Trump’s war on diversity and affirmative action
A twice-over chill has descended on Washington. The near zero weather is colder than it has been in years. And President Trump’s flurry of executive orders has already disrupted the previous workings of government. Two in particular, one that addresses Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), which he issued on his first day in office, and a second entitled, ”Ending Illegal Discrimination and restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which he signed the following day, have sent Arctic chills throughout the city.
The first DEI order targets not only the career civil service, which the president continues to view as the “deep state.” It also affects the military that implemented DEI programs under a mandate from the Biden White House. And it targets “federal contractors who have provided DEI training or DEI training materials to agency or department employees.”
The second order is far more comprehensive. Trump’s objective is to eliminate preferences of all kinds, not only in the federal government, but among all who contract with it. As the order puts it, “all executive departments and agencies… [must]terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders and requirements.” It also instructs the Department of Labor’s compliance office to cease “allowing or encouraging Federal contractors and sub-contractors to engage in workforce balancing based on race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion or national origin.”
This order also revokes a series of previous executive orders dating back to Lyndon Johnson’s September 1965 executive order on equal employment opportunity. Other orders that it revokes include a 2011 Obama order that established a “Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce” and a similar Obama order issued five years later that focuses specifically on the national security workforce.
In some respects, the order’s focus on government contractors will have the greatest impact on American society as a whole. Government contractors are not merely those who build ships, planes or tanks. They provide a host of services ranging from maintaining branches of coffee and food shops on military bases to providing both military commissaries and federal office buildings with a host of everyday products, ranging from household cleaning items to the snacks and beverages that stock vending machines. All will now come under the purview of the new executive orders.
The challenge to government contractors actually materialised before Trump’s inauguration and his dismantling of the Biden Administration’s diversity policies. A week before Trump took office, the giant defense contractor Lockheed-Martin, under pressure from some congressional Republicans, fired Shelley Stoneman, its senior vice president for government relations. Her dismissal took place only days after the pro-Trump online platorm Breitbart News outed her for tweeting her support for Biden’s diversity and LGBTQ+ policies. The story made the rounds in Trump circles and among some Republicans on Capitol Hill, who targeted not only Stoneman but Lockheed-Martin. One person whom Breitbart identified as close to Trump’s circle accused Lockheed-Martin of being “the poster child for woke”, adding that “worship of woke is killing American competitiveness against China.”
Not surprisingly, Trump’s executive orders have come as a shock, both to the federal government workforce, which Trump views as the “deep state”, as well as to government contractors. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employees’ union representing some 800,000 government workers, has already mounted a court challenge to Trump’s orders. And the union is no weakling. During my tenure as Comptroller of the Defense Department, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld attempted to replace the virtually automatic tenure-based promotion of civil servants into one that also accounted for merit and achievement. The union mobilised its friends in Congress and in the media and launched a furious counterattack. Rumsfeld was forced to withdraw his proposal.
In addition to its current lawsuit, the AFGE has already enlisted its allies in the media and in the Congress to reverse the executive orders. It will have less clout on Capitol Hill, however, because Congressional Republicans, who form the majority in both Houses, staunchly support Trump on this issue (as do some Democrats).
Diversity and affirmative action programmes, long darlings of the Left, have been equally long resented by the Right, which has claimed that these programmes discriminate not only against white males, but against those minorities that are not Black, Latino, Native American, or LGBTQ+, notably Asians, Jews and Evangelical Christians. As early as 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Alan Bakke, who had sued the University of California at Davis Medical School for denying him admission because it had set aside a quota of 16 seats for minority students.
The Court did not explicitly rule out affirmative action. Instead, it focused on racial quotas, which it declared unconstitutional. Years later, however, in June 2023 the Court ruled against Harvard and the University of North Carolina affirmative action admissions programs, on the grounds that the programs in both schools discriminated against Asian American students. The ruling sounded the death knell for affirmative action in higher education, but not in other domains. Trump’s orders now in effect extend that ruling to all who work for or contract with the federal government.
The American military, always seeking to hew to the orders of the President, its commander-in-chief, faces an especially delicate dilemma. Women and minorities constitute a significant percentage of the armed forces; indeed, General C.Q. Brown, a distinguished Air Force officer who currently serves as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s most senior officer, is an African American. Lisa Franchetti, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), amassed an enviable record in the senior combat command positions that she has held. Pete Hegseth, recently confirmed as Secretary of Defense, has long been a vocal opponent of anything that smacks of DEI and of preferences, policies and promotions that whatever they are termed, smack of affirmative action.
With respect to Brown and Franchetti, both senior officers continue to serve, in contrast to Admiral Linda Fagan, the first female Commandant of the Coast Guard, an outspoken DEI advocate, who was summarily dismissed. No doubt the Chairman and the CNO and both their fellow officers, as well as enlisted personnel, cannot but be sensitive to the new Defense Secretary’s outspokenness on these matters. Indeed, President Trump has now signed a new set of executive orders that, among other things, roots out all vestiges of the Department of Defense’s DEI programs; bans transgender troops from serving in the military; sets standards for the use of gender pronouns; and reinstates with back pay and benefits service members who refused to be vaccinated for COVID-19.
What Trump has done, as his second executive order on the subject explicitly puts it, is to ensure that the Government, and all who contract with it, revert to a merit-based system of hiring and promotion. In so doing, he argues that his objective is to “protect the civil rights of all Americans and…promote individual initiative and hard work.” As former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has put it, there is a difference between equality and equity. “Equality” connotes equal opportunity for all. On the other hand, “equity” connotes equal outcomes, regardless of individual merit. The Trump Administration will no doubt argue that it is promoting the former, not the latter, whether in the military or in society as a whole. Ultimately, the courts will decide which approach provides the best opportunities for all Americans, regardless of race, religion, sex and sexual preferences.
Dov S. Zakheim is a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former U.S. Under Secretary of Defense in the first Bush Administration and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense in the second Reagan Administration.
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