‘DEI Watch list' sparks racism charges; Advocates see that as validation

The Hill

13-02-2025

President Trump and Elon Musk have brought a 'move fast and break things' style to Washington that is inspiring aggressive outside advocacy campaigns and giving new significance behind past right-wing efforts.
A 'DEI WATCH LIST' is one example of how conservatives are still finding ways to pile on with the shocking and attention-grabbing tactics that fuel the Trump moves.
The recently-released list, announced with Trump's signature all-caps text, set off a flurry of concern, fear and criticism — which Tom Jones, who leads the American Accountability Foundation that compiled the list, saw as a validation of the work.
'If you're not taking flak, you're not over the target,' Jones told me in an interview. 'If the New York Times hasn't called me a racist, I'm probably not doing my job.'
The list named dozens of federal workers who are not only explicitly focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, but that Jones alleges are 'aggressive activists in the DEI space' in other ways. The list dug into the individuals' past jobs, op-eds, social media posts, campaign donations and more.
Democrats and other outsiders decried the project as a scare tactic intended to intimidate public employees, expressing concern that it listed mostly Black workers. The head of the American Public Health Association, Dr. Georges Benjamin, called the project racist. Concerns swirled about safety and physical threats against those on the list, NBC News reported.
'It's all bull—-. Like, they literally have no examples of anyone being threatened,' Jones said, adding that he has gotten death threats in his own email in wake of the watch list going live.
I asked Jones about how he would feel if the list does inspire some kind of threat against these individuals. He wouldn't entertain the notion. 'It's just a red herring. It's not a worthy hypothetical to discuss.'
Trump signed an executive order to terminate DEI in the federal workforce. But Jones is hoping to see that order implemented even more broadly, such as taking action against senior leaders who might have some DEI ties but not have it in their job title.
'This isn't filling potholes. It's not a position where your ideology doesn't matter. It's a position where your ideology is essential and at the core of what you do. And that's why these people can't be in these positions,' Jones said.
The goal? 'Reassign them, furlough them, administrative leave, all of those things, fire them. All those things seem to make a lot of sense to me,' Jones said.
The pushback isn't slowing the American Accountability Foundation down. The group said it would add even more names to the DEI Watch List. And it's not the first watch list tactic from the group either, which published a 'DHS Bureaucrat Watch List' last year.
The American Accountability Foundation has strong ties to the Conservative Partnership Institute, a conservative training and advocacy nonprofit which has been an incubator of Trump-aligned outside groups such as the Center for Renewing America.
RELATED: PBS closes its DEI office to comply with Trump executive order
WHAT'S PAST IS PROLOGUE — Actions once seen as ill-fated red meat displays for conservatives that even got some pushback from Republicans are now more like instruction manuals in the Trump Administration. And they now get little if any GOP pushback.
Just take a look at a number of amendments from members of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus in the last Congress.
That vote came just before the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel — which several UNRWA staffers were accused of being involved in and fired over, resulting in the Biden administration and Congress later halting funds to UNRWA. But at the time, the vote was following Trump cutting off UNRWA during his first administration. Trump also signed an executive order to yank UNRWA earlier this month.
I asked Perry about why we aren't hearing more grumbling from Republicans about actions from Musk and others given prior opposition.
'I think the difference is that Elon, unlike the rest of us, has this huge platform by which he communicates to the American people on a mass scale,' Perry told me. 'These are things that individual Republicans, time after time, whether it's USAID or UNRWA or anything like that, have been shouting from the rooftops, ringing the alarm bell. Our bandwidth, our ability to communicate that to the mass volume of American people is very limited.'
Those failed amendments are just one of the ways prior advocacy campaigns and efforts are fueling and previewing Trump administration actions.
Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) annual 'Festivus' report of government waste is another example of GOP-compiled wastebooks that are not acting like messaging playbooks.
Last year's Festivus report, for instance, criticized a USAID-funded 'Ahlan Simsim' Sesame Street show in Iraq – a tidbit that Trump officials repeatedly brought up when praising the Trump administration's dismantling of the agency.
Paul said in a statement that he has shared with DOGE 'egregious examples of government spending that I have spent the last ten years gathering, including over $1 trillion of waste highlighted in my most recent Festivus Report.'
DEMS DODGE DOGE — The House DOGE Caucus is quickly shedding the initial Democratic interest that it had in wake of the flurry of Musk'sDOGE activities in the executive branch — posing a problem for the GOP leaders who had high hopes of finding bipartisan consensus in the group.
One of three Democrats who joined the DOGE Caucus, Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Ore.), announced last week night that she would leave the group, saying it was impossible to work in good faith on the project while Musk was 'burning down the government—and the law—to line his own pockets and rip off Americans across the country who depend on government services to live with dignity.'
She's not the only one reconsidering affiliation with the caucus as resistance to Musk's DOGE becomes a major rallying cry for the Democratic Party.
'I thought the purpose of the caucus was to make government more efficient and decrease the cost to the taxpayers. But it seems that Elon Musk doesn't need Congress. He's doing it all himself,' Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), one of the other two Democrats to join, told me. 'So, I want to hear my colleagues tell me why we need the caucus.'
That's not good news for the House DOGE caucus — not to be confused with the Senate DOGE Caucus led by Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) or House Oversight DOGE Subcommittee chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
The group was hoping to attract even more Democrats and have one member from each party to lead eight working groups on various different policy areas. But Musk and DOGE have since become a major source of outrage and a symbol of everything they dislike about the Trump administration, giving Democrats no incentive to add credibility to DOGE efforts.
The Musk DOGE moves are also repelling those who expressed some initial interest in DOGE, like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who considered joining the group to talk about defense spending cuts but opted against it. He told me that after the last few weeks, his decision 'was the right one.'
Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Ga.), a DOGE Caucus Co-chair, said that the group had just topped 100 members, and he is staying optimistic about the prospects for bipartisanship in the group, inviting Hoyle to come back into the fold.
'I still have a personal goal to create that safe harbor where we can debate and we can add more Democratic members,' Bean told me, inviting Democrats to come to the group's meetings without officially joining the caucus. 'We need everybody's input.'
Bean said the next DOGE Caucus meeting will happen some time this month.
RELATED: First DOGE committee hearing becomes referendum on Elon Musk
I'm Emily Brooks, House leadership reporter at The Hill, expanding to cover the wider right-wing ecosystem, influences, and debates in Washington, D.C. Send me observations and tips: [e-mail].