During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised to eliminate federal spending on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, reversing course from President Joe Biden, who boosted DEI practices during his presidency.
Trump said he wants to fire DEI government employees and will “direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination.” He also said he would hold universities accountable “that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity” by fining them the “entire amount of their endowment.”
Vice President-elect JD Vance sponsored the Dismantle DEI Act in the Senate last June “to eliminate all federal DEI programs and funding for federal agencies, contractors which receive federal funding, organizations which receive federal grants, and educational accreditation agencies.”
According to Axios, two first-day issues for Trump will be to “revoke federal DEI requirements” and “terminate federal staffers implementing DEI policies.”
Is DEI still popular in the private sector?
There are still a wide range of views on whether private companies and the federal government should promote DEI. For example, Bill Townsend, CEO and founder of College Rover, told NBC, “The big positive about DEI is that it exposes people to ethnic groups and viewpoints about ethnicities that are different from how they were raised at home.”
“We have to work and live among people who are different from us. DEI helps us manage that dynamic,” he continued. “Getting rid of DEI reinforces the fact that you don’t have to get along with everybody. It shouldn’t be that way.”
On the other hand, The Heritage Foundation claims DEI programs “don’t make people more tolerant of individual differences.”
Harvard public policy professor Iris Bohnet said that although about $8 billion is spent yearly in the U.S. on DEI trainings, “I did not find a single study that found that diversity training in fact leads to more diversity.” Bohnet added, “It is actually very hard to change mind-sets.”
The grassroots conservative organization, Parents Defending Education, released a report mid-December showing that since 2021, the federal government has spent over $1 billion in diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, grants.
Broken down, roughly $490 million went to DEI hiring, $343 million went to DEI programming and $169 million went to DEI based mental health/social emotional learning, according to the report.
DOGE looking at DEI spending
As a nation, the attitude surrounding DEI initiatives appears to have tipped towards the negative since last February, according to Pew Research Center.
Matching this nationwide trend are Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, the leading figures behind the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has a mandate to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies.”
Musk has consistently voiced concern over the DEI movement on X, most recently writing, “DEI is racism and sexism.” He has said the movement is founded in illegal practices since it “discriminates on the basis of race, gender and many other factors.”
Similarly, Ramaswamy, the soon to be head of the Department of Government Efficiency, wrote, “Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services has gone wild on DEI,” claiming there are 207 DEI employees across seven offices, and 294 taxpayer-funded DEI staffers.
He continued, “The price tag for payroll alone exceeds $67 million, with a majority of these DEI hires making six-figure salaries. The latest HHS budget request mentions ‘equity’ 829 times, with requests seeking to address ‘racial equity and environmental justice’ at the forefront. An efficient government has no place for DEI bloat. Time to DOGE it.”
This article has been updated.