Trump's anti-DEI orders worry some federal workers
WASHINGTON – In the blink of an eye, President Donald Trump dismantled decades of antidiscrimination protections for federal employees after his Monday inauguration.
While landmark laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 and the Americans with Disabilities Act still stand, a flurry of Trump-issued executive orders gutted their enforcement mechanisms or redirected them to address purported discrimination against white Americans.
Many underrepresented people who built successful government careers credited those laws and their enforcement with expanding the path to prosperity that federal jobs have provided to millions of Americans.
The late Colin Powell – a retired Army general and the first Black man to serve as National Security Adviser, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State – was a self-described “strong proponent of affirmative action” policies.
In his 1995 memoir, My American Journey, Powell said he “benefitted from equal opportunity and affirmative action” in his military career but denied receiving preference.
“When equal performance does not result in equal advancement, then something is wrong with the system, and our leaders have an obligation to fix it,” Powell argued.
The DEI rollbacks are “unsettling” to longtime federal worker Danny Thompson, 42, a senior research analyst in the Dept. of Education and a member of the American Federation of Government Employees.
“We’ve been making some strides, and now it may be all for naught,” said Thompson, who's Black and has a doctorate in higher education management. “That’s disheartening.”
After decades of enforcement and affirmative action efforts, the federal workforce (as of 2021) is roughly as racially and ethnically diverse as the broader American workforce, according to Government Accountability Office data. Black and white workers are slightly overrepresented, while Hispanic employees are slightly underrepresented.
Between 2011 and 2021, Americans with self-reported disabilities doubled their share of federal jobs, which in turn is three times higher than their overall workforce representation.
Thompson, an Army veteran, worries his kids may lack access to his path. “They’re already asking questions … They’re kids, they shouldn’t be thinking about this stuff,” he said.
Sweeping away a ‘stepping stone’ to the middle class
Experts once charged with enforcing antidiscrimination within the government also fear that Trump’s anti-DEI orders threaten the trails blazed by civil servants like Powell and traversed by workers like Thompson.
The advent of antidiscrimination laws and enforcement during the Civil Rights Movement made the federal workforce “a stepping stone … to the middle class where workers [from protected groups] could pursue jobs where they would have reasonable work hours, safe working conditions,” said Joseph Seiner, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who worked for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces antidiscrimination laws.
Seiner argued that those protections, combined with affirmative action in hiring, forced the private sector to improve their treatment of historically underrepresented groups to compete for their labor.
The advent of federal workforce civil rights protections thus created “an engine for the middle class” for Black Americans and women especially, said David Lopez, a law professor and dean emeritus of Rutgers Law School and former Senate-confirmed general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Council.
Lopez, who was the EEOC’s top lawyer from 2010 to 2016 and spent decades more in civil rights enforcement there and at the Justice Department, characterized the administration’s orders as a “historical retreat” from hard-won civil rights victories that he argued are still needed today.
“I didn’t work there in the dinosaur age – I worked there in the Internet era,” Lopez said. “We had cases that successfully were litigated in front of juries that involved nooses, and the N-word, and some of the most egregious forms of sexual assault. I’m not sure at what point … that all ended.”
Lopez and Seiner further argued that antidiscrimination and affirmative action principles enhance the federal meritocracy. They’re also optimistic that the courts will continue to observe decades of precedent for pro-diversity interpretations of civil rights laws.
“I still have faith in the vast majority of federal judges,” said Lopez. “They’ll continue to be a check … [for] vigorous enforcement of the civil rights laws.”
What do conservatives think of Trump’s rollback of DEI protections?
Republicans claim diversity initiatives focus on race and gender at the expense of individual merit, and they celebrated the president’s actions.
“This is a crucial step in carrying out the policy of prohibiting the racial discrimination that comes from DEI,” said Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.
Under pressure from the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations, federal contractors created affirmative action plans and hired more Black workers, though mostly in low-level positions.
The push to create greater equality and opportunity in the workplace left a growing number of white Americans believing they faced racial discrimination.
When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, he campaigned against this “reverse discrimination.” While in office, Reagan worked to roll back affirmative action but ultimately backed off under pressure from major corporations and politicians in both parties.
Trump picked up the mantle in his first term, issuing an executive order banning diversity training among federal contractors. The 2023 Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions opened the floodgates to similar challenges in the employment world.
Republican-led legislatures introduced dozens of bills to restrict DEI in education but also state government, contracting and pension investments.
Conservative activists now working in the Trump administration like Stephen Miller filed dozens of lawsuits against “woke” corporations. As an Ohio senator, Vice President JD Vance introduced legislation that would prohibit government contractors from using federal funds for DEI initiatives.
After campaigning on the idea that white Americans – not Black Americans or other historically marginalized people – are the true targets of racism, Trump is putting that philosophy to work from the Oval Office.
Former Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron, who runs the conservative 1972 Exchange group, argued the changes realize that vision.
“The federal government is now the gold standard for hiring practices,” he said.
Davis Winkie's role covering nuclear threats and national security at Paste BN is funded by a grant from Outrider Foundation. Outrider Foundation does not provide editorial input. You can reach Davis via email at dwinkie@usatoday.com or via the Signal encrypted messaging app at 770-539-3257.
Contributing: Jayme Fraser, Erin Mansfield