Trump says he killed DEI. So why isn't it dead yet? Cracks emerge in war on 'woke'

USA Today

18-05-2025

Trump says he killed DEI. So why isn't it dead yet? Cracks emerge in war on 'woke'
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Big U.S. companies taper or abandon diversity pledges
Some of the biggest companies in the U.S. from Walmart to Meta Platforms have rolled back their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, known as DEI.
With the swirl of a black Sharpie marker, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in the White House, cracking down on what he calls 'illegal and radical' diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
It was the first in a series of actions to make good on campaign promises to wipe out DEI.
Over 100 days in office, the president purged diversity initiatives in the federal government and the military, threatened to strip billions of dollars in federal funding and grants from universities and pressured major corporations to roll back diversity initiatives or risk losing federal contracts – or worse.
With the anti-DEI campaign that began in his first term now topping the White House's economic and cultural agenda, Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened investigations and prosecutions. The Federal Communications Commission opened probes into Comcast and Disney.
'I ended all of the lawless, so-called diversity, equity and inclusion bullshit all across the entire federal government and the private sector,' Trump said at a rally in Michigan marking his 100th day in office.
But has he? DEI is not dead yet, people on both sides of the political aisle say.
The White House 'will need to focus on making sure companies are doing what they said they would do when they announced they were turning away from DEI,' said Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. 'Goldman Sachs, Disney, IBM and others all made announcements just this year, so are they just renaming programs or actually ending race-based hiring policies or DEI-focused employee training?'
DEI retreat or reset?
The Trump administration struck mighty blows in the first 100 days, reshaping DEI policies across industries and touching virtually every American workplace.
Even before Trump's inauguration, Facebook owner Meta abandoned its practice of considering diverse candidates for open roles. McDonald's dropped diversity targets for its executive ranks.
In Trump's first week back in the White House, defense contractor Lockheed Martin said it would take 'immediate action to ensure continued compliance and full alignment with President Trump's recent executive order.'
Software giant Salesforce.com, which told USA TODAY in 2023 that it would stand up to Trump on DEI, deleted the word 'diversity' from its annual report and scrapped goals to diversify its workforce.
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'The administration has certainly created a chilling effect where many organizations are reluctant to keep or advertise perfectly legal strategies to advance diversity,' said Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
Even as major companies pare back or flatline diversity commitments, a few, including Costco and Cisco, have publicly defended DEI. Shareholders at American Express, Apple and Levi's have overwhelmingly voted in favor of DEI. And the 'silent majority' is continuing the work despite growing political pressure to defund DEI, said sociology professor Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, who runs the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
'The vast majority of organizations have simply gone quiet, neither retreating from or defending their DEI programs in the public square,' Tomaskovic-Devey said.
The data seems to bear that out.
Just 8% of business leaders surveyed by the Littler law firm are seriously considering changes to their DEI programs as a result of the Trump administration's executive orders. Nearly half said they do not have plans for new or further rollbacks.
Instead of backing off, corporations are evolving their diversity programs to focus on what works and jettison what does not, said Joelle Emerson, CEO of culture and inclusion platform Paradigm.
Some 85% of companies report that their executive teams are just as committed – or even more – to building fair and inclusive workplaces as they were a year ago, according to a recent Paradigm survey.
'We're seeing organizations back away from highly scrutinized and increasingly legally risky efforts like setting and sharing representation goals as well as evolving their language, moving away from the politically charged acronym 'DEI,'' Emerson said. 'But most appear to be continuing or even doubling down on initiatives that have the greatest impact. Benefits that allow a broader range of people to thrive in the workforce. Processes that empower companies to cast wider nets and hire and advance the best talent. Training and other programs that focus on creating cultures for everyone where all employees can do their best work.'
Is DEI doubling down?
Over half of the nation's 3,000 largest companies continue to build and expand DEI-related programs, according to Olivia Knight, racial and environmental justice manager at shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, which has advocated for corporate DEI programs.
With good reason, said Meredith Benton, workplace equity manager at As You Sow and founder of Whistle Stop Capital. In the coming years, minority groups will become a majority of the U.S. population and they will expect businesses to reflect the nation's diversity.
'Early on, there was sincere confusion about the relevancy of these topics to financial returns,' Benton said. 'We are no longer having that conversation. The conversation now is about the best way to ensure that workplaces are managing against bias and discrimination.'
While corporations try to "fly below the radar" – in the words of a large retailer just this week, Benton said – she continues to have conversations with corporate executives that show 'their deep understanding of how workforce cohesion, employee belonging, and employee loyalty is essential to their business success.'
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Some corporations are not sitting on the sidelines.
At the Great Place to Work For All Summit, a leadership event in Las Vegas, CEO Anthony Capuano recalled the debate over whether Marriott should make changes to its DEI policies.
Thinking back to conversations with his mentor and former chairman Bill Marriott, he told employees: 'The winds blow, but there are some fundamental truths for those 98 years. We welcome all to our hotels, and we create opportunities for all, and fundamentally, those will never change.'
Twenty-four hours later, Capuano said he had 40,000 emails thanking him.
At Starbucks' annual meeting, CEO Brian Niccol talked up DEI, telling shareholders it is critical for the coffee giant to reflect the diversity of its customers and staff 'in every single one of our stores.'
'Starbucks is a tremendously, tremendously diverse organization and will continue to be a tremendously diverse organization,' Niccol said.
'It's still early days, and I'm sure this administration will have more items in their bag of tricks, but I do think it's notable that a lot of work is continuing despite the unprecedented assault (DEI) has faced,' said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at the NYU School of Law.
'Short-sighted' organizations that abandon DEI won't do so for long, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian predicts.
Successful companies are not checking a box but building policies that support 'a wide range of people,' the entrepreneur and investor told Forbes.
"I think that the biggest sham is that we have somehow identified these types of goals with not being meritocratic," Ohanian said. "Those of us who've been out here building multibillion-dollar companies with an eye towards having diversity, equity, and inclusion, we're hiring for greatness. That never stopped."
Paul Argenti, a professor of corporate communication at Dartmouth, said the business case for diversity has never been stronger.
'The choice isn't between merit and diversity. The highest-performing organizations know that having a meritocracy means you need to make sure that diverse candidates have the same chance to show their merit as others,' Argenti wrote in a LinkedIn post. 'Companies with diverse leadership consistently outperform their homogeneous counterparts in innovation, risk management and financial returns.'
Trump banks on DEI backlash
DEI initiatives swept through corporate America and the federal government after George Floyd's 2020 murder forced a historic reckoning with race in America.
Those efforts to increase the stubbornly low percentage of female, Black and Hispanic executives seemed to get results.
Between 2020 and 2022, the number of Black executives rose by nearly 27% in S&P 100 companies, according to a USA TODAY analysis of workforce data collected by the federal government.
That momentum was met with a forceful backlash. Critics like Stephen Miller and Edward Blum threw down legal challenges that reframed these DEI efforts as illegal discrimination. Consumer boycott threats from anti-DEI activists like Robby Starbuck intensified.
In 2023, the ranks of Black executives fell 3% from the prior year at twice the rate of White executives, USA TODAY found.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump telegraphed a dramatic shift to America's approach to civil rights, vowing to take on "anti-white" racism.
"I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country and that can't be allowed," Trump said.
Some of DEI's sharpest critics now hold powerful positions in the Trump administration and they are leaning into deep divisions over DEI.
A narrow majority of the public – 53% – disapproves of the Trump administration's actions to end DEI, while 44% approve, according to the Pew Research Center. The split is sharper along party lines. Nearly 8 in 10 Republicans approve while nearly 9 in 10 Democrats disapprove.
According to data intelligence firm Morning Consult, DEI is one of the hot-button issues that produces the widest partisan gaps in what Americans want brands to talk about.
Democrats are far more likely to want to hear about DEI than Republicans but even they are prioritizing it less than last year, down from 78% to 71%, Morning Consult found.
'If you want to have a government that enforces civil rights laws, we need to have a government that enforces civil rights laws for everyone. Not just the favored groups, but for every individual,' DEI critic Christopher Rufo said on a recent New York Times podcast. 'So what does that look like? It looks like what the Trump administration is doing: To say anti-White bigotry should face just as severe a sanction as anti-Black bigotry.'
Many of the Trump administration's actions in the first 100 days were pulled straight from the pages of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for Trump's second term, from overhauling civil rights offices that enforce civil rights and antidiscrimination laws to the removal of a cornerstone of civil rights law known as disparate impact liability that the government used to challenge exclusionary policies in employment.
At the Departmentof Justice, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the new head of the civil rights division that has been at the center of the struggle for racial equality since its creation in 1957, has purged top lawyers and reoriented the agency to focus on combating antisemitism and transgender athletes in women's sports, among other Trump priorities.
'The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws, not woke ideology,' Dhillon told conservative commentator Glenn Beck.
In the coming weeks, Bondi is expected to submit a report with recommendations to 'encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI,' including each agency's list of up to nine civil compliance investigations.
'That's when the rubber will really hit the road as we move from the realm of bluster and threats into the realm of actually determining whether 'illegal DEI' is as pervasive as they seem to think it is,' Glasgow said.