- President Trump took aim at federal DEI policies in his inaugural address on Monday.
- He vowed to reverse executive orders from Biden in favor of a “merit-based” society.
- Trump indicated that he plans to largely freeze federal hiring and scrap pro-LGBTQ+ initiatives.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government.
Federal agencies and departments have 60 days from the signing of the order to end DEI-related practices.
The executive order will be implemented by the US Office of Personnel Management and The Attorney General, who will review all existing federal employment practices, union contracts, and training policies to ensure compliance with the DEI termination order.
“Federal hiring practices, including federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skill, performance, and hard work and shall under no circumstances take into account the factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements of DEI or DEIA,” the warrant said.
Trump also used his inaugural address on Monday to take aim at DEI initiatives in the federal government.
“This week, I will also end the government’s policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,” he said on Monday. “We will create a society that is blind and based on merit.”
He also said it will be official US policy that “there are only two genders: male and female”.
The remarks echoed his remarks at a rally a day earlier, when he vowed to end DEI’s mandates in government and the private sector.
Like many of the orders Trump is signing on his first day in office, the measure aims to undo several orders issued by Joe Biden during his presidency.
In an executive action from June 2021, Biden said the federal government is the nation’s largest employer and, thus, “must be a model for diversity, equity, inclusion and access, where all employees are treated with dignity and respect.”
In response, the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) initiative to source talent for America was launched in September 2022.
A 2022 report from the Office of Personnel Management said the government-wide DEIA initiative included a plan to prioritize equality for LGBTQI+ employees by “expanding the use of gender markers and pronouns that respect transgender, gender non-conforming employees and non-binary; and working to create a more inclusive workplace.”
The report showed minimal changes in the demographics of the federal workforce between fiscal years 2017 and 2021, which spanned most of Trump’s first term. This included “small” changes in the shares of the federal workforce by race and gender.
A 2024 report by OPM found small increases in federal personnel diversity under the Biden administration after the announcement of DEIA’s goals, but indicated that the office’s goals for diversity and equity initiatives had not been met.
Although there had been only minor demographic changes in the workforce under the Biden administration, the Trump administration’s first official statement, released Monday, reiterated its plans to “freeze the hiring of bureaucrats except in areas essential to end attacking useless, paid DEI activists buried in the federal workforce.” and “establish male and female as biological reality and protect women from radical gender ideology.”
Meanwhile, several companies — including the nation’s largest private employer, Walmart — have reversed course on DEI initiatives in the weeks since Trump’s election in November.
