How Trump’s EEOC Is Attacking DEI and Emphasizing White People

In late February, Andrea Lucas sent a letter to the leaders of Fortune 500 companies.

The Trump-appointed chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) framed it as a friendly reminder of where she stood on a hot-button issue: diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.

She directed the CEOs, general counsels and board chairs to guidance she’d issued last year warning that a company’s DEI policies or practices may be illegal if they lead to employment decisions based even just in part on a person’s race, sex or other protected characteristic.

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In a probe Lucas initiated in 2024, the EEOC is investigating Nike’s hiring goals and career development practices to see whether they disadvantage white people. The agency got a Planned Parenthood affiliate to agree to pay $500,000 to settle charges of harassment and discrimination against white people. Late last year, Lucas herself made a direct appeal to white men to come forward if they believe they’ve been disadvantaged due to their sex or race.

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But former leaders of the agency say Lucas is also using its increasingly scarce resources to pursue an agenda at odds with its traditions and even its mandate. In addition to the cases challenging DEI, they point to the agency’s decision to dismiss multiple lawsuits it was fighting on behalf of transgender and nonbinary individuals, its reversal of earlier decisions establishing protections for transgender workers and the rollback of its comprehensive harassment guidance.

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Lucas told NPR she made the video after reading Jacob Savage’s essay, “The Lost Generation.” A once-aspiring screenwriter, he chronicled the ways his generation of men has been shut out of professional opportunities.

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