Trumps bold strike against DEI ends 60 years of discrimination and makes history

We’re only days into the Trump administration, and we can already identify one of his top five achievements. With one carefully crafted act, the president initiated the end of DEI in the federal government and perhaps in the private sector and educational system, as well.It is a breathtakingly bold and wholly righteous move that could bring about a generational change.One way or the other, books will be written about the executive order, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”Trump’s directive repeals a series of executive orders promoting affirmative action in government, including the granddaddy of them all, President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Executive Order 11246.The implementing regulations for 11246 have created a vast archipelago of racial preferences in federal contracting.

The roll-back of the LBJ order alone would be momentous. It instructs executive departments and agencies to “terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and requirements.”This is not empty verbiage.The Trump administration immediately ordered diversity offices in the federal government closed and DEI workers put on administrative leave, while it suspended contracting programs that run afoul of the race- and gender-neutral standard set by Trump’s order. Again, all of this would be historic on its own, but the order goes further still.It takes solid aim at other institutions of American life that have, through government pressure or their own initiative, embraced DEI.

 Trump’s order goes further, though.A key, and correct, contention of the Trump order is that DEI’s race-consciousness practices violate federal civil-rights laws. The order then uses the prospect of federal enforcement of the civil-rights laws as a stick to move private actors toward fair, color-blind policies.The federal contracting process itself will be a mas...