President Donald Trump has been busy here in his first week back in office. Executive orders are fast and furious. Many aren’t really being noticed while others have made a massive splash.
For example, Trump ordered all federal DEI employees to be put on administrative leave. The goal is, ultimately, to terminate them.
What does this have to do with guns, gun rights, or gun control?
Well, it shouldn’t have anything. I’d have been delighted to never talk about it here.
Unfortunately, the ATF is trying to engage in some shenanigans and someone realized it.
🚨BREAKING🚨
ATF is circumventing President Trump’s executive orders to crush racist DEI programs.
To hide its DEI, @ATFHQ quietly changed Lisa T. Boykin’s job title from “Chief Diversity Officer” to “Senior Executive.” pic.twitter.com/WKFCWv5ftZ
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) January 22, 2025
Now, there are two approaches federal agencies could take.
One is to do as directed and put these folks on paid administrative leave as the president has directed. The other is what it looks like the ATF has decided to do, which is to change someone’s title so they wouldn’t be impacted by the executive order.
This isn’t her being slid into an open position or anything. Note what it says under her title in the most recent screenshot. It says “Office of the Director.”
First, there isn’t one right now.
OK, in fairness, there’s still an office and someone is filling that job until Trump can nominate someone and the Senate approves them, but still…
It should be noted that everyone else on that list has a distinct office, an area of responsibility that even those ignorant of much of what the ATF does can still glean what their jobs entail to some degree or another.
Boykin, however, has no area of responsibility anymore. She’s what? The acting director’s advisor? She was the DEI officer, for crying out loud. Her bio is mostly missing from the internet, but from what I can tell, she’s a glorified HR flak who leveraged that into DEI somewhere along the way.
In other words, she has no relevant expertise to offer the director of a federal law enforcement agency beyond the DEI efforts that have been ended by President Trump.
If they’ll defy this directive, what else do they have planned? What other issues will we, as ordinary gun owners, run into with the ATF because they’ve decided not to listen to the man their director answers to?
This may be an attempt to comply with Trump’s order while not actually putting anyone in a position to be fired, but the truth is that I’m not willing to be that charitable.
We saw no tolerance for good-faith mistakes made by FFL holders by the ATF, so I see no reason to automatically try to extend them any grace.
I suspect they knew what they were doing and figured that they’d get away with it. Most people don’t keep track of that kind of information, but the internet is forever and you can never hide everything from everyone.
In this case, they got caught. Now, for Trump to nominate an ATF director–Brandon Herrera, anyone?–who will stamp this out with extreme prejudice.
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