korean president indicted on insurrection charges (National Review)
A just future is a color-blind future. The evil of racism is that it pits ethnic groups against each other. A society with diverse racial groups cannot cohesively exist in unity if these ethnic differences are elevated as primary identity delimiters that are to be held above all else. A truly unified and just society would view racial differences as insignificantly as it views differences in eye color. It recognizes that people look different, but they are still people like everyone else.
This is why the leftist woke “diversity, equity, and inclusion” movement is, in fact, unjust. Rather than seeking to unite people under their common humanity, this ideology divides people based on their racial differences and then applies broad sweeping prejudices upon these racial groups using the Marxist ethic of oppressor vs. oppressed.
DEI is little more than Marxism wrapped in race.
Donald Trump has recognized this DEI blight upon the Land of the Free and has correctly labeled DEI programs as “illegal” within the federal government. In just his first week, he has taken a figurative chainsaw to the bureaucratic pillars upholding DEI within the federal government.
The purging of federal DEI personnel and programs began with a memo from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which ordered all executive agency heads to put all federal employees at DEIA offices on paid leave, as these offices are to be shuttered immediately. Cognizant of leftists’ tendency to rebrand rather than move on, the memo also asked federal employees “if they know of any efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.”
Of significance was his ending of the 1965 Executive Order 11246, which established affirmative action within the federal government. Now, federal hiring considerations are no longer hindered by complying with race- and sex-based quotas. Meritocracy will once again rule the day.
However, eliminating DEI programs within the federal government is just the tip of the iceberg, as Trump also has an eye on eliminating DEI across the private sector. “Encourage the Private Sector to End Illegal DEI Discrimination and Preferences” is an executive order that will require businesses and companies seeking contracts with the federal government to dump any DEI requirements within their own companies. It’s a complete reversal in federal contracting practice, ending Clinton- and Obama-era executive orders that progressively pushed more affirmative action-based regulations.
At the root of all the acrimony and division within the U.S. and between the two political parties is Marxism versus meritocracy. The radical Left, which has almost completely taken over the Democrat Party, has effectively embraced a Marxist worldview. Democrats see the job of government as ensuring “equitable” outcomes based on everything from race to sex to class to finances.
For the last half-century or more, leftists have spread their Marxist worldview via higher education, news media, the entertainment industry, and the federal government. It’s been on a long, slow march through the nation’s institutions, but under the guise of “social justice,” the Left has seen massive success.
However, as the growth of the Marxist worldview spread, the reality of what it is and what it produces has become much clearer to the American public. Woke ideology that pushes DEI has become a bridge too far, as it has served to unmask the Marxist totalitarianism that’s behind the Left’s ideological societal goals.
DEI is inherently antithetical to the principles of individual liberty upon which our nation was founded. Trump’s actions against DEI are not, as the Leftmedia falsely frames them, an attack against diversity. Rather, they’re an attack against racism and Marxism and the prejudice inherent therein, which disparages individual liberty, personal productivity, and meritocracy as immoral.
America became a great nation because our Founding Fathers embraced the ideals of individual liberty, unlocking the greatest resource that exists on the planet. Thankfully, Trump is seeking to once again unburden Americans from the Marxist ideology that threatens to break our nation.
Emmy Griffin: The Leftist Erasure of Women Continues — From the newly minted “People’s March” to award nominations for “Emilia Pérez,” leftists are excluding women from their own prestigious domains.
Nate Jackson: The Leftmedia Turn on Zuckerberg — Numerous articles in recent weeks delve into what caused Meta’s CEO to “go MAGA.”
Douglas Andrews: The Democrats Admit It: They Suck — The steamroller that is Donald Trump has forced the Democrats into fits of self-loathing.
First BLM Mayor Arrested for Burglary — South Fulton Mayor Khalid Kamau was arrested for felony burglary after being caught trespassing in a private home.
Big Government, Inflation, and Taxes — Prior to his presidential run, Ronald Reagan talked with Johnny Carson about the state of government in America.
“Number of words in Trump’s inaugural address about renaming the Gulf of Mexico, renaming Denali mountain, and retaking the Panama Canal: 213. Number of words about making housing, health care, or child care more affordable: Zero.” —Senator Elizabeth Warren
Lack of Self-Awareness Award
“You can’t just spin a tale and pull the wool over people’s eyes. This is CNN.” —CNN’s Jim Acosta, a professional tale-spinner
Delusions of Grandeur
“I’m the first black press secretary. The first person of color press secretary. The first openly queer press secretary. The first Haitian American immigrant press secretary. The first press secretary to be all of the above. Being a first meant that my responsibilities were beyond those in the job description, the load heavier.” —Karine Jean-Pierre
Inquiring Minds Want to Know
“Something I’ve often wondered about: if ‘diversity is our greatest strength’ why is it that we have to be reminded of that after every terrorist attack?” —Konstantin Kisin
The Davos Elite Admit Defeat
“A dead man, a dead politician has risen. … This is the greatest comeback in political history of a politician. And therefore he thinks he can do anything.” —former Defense Department official Graham Allison
“We need to also factor in not only who’s won, which is Trump, but who’s lost — which is to say, us. That is to say the sort of general, kind of intellectual, professional, managerial people who sort of thought … that history was over, and we were administering and trying to manage things according to rules that were kind of clear and known.” —Yale University professor Walter Reed
Upright
“Deportation flights have begun. President Trump is sending a strong and clear message to the entire world: if you illegally enter the United States of America, you will face severe consequences.” —White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
Political Futures
“It’s like signal after signal that this wasn’t a con to get to a place of power. That the election was actually about changing things in the promised direction, to a large extent. Will it be to the full extent that we were promised? I don’t know. But this certainly seems like a good-faith effort to bring these things about immediately.” —Bret Weinstein on Trump’s executive orders
“You look at what they’re trying to do to Tulsi Gabbard, which is disgusting. They are trying to say she’s a Russian asset. She isn’t. She’s been through five background checks.” —Senator Marsha Blackburn
“With Democrats and Tulsi Gabbard, I think that they’re trying to appeal to that old guard of sort of neo-conservative national-security Republican, but that’s an increasingly rare breed on Capitol Hill.” —Phil Wegmann
For the Record
“Just Ukraine alone, they have lost more soldiers in three years than we lost in the entire Vietnam war and Korean war combined. So [Trump] understands the carnage and the destruction. … It’s not going to end by killing each other.” —Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, U.S. special envoy to Russia and Ukraine
“That’s how the Russians fight. They fight an attrition war. Look, this is a nation that was willing to lose 700,000 killed in six months at Stalingrad in World War II.” —Keith Kellogg
“When you see pictures of the fields that I see? Nobody wants to see it. You’ll never be the same.” —Donald Trump on the killing fields of Ukraine
Belly Laughs of the Day
“The Trump administration has discovered something called ‘genetics,’ which apparently is not yet well known in the legal and medical community despite the wide use of DNA tests in both professions.” —David Strom
“I’m so happy Trump is rescuing all these illegal aliens from living in such an evil racist country.” —Joel Berry
“When you’re getting deported how much is customary to tip the ICE agents?” —comedian Danny Polishchuk
McDonald’s has joined the growing list of companies that have scrapped their diversity targets.
In a statement posted on its corporate website on Monday, the company revealed that it had recently carried out a Civil Rights Audit to assess its current policies.
The statement read:
Last year, we completed a comprehensive Civil Rights Audit (CRA) that looked at all aspects of inclusion across our system.
We also engaged with shareholders to understand their expectations and assessed the overall landscape of shareholder proposals.
Following the Supreme Court ruling in STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, we also assessed the shifting legal landscape to anticipate how this ruling may impact corporations such as McDonald’s.
And finally, we benchmarked our approach to other companies who are also re-evaluating their own programs.
As a result of this audit, McDonald’s will implement the following changes:
We are retiring setting aspirational representation goals and instead keeping our focus on continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations.
We are pausing external surveys to focus on the work we are doing internally to grow the business.
We are retiring Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge in favor of a more integrated discussion with suppliers about inclusion as it relates to business performance.
We are evolving how we refer to our diversity team, which will now be the Global Inclusion Team. This name change is more fitting for McDonald’s in light of our inclusion value and better aligns with this team’s work.
The announcement was celebrated by conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who has led the way in successfully urging companies to scrap their departments, which are designed to prioritize race, gender and other inherited characteristics as opposed to the real merits of job applicants.
BIG news: @McDonalds is ending a number of woke DEI policies today. Now let me tell you what’s changing and how it happened.
3 days ago I told McDonald’s that I’d be doing a story on woke policies there. Today they’ve announced the following changes:
Many other U.S. companies have also scaled back or dismantled their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.
Notable examples include Walmart, which ceased considering race and gender in supplier contracts; Boeing, which disbanded its global DEI department; and Google, which reduced DEI staffing amid budget cuts.
Other large companies, such as Toyota, Ford, Harley-Davidson, and John Deere, have also redefined or curtailed their DEI initiatives in response to political pressures.
The tide is turning against the tyranny of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Academic institutions and corporations alike are waking up to the destructive consequences of woke ideology. Two recent developments, one at the universities in Georgia and the other at Walmart, show that a rollback of DEI is beginning. This rollback is necessary to restore meritocracy to the American system.
In Georgia, the Board of Regents has taken a bold stand. They are dismantling DEI programs and reaffirming the principles of free speech and meritocracy. Gone are the ideological litmus tests and diversity statements for admissions and hiring. Instead, qualifications, knowledge, and abilities are the metrics of judgment. Even more promising, the system is implementing civics education, requiring students to study the crown jewels of the American Republic. Students will not focus on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Georgia Board of Regents stated that these changes will strengthen academic communities and prepare students to be “contributing members of society.” In rejecting ideological coercion, Georgia’s universities are leading the charge to restore intellectual freedom and civil discourse.
Meanwhile, Walmart, the nation’s largest employer, has begun dismantling its DEI infrastructure. Under pressure from activists like Robby Starbuck, Walmart is reviewing its grants and product offerings. The corporation is reviewing those inappropriately targeting children and abandoning divisive terms like “Latinx.” More significantly, Walmart has withdrawn from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index and is shuttering its Racial Equity Center. These moves signal a retreat from virtue-signaling to focus on serving customers and employees without the baggage of left-wing politics.
These shifts represent the beginning of a necessary cultural course correction. Americans reject policies that sow division and prioritize systems rooted in fairness, excellence, and individual freedom. The fight against wokeness is far from over, but victories like these show us that the tide is turning.
BENTONVILLE, AK — Sources within Walmart’s corporate offices confirmed that the company will be terminating its DEI program and instead adopt a policy of treating all its employees like garbage regardless of their race or gender.
According to several high-ranking Walmart executives, the U.S.-based retail giant was refocusing its efforts to treat all its employees equally awful, rather than giving different treatment to some based on their gender or the color of their skin.
“At Walmart, we’re committed to equality,” said Walmart Executive Vice President Dan Bartlett. “That’s why we will be doing away with any previous DEI-derived policies in favor of an even playing field in which every single one of our employees will be treated like absolute trash. We apologize to all of the worthless individuals working at our stores — including white heterosexual males — who we may have offended in the past due to discriminatory practices and promise to do better by treating everyone like refuse from this point forward.”
When reached for comment, one Walmart employee appreciated the change. “It’ll be nice to be treated like everyone else,” said Jared Sharp. “I’ve worked here for a few years, but I’ve always felt like there were different tiers of employees. Whereas management might treat one group like garbage, another group will be treated like utter feces. Now, we’ll all be equal.”
At publishing time, Target had also announced the end of its DEI program, which was already irrelevant as 100% of its workforce was made up of transwomen of color.
Truth2Freedom's Blog 