As part of his massive crackdown on federal diversity programs, President Donald Trump withdrew an executive order this week that prohibited discrimination by federal contractors and subcontractors.
In a memo released Wednesday, the White House stated that the order signed the day before “protects the civil rights of all Americans and expands individual opportunity by terminating radical DEI preferencing in federal contracting and directing federal agencies to relentlessly combat private sector discrimination.”
According to the Department of Labor, the contested order had mandated “affirmative action and prohibits federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.” Initially covering federal personnel, it was eventually limited to contractors after being approved by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Trump’s order Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton’s executive acts to further encourage diversity and inclusion in hiring across the federal government were also repealed on Tuesday.
The order stated that the diversity initiatives “violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws” as well as “undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
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According to the White House letter, Trump’s decision is “the most important federal civil rights measure in decades.”
“It terminates ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) discrimination in the federal workforce, and in federal contracting and spending,” the note stated.
Although the decree focuses on the government level, the private sector is also affected. By May, it is expected that the U.S. attorney general will have collaborated with other agencies and produced a report “containing recommendations for enforcing Federal civil-rights laws and taking other appropriate measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.”
The order states that the report should include a “strategic enforcement plan,” which may include civil rights action, and should concentrate on the “most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners in each sector of concern.”
“As a part of this plan, each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars,” the order states.
The memo indicates that colleges and corporations will be the main targets of the initiative.
“In the private sector, many corporations and universities use DEI as an excuse for biased and unlawful employment practices and illegal admissions preferences, ignoring the fact that DEI s foundational rhetoric and ideas foster intergroup hostility and authoritarianism,” the note stated.
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Another executive orderTrump ordered the government’s DEI programs to be discontinued on Monday. His government mandated on Tuesday that all federal workers in DEI positions be put on paid leave the following day.
The Office of Personnel Management requested in a memo that federal agencies provide a detailed strategy by January 31 for terminating workers in DEI positions.
Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are represented by the American Federation of Government Employees, whose president, Everett Kelley, stated Tuesday that the “federal government already hires and promotes exclusively on the basis of merit.”
He referred to Trump’s move as a pretext for dismissing civil servants, destroying the apolitical civil service, and transforming the federal government into a force of yes-men who are solely devoted to the president and not the Constitution.
An inquiry about Kelley’s comments was not immediately answered by the White House.