Trump Purges DEI From Federal Government; Restores Meritocracy

By Carole Hornsby Haynes          January 22, 2025 

On his first day in office, President Trump signed the death knell for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government, signaling a return from discriminatory to merit-based hiring practices. 

Trump issued the Executive Order, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” that rescinded Biden’s January 2021 executive order. He instructed his Cabinet to terminate all DEI, DEIA, and environmental justice offices and positions, including Chief Diversity Officers. All federal employees in the DEI bureaucracy have been placed on paid leave while the individual agencies develop plans for their layoffs. 

All federal employment practices, union contracts and training policies and materials will be reviewed for compliance with the new order. Federal hiring practices will be based solely on “individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work.” 

Each “agency, department, or commission head” will provide a list of “positions, committees, programs, services, activities, budgets, and expenditures in existence since November 4, 2024” to determine if they have rebranded in an attempt to do an end run around the order. All discriminatory and illegal programs “under whatever name they appear” will be terminated. 

For four years following the death of George Floyd, far left activists marched through America’s institutions, establishing DEI discriminatory offices and practices in universities, K-12, large corporations, and government policy. 

On his first day in office, Biden entrenched discrimination in the federal government with Executive Order 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities.” Through this and follow-on orders, DEI was implemented in every agency of the federal government, including the workforce, education, medical, energy, finance, legal, housing, military, transportation, national security, and social security. 

Favored groups, including non-whites, LGBT, pregnant women, religious groups, and immigrants, got federal government preference while others were punished and segregated based on their race, ancestry, and genderunder the guise that whites are guilty of erecting barriers to keep non-whites from prospering. 

Federal DEI initiatives have taken a drastic toll on our military. With focus on woke policies, the military is prevented from focusing on its primary mission: the defense of America. Recruitment is in a state of crisis, which Republicans blame partly on DEI policies. Drag queens are used to entice recruits, yet serve only to create public antagonism and disdain toward the military. Foreign nations laugh at us while China rattles the sabre. 

Pride flags at U.S. Embassies and a Pride flag next to the American flag at the White House are evidence of the deep entrenchment of DEI within the federal government. 

DEI is a Marxist-based ideology designed to divide, intimidate, disrupt, and destroy. Racial hatred is fostered to divide and conquer. White supremacy will supposedly be ended by the Marxist destruction of meritocracy, equal rights, freedoms, and the rule of law. Cultural revolutionaries implemented DEI in academia, the courts, state governments, secondary education, entertainment, and corporations. 

Americans are fed up and our voices were heard at the ballot box. In a presidential landslide victory, we elected a leader who has proven he will not cave to evil forces. Corporations had already gotten the message and, with the pending inauguration of Trump and his promise to end DEI, some corporations terminated or cut back on their DEI programs, including Walmart, Ford, Meta Platforms, Lowe’s, Amazon, McDonald’s, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, and Tractor Supply. 

Yet the fight is far from over. The DEI crowd will use every trick in the book to skirt around the bans -- evil does not go away or submit to the law of the land. We must be ever vigilant to stop any and all efforts to continue the discriminatory programs. In the meantime, we can celebrate this victory and thank God we have a fearless leader in President Trump. 

Promise made, promise kept.