White House highlights over $2B in savings from DEI cuts during Trump administration's first 100 days
An analysis of the Trump administration's efforts to end diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the federal government during the president's first 100 days in office revealed that nearly 750 DEI employees have been placed on leave or fired for a savings of more than $2 billion.
The analysis provided by the White House showed that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the Department of Labor saw some of the biggest savings. The trio of agencies fired or placed on leave 256 DEI employees, saving taxpayers over $1.3 billion, the analysis noted.
Overall, the Trump administration let go of 745 employees working in DEI offices or on DEI-related programs throughout the government and saved taxpayers roughly $2.33 billion.
"President Trump ordered the end of radical and racist DEI propaganda in government, and the administration is swiftly enacting the president's order," White House principal deputy communications director Alex Pfeiffer told Fox News Digital. "Common sense has returned to government."
In addition to savings and staff cuts, the White House's analysis highlighted the various grants that were slashed and other changes made as a result of the Trump administration's efforts to rid the federal government of DEI.
Those programs included race-based grants or quota programs at multiple agencies and race-based promotion commitments. Multimillion-dollar grants for DEI training and DEI-focused activist groups were also among the cuts at most agencies.
At the State Department, a $5 million grant to "strengthen organizational capacity leadership and impact for mid-sized autonomous intersex and trans human rights organizations" was cut. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) saved $1.7 million by eliminating four years of DEI staff training on topics ranging from "microaggressions" to "identifying and preventing racism in your marketing."
"You must accept what has happened and what you have done," a narrator of one of the LinkedIn training sessions funded through these grants stated. "If you can't accept what the marketplace is telling you, that this piece of content is sexist, racist, homophobic … you can't move forward as a leader."
Other USDA grants, according to the White House's analysis, spent money on staff training aimed at "cultivat[ing] an Eye for Inequity," while Trump administration staff also found "DEI Bingo" cards left over from the Biden administration. The bingo cards included spaces to be checked off, like, "I know what the 'I' in LGBTQIA+ means" and "I have pronouns in my signature line."
USDA also dispersed race-based grants, such as money for "LATINX Growers" and "Black Women's Regenerative Farming," according to the White House analysis. The analysis also indicated that the USDA spent $600,000 on research into the menstruation of biological males and $361,000 to support queer and trans farmers.
Similar DEI-related materials were found at the Department of Education, including a white board with bullet points about race-centric priorities. Below the heading "Projects" was a bullet point that said "Black male resource doc," while "Goals of the Week" included "Tighten up Black Ed Roundtable" and "PAC pictures." Another box on the whiteboard said, "Black male political appointees."
The Education Department under President Donald Trump has also slashed grants promoting racial hiring quotas and numerous teacher training sessions on topics like resisting "settler patriarchy" and how America's education system is one of the "settler-colonial realities."
According to the administration's analysis of its DEI cuts, almost 100 antisemitic incidents were left unresolved by the former Biden-Harris administration's Office of Civil Rights within the Education Department. According to the analysis, staffers in the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights were also told by the last administration to "sit on" a civil rights complaint against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.
The Biden administration also reportedly neglected Freedom of Information Act requests about its DEI efforts. The White House's analysis recorded as many as 4,000 outstanding requests sent to the Department of Labor, which, under President Joe Biden, promoted DEI-based hiring and mandatory training programs for staff.
The Health and Human Services Department also saw steep cuts to DEI programs during Trump's first 100 days.
At the National Institutes of Health alone, over $350 million in DEI projects were slashed, including grants for studying "multilevel and multidimensional structural racism" and "gender-affirming hormone therapy in mice," among others.
In addition to all the cuts, the Trump administration has taken steps to rectify the Biden administration's DEI focus. It ended DEI-related training courses within the DOT online learning management system and disabled an internal email feature at the Department of Transportation that let users list their pronouns. The administration did the same with other pronoun policies at other agencies.
The administration has also taken proactive steps at other agencies, such as removing DEI criteria from more than 2,900 supervisory performance standards at the Energy Department. At the Department of Interior, the agency's "DEIA Council" was terminated. It had a stated purpose of embedding diversity, equity and inclusion principles into "everything" the agency does.
Trump's crusade against DEI began on the first day of his second presidency with an executive order, "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing." In the order, President Trump accused the Biden administration of forcing "illegal and immoral" DEI programs on the American people.
"This was a concerted effort stemming from President Biden's first day in office," Trump's order insisted.
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