https://www.axios.com/2025/02/26/trump-gaza-ai-video-israel-hamas-war
https://www.reuters.com/legal/straight-womans-reverse-discrimination-case-goes-us-supreme-court-2025-02-26/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/25/ohio-discrimination-marlean-ames-supreme-court/
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/scotus-hear-straight-womans-discrimination-case-could-reshape-employment-law
https://www.thefp.com/p/christopher-caldwell-dei-trump-executive-order
Christopher Caldwell writes:
Now Trump has done what Reagan would not. His repeal came via three executive orders, two issued on Inauguration Day. The first overturned dozens of Biden decrees, including the “Advancing Racial Equity” executive order signed in the first hours of his presidency in 2021. The second ended all initiatives, offices, contracts, and employees connected to DEI, which Trump referred to as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.”
The decisive blow came the following day. In an order called “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” Trump repealed a variety of executive orders, including 11246, and explicitly barred the OFCCP from enforcing affirmative action. And his Office of Personnel Management followed through on the previous day’s business, ordering that all DEI federal employees be sent home, all DEI federal contracts be terminated, and all efforts to pursue federal DEI programs under another name be rooted out.
RIP affirmative action.
But that is only part of the story. A curious element of Trump’s third executive order is its invocation of the president’s “solemn duty” to enforce “longstanding Federal civil-rights laws,” mentioning the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is not a concession. It’s a threat.
While the Civil Rights Act mentioned “affirmative action” it attached no specific meaning to the term, and the law was resolutely color-blind. Affirmative action programs, with their differing treatment of races, are in tension with it. DEI programs, many of which scapegoat white people, are even more so. It is Trump’s assertion that DEI programs “violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws.” Trump is doing more than reforming the public sector. He is signaling to the private sector that certain kinds of programs are liable to prosecution, even asking each federal agency to name up to nine large private-sector organizations that might be engaged in discrimination.
