Executive Orders which President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office launched a flurry of activities that included sending perhaps thousands of federal employees on administrative leave prior to being fired but who did nothing wrong. Websites and social media contacts related to those employees’ work were shut down and training courses were canceled.

Such drastic actions would be understandable if there were a national emergency. Rather, the president’s orders abolished programs directed at promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in a nation whose policies have mostly been failing to reflect its demographics and where several attempts in that direction were eventually curtailed.

President John Kennedy signed an Executive Order in 1961 directing government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated [fairly] during employment, without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin.” President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 order directed the government to “hire without regard to race, religion and national origin.” Johnson instructed the government to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin."

And President Jimmy Carter, in his 1977 inaugural address, stated that “the time for discrimination is over. No poor, rural, weak or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education a job or simple justice.”

The Kennedy and Johnson orders led to “affirmative action” programs and ill-fated “set-asides” which the courts deemed unconstitutional. Affirmative action, after various iterations, was finally halted by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2023. DEI initiatives followed as a more acceptable way to address racial imbalances and intolerance.

The “diversity” in the DEI name, as CNN explained, citing seven experts, “is embracing the differences everyone brings to the table, whether those are someone’s race, age, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability or other aspects of social identity.”

“Equity” is “treating everyone fairly and providing equal opportunities.”

“Inclusion” is “respecting everyone’s voice and creating a culture in which people from all backgrounds feel encouraged to express their ideas and perspectives.”

Conservatives quickly attacked DEI as affirmative action in disguise. Trump, in his order, described it as “illegal and immoral discrimination,” after promising in his inaugural address to “end the government policy to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” He would, instead, “forge a society that is color-blind and meritbased.”

Neither the president nor other DEI critics have provided any evidence to support their anti-DEI stance. In fact, a 2022 government report said that the federal workforce reflected the broader population, NBC30 in Central California reported. The bureaucracy overall was 60 percent European Americans and 55 percent male. If anything, the report suggested that more work needed to be done because the senior executive level was 75 percent European American and more than 60 percent male.

The nation has seen this rodeo before, when critical race theory (CRT) was the villain and several states, including Florida under Gov. Ron DeSantis, banned it from being taught in schools, even though it never was. And just as happened with CRT, the anti-DEI campaign was led by Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the rightwing Manhattan Institute, who inveigled himself into the confidence of the governor and was rewarded by being named to the board of the public New College of Florida which DeSantis converted into a conservative education laboratory.

Rufo argued in a July 2023 New York Times Op Ed that “there is a strong argument for abolishing DEI programs on liberal grounds” with a focus on university education. “Many DEI programs seem to be predicated on a view radically different from the liberal tradition: namely, that the university is not merely a home for the discovery of knowledge but also a vehicle for activism, liberation and social change.”

Six months later, billionaire hedge fund owner Bill Ackman devoted most of a 4,000-word social media post to attacking Claudine Gay, the first African American woman president of Harvard University, who was eventually hounded out of office. He accused her of being an unqualified DEI hire incapable of dealing with “antisemitism at Harvard.”

Ackman argued that DEI “was not about diversity in its purest form” but “a political advocacy movement on behalf of certain groups that are deemed oppressed under DEI’s own methodology.” It was “inherently inconsistent with American values” that included “building a democracy with equality of opportunity for all.”

It is unclear how much Ackman’s position influenced Trump but the President’s description of DEI as “illegal and immoral discrimination” closely reflected Ackman’s argument that it “is inherently a racist and illegal movement.”

Neither Trump nor states that passed anti-DEI laws have produced evidence to support their anti-DEI stance. Still, more than 80 anti-DEI bills were introduced in state Legislatures in 2023; eight passed, 25 failed and the others were pending, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Florida, as was the case of the CRT issue, was among them, passing laws barring state colleges from requiring “political loyalty tests” in employment, admission or promotion.

Conservative activists also started a drive in 2023 to pressure companies to abandon DEI programs. That campaign is being headed by groups with innocuous names such as the National Legal and Policy Center and the National Center for Public Policy Research, as well as the Heritage Foundation. They have been threatening boycotts of banks and corporations.

Companies which have surrendered include Amazon, Boeing, Brown-Forman/Jack Daniels, Ford Motor Company, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Lowe’s, McDonald’s, Meta/Facebook, Molson Coors, Target and Walmart.

Others have resisted the bullying. A Goldman Sachs spokesperson said that “organizations benefit from diverse perspectives,” The Wall Street Journal reported. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon stated, “We are going to continue to reach out to the Black community, Hispanic community, the LGBT community.” Apple’s board accused those behind the campaign of “inappropriately” trying to “restrict Apple’s ability to manage its own ordinary operations.” The board said that Apple is striving “to create a culture of belonging where everyone can do their best work.”

Delta Airlines’ executive vice president for external affairs, Peter Carter, told a reporter that its DEI policies “are critical to our business” and are “about talent and that’s been our focus,” according to Forbes. Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco, told Axios that critics are treating DEI as a “single issue” but that it is “made up of 150 different things and maybe seven of them got a little bit out of hand.” Those weaknesses are “going to be solved and then you’re going to be left with commonsense,” Robbins said.

Costco’s board unanimously urged shareholders to reject calls to drop DEI, which they did at their annual meeting on Jan. 24 — by 99 percent, the Associated Press reported. The merchandise membership club was being pressured by the National Center for Public Policy which claimed that Cisco’s DEI initiatives posed “litigation, reputational and financial risks to the company and therefore financial risk to shareholders.” The Costco board countered that “our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary.”

This confrontation is still to be played out fully. The president has also ordered federal contractors to verify that they do not “operate programs promoting DEI that violate applicable federal anti-discrimination law.” He also rescinded Johnson’s 60year-old order requiring private federal contractors to maintain anti-discrimination programs. He gave federal agencies 10 days to identify contractors “using coded or imprecise language” to “obscure” DEI programs, Forbes reported.

The public, which still supports DEI by just over 50 percent, will obviously have a big role to play in this showdown but obviously a few corporations are willing to risk public displeasure because they have billiondollar government contracts. African Americans, Latinos, the LGBT community and women have the most to lose. But, as the recent election has shown, Americans do not always vote the way others expect them expected to, even when their own interests are at stake.