With the swirl of a black Sharpie marker, President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0issued an executive order on his first day back in the White House, cracking down on what he calls\u00a0\u201cillegal and radical\u201d\u00a0diversity, equity and inclusion practices.<\/p>\n
It was the first in a series of actions to make good on campaign promises to\u00a0wipe out DEI.<\/p>\n
Over 100 days in office, the president\u00a0purged diversity initiatives\u00a0in 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 \u2013 or worse.<\/p>\n
With the\u00a0anti-DEI campaign\u00a0that began in his first term now topping the White House\u2019s\u00a0economic and cultural agenda, Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened investigations and prosecutions. The Federal Communications Commission opened probes into Comcast and Disney.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ended all of the lawless, so-called diversity, equity and inclusion bullshit all across the entire federal government and the private sector,\u201d Trump said at a rally in Michigan marking his 100th day in office.<\/p>\n
But has he? DEI is not dead yet, people on both sides of the political aisle say.<\/p>\n
The White House \u201cwill need to focus on making sure companies are doing what they said they would do when they announced they were turning away from DEI,\u201d said Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. \u201cGoldman 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?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration struck mighty blows in the first 100 days, reshaping\u00a0DEI policies\u00a0across industries and touching virtually every American workplace.<\/p>\n
Even before Trump\u2019s inauguration, Facebook owner Meta abandoned its practice of considering\u00a0diverse candidates\u00a0for open roles. McDonald\u2019s\u00a0dropped diversity targets\u00a0for its executive ranks.<\/p>\n
In Trump\u2019s first week back in the White House, defense contractor Lockheed Martin said it would take \u201cimmediate action to ensure continued compliance and full alignment with President Trump\u2019s recent executive order.\u201d<\/p>\n
Software giant Salesforce.com, which told USA TODAY in 2023 that it would\u00a0stand up to Trump\u00a0on DEI, deleted the word \u201cdiversity\u201d from its annual report and\u00a0scrapped goals\u00a0to diversify its workforce.<\/p>\n
DEI explained\u00a0<\/strong>What is DEI and why is it so divisive? What you need to know.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe administration has certainly created a chilling effect where many organizations are reluctant to keep or advertise perfectly legal strategies to advance diversity,\u201d said Adia Harvey Wingfield,\u00a0a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s have overwhelmingly voted in favor of DEI. And the \u201csilent majority\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe vast majority of organizations have simply gone quiet, neither retreating from or defending their DEI programs in the public square,\u201d Tomaskovic-Devey said.<\/p>\n The data seems to bear that out.<\/p>\n Just 8% of business leaders surveyed by the Littler law firm are\u00a0seriously considering changes\u00a0to their DEI programs as a result of the Trump administration\u2019s executive orders. Nearly half said they do not have plans for new or further rollbacks.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Some 85% of companies report that their\u00a0executive teams are just as committed\u00a0\u2013 or even more \u2013 to building fair and inclusive workplaces as they were a year ago, according to a recent Paradigm survey.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re 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 \u2018DEI,\u2019\u201d Emerson said. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Over half of the nation\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s diversity.<\/p>\n \u201cEarly on, there was sincere confusion about the relevancy of these topics to financial returns,\u201d Benton said. \u201cWe are no longer having that conversation. The conversation now is about the best way to ensure that workplaces are managing against bias and discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n While corporations try to “fly below the radar”\u00a0 \u2013 in the words of a large retailer just this week, Benton said \u2013\u00a0she continues to have conversations with corporate executives that show \u201ctheir deep understanding of how workforce cohesion, employee belonging, and employee loyalty is essential to their business success.\u201d<\/p>\n ‘Root out DEI’\u00a0<\/strong>Why red states are enlisting in Trump’s war on ‘woke’<\/span><\/p>\n Some corporations are not sitting on the sidelines.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Thinking back to conversations with his mentor and former chairman Bill Marriott, he\u00a0told\u00a0employees: \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Twenty-four hours later, Capuano said he had 40,000 emails thanking him.<\/p>\n At Starbucks\u2019 annual meeting, CEO Brian Niccol\u00a0talked up DEI, telling shareholders it is critical for the coffee giant to reflect the diversity of its customers and staff \u201cin every single one of our stores.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStarbucks is a tremendously, tremendously diverse organization and will continue to be a tremendously diverse organization,\u201d Niccol said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s still early days, and I\u2019m sure this administration will have more items in their bag of tricks, but I do think it\u2019s notable that a lot of work is continuing despite the unprecedented assault (DEI) has faced,\u201d said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at the NYU School of Law.<\/p>\n With the swirl of a black Sharpie marker, President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0issued an executive order on his first day back<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Is DEI doubling down?<\/h2>\n