Trump Says He Killed DEI. So Why Isn’t It Dead Yet?

With the swirl of a black Sharpie marker, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in the White House, cracking down on what he calls “illegal and radical” diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

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Over 100 days in office, the president purged diversity initiatives in 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 – or worse.

With the anti-DEI campaign that began in his first term now topping the White House’s economic and cultural agenda, Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened investigations and prosecutions. The Federal Communications Commission opened probes into Comcast and Disney.

“I ended all of the lawless, so-called diversity, equity and inclusion bullshit all across the entire federal government and the private sector,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan marking his 100th day in office.

But has he? DEI is not dead yet, people on both sides of the political aisle say.

The White House “will need to focus on making sure companies are doing what they said they would do when they announced they were turning away from DEI,” said Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. “Goldman 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?”

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The Trump administration struck mighty blows in the first 100 days, reshaping DEI policies across industries and touching virtually every American workplace.

Even before Trump’s inauguration, Facebook owner Meta abandoned its practice of considering diverse candidates for open roles. McDonald’s dropped diversity targets for its executive ranks.

In Trump’s first week back in the White House, defense contractor Lockheed Martin said it would take “immediate action to ensure continued compliance and full alignment with President Trump’s recent executive order.”

Software giant Salesforce.com, which told USA TODAY in 2023 that it would stand up to Trump on DEI, deleted the word “diversity” from its annual report and scrapped goals to diversify its workforce.

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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’s have overwhelmingly voted in favor of DEI. And the “silent majority” 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.

“The vast majority of organizations have simply gone quiet, neither retreating from or defending their DEI programs in the public square,” Tomaskovic-Devey said.

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Just 8% of business leaders surveyed by the Littler law firm are seriously considering changes to their DEI programs as a result of the Trump administration’s executive orders. Nearly half said they do not have plans for new or further rollbacks.

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.

Some 85% of companies report that their executive teams are just as committed – or even more – to building fair and inclusive workplaces as they were a year ago, according to a recent Paradigm survey.

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Over half of the nation’s 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.

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At Starbucks’ annual meeting, CEO Brian Niccol talked up DEI, telling shareholders it is critical for the coffee giant to reflect the diversity of its customers and staff “in every single one of our stores.”

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