(Image via fiercehealthcare.com)

Staff Writer: Gwen Pichette

Email: gpichette@umassd.edu

Mere hours after being sworn into office on January 20th, freshly-elected President Donald Trump wasted no time to federally dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, or what is more commonly known as DEI. 

DEI is a movement towards increasing access to jobs and opportunities for people of diverse socioeconomic background, genders, and races. Despite the perception that it is a newer program under the Biden administration, DEI’s origins trace back to over half-a-century ago with the introduction of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Among many other things, this 1964 law outlawed any form of discrimination against those seeking employment. 

The following year in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, which required the government to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”

Former-president Biden extended this legacy with his own executive order, which Trump has now undone. 

The executive order Trump swiftly signed was titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” In it, he affirmed that DEI forced “illegal and immoral discrimination programs” into the federal government and that former president Biden’s orders “demonstrated immense public waste.”

Then on January 22nd, Trump issued a directive for employees part of federal diversity, equity, and inclusion offices to be placed on administrative paid leave—effective immediately.

The difference in reactions to DEI is largely party-line. 

A Pew Research study from 2023 found that of those who supported DEI programs (around 78%) were Democratic and Democratic-leaning workers. In comparison, a mere 30% of Republican and Republican-leaning workers were in favor of it. 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is certainly not in that 30%. She affirms that this newest executive order is something to be celebrated.

Leavitt claims that Trump is simply making true on the promises he made before entering office. “President Trump campaigned on ending the scourge of DEI from our federal government and returning America to a merit based society where people are hired based on their skills, not for the color of their skin,” she said. “This is another win for Americans of all races, religions, and creeds.” 

Others are already feeling the impact of the order_, including many who feel it is a step back from progress. 

A Treasury Department employee belonging to an LGBTQ-related ERG who wishes to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, mentions, “I’ve been here for four years, and in that time, we’ve made progress to help employees just have a better lived work experience. Four years later in the snap of fingers, our work is being completely undone…. It’s one step forward, two steps back. I feel despair at the moment.” 

Another federal worker, a Department of Homeland Security lawyer, has expressed anxieties about how Trump’s newest orders may impede their ability to do their job properly. “After nearly 20 years of federal service, I have never felt this kind of anxiety about my job,” the lawyer, who lives in the Southwest with a spouse and two young children, said. “Being able to freely do my job with the feeling that I’m not going to be subject to reprisal, I feel like those days are gone once Schedule F is implemented.”

Schedule F refers to an old order from Trump’s first presidency back in 2020, in which his administration attempted to make a category for federal workers in policy. 

While Schedule F never went through, it would have effectively made it easier to fire workers in this section. This led many critics to say that the order “politicizes civil service” and could “lead to career officials being pushed out for political reasons.” 

In 2020, it was estimated to have affected a whopping 50,000 workers.

While it is uncertain as to how many workers it will affect now, many critics of the order insist that it will be detrimental.

Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, is one such critic. “President Trump’s order is a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons. It will remove hundreds of thousands of federal jobs from the nonpartisan, professional civil service and make them answerable to the will of one man.”

With only a few weeks into Trump’s second presidency, protests against the orders are already sweeping across the nation, including advocates who have filed a lawsuit to block the orders.

The 40-page federal lawsuit that was filed in the District Court of Maryland is one of the first to oppose the slew of executive orders. In short, it argues that the criteria for DEI is too vague, that Trump exceeded his executive orders, that free speech is targeted, and that neither the president nor the executive branch can dictate how government funds are spent. 

Advocates for the lawsuit are composed of a diverse group of federal workers, from diversity officers, to professors, and restaurant workers. This truly shows the range of Americans that these orders will affect as the threat against DEI becomes imminent.