Trump’s DEI Executive Order Is Lit

With all the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth from the Left, it was hard to miss the fact that Donald Trump issued an executive order that banned the use of DEI and DEI principles in the federal government. 

Outstanding.

Donald Trump puts all diversity staff on leave ‘immediately’ https://t.co/goB9WKzwW4

— Nile Gardiner (@NileGardiner) January 22, 2025

We all know that orders and laws intended to achieve this goal are regularly ignored at the state level using “one simple trick,” as they say: change the wording, not the actual policies. Many of us were concerned that Trump’s EO would follow the same pattern. After all, it’s not like the people in charge of these programs are gone—they usually get moved to Human Resources or are tucked away in other places within the organization. 

Trump knows this and came up with a few simple tricks of his own to stamp out this practice. It was genius. 

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) directed agencies to place DEI office staffers on paid leave, take down all public DEI-focused webpages and cancel any DEI-related training by 5pm EST on Wednesday (10pm GMT).

The memo also encouraged employees at federal agencies to inform on those attempting to disguise DEI programmes.

Federal department and agency bosses are required to ask “employees if they know of any efforts to disguise these [DEI] programmes by using coded or imprecise language”.

The memo, issued on Tuesday, included a template email for bosses to send to employees, which asks them to report to OPM if they are “aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 (Election Day) to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies”.

It’s a one-two punch: send the DEI zealots home without violating civil service laws and encourage employees to root out the hidden grifting. It also sets up a predicate for firing people who don’t follow the rules by hiding the programs by changing the wording of contracts. 

Of course, you will never be able to destroy something so deeply ingrained in a bureaucracy. Tearing it out root and branch is the goal, but DEI is like a weed that refuses to die.

But Trump’s EO was designed to plant some landmines for the unwary who have been preparing for months to skirt the order, making it much more difficult to finesse the rules and, hopefully, much more costly to those who try to do so. 

In other words, the order was not just symbolic or aspirational. The goal is to find a way to fire the employees who have been distorting the merit-based system and replace it with racialist policies. 

Federal bureaucrats plan resistance to Trump adminhttps://t.co/2vj29UcnAD

— Steve Forbes (@SteveForbesCEO) January 21, 2025

About half of all federal bureaucrats say they will resist Trump policies they don’t like–and they succeeded in many cases during Trump’s first term. This time around, real costs will be imposed on those who do, and I have no doubt that Trump will find a way to punish them for doing so. 

It’s a necessary corrective for a system that places too much power in the hands of bureaucrats, who see themselves as the permanent government and elections as an inconvenience, not a mandate. 

No doubt there will be lawsuits intended to stymie Trump’s efforts, but a “shock and awe” approach will most likely have the intended effect. His policies also open up more space for the private sector to make profound changes to their organizations. 

The sooner #resistance figures start paying high prices for opposition to Trump, the sooner real change will happen.