Trump ends ‘Illegal DEI’ and restores merit-based opportunities

2CE31FY U.S. President Donald Trump announces additional support of the Farmers to Families program at Flavor First Growers and Packers August 24, 2020 in Mills River, North Carolina.

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Barely three days into President Donald Trump’s second term, he has already created major changes, and Wednesday morning he moved to swiftly end federal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs to ensure that Americans’ civil rights are protected under merit-based practices. 

He enacted three measures to ensure that Americans are hired and ranked based on their abilities instead of their identity. Trump signed an Executive Order that “protects the civil rights of all Americans and expands individual opportunity.”

This eliminates DEI practices within federal hiring and spending, revokes affirmative action from federal contracting, and prohibits the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs from seeking employees based on their identity. In addition, it requires contractors to disengage from DEI practices. 

It also places the Attorney General and Secretary of Education in guidance roles that comply with the Supreme Court ruling that race-based programs violate the 14th amendment. 

President Trump also signed a Presidential Action “Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”

This declared, “Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also 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.”

The action went on to state, “I therefore order all executive departments and agencies (agencies) to terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and requirements.”

It also ordered federal agencies to enforce current civil-rights laws and combat all illegal private-sector DEI.

Furthermore, the 47th president issued a Memorandum specifically ending “DEI Madness” in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The action ends the Biden Administration’s FAA DEI hiring policies and requires the agency to reevaluate performance standards and that of current employees in their “critical safety positions.”

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