Project 2025 on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
The conservative movement in the US is working diligently to erase hard-won progress to combat discriminatory practices. Project 2025 outlines exactly how they plan to do this if Trump is elected for a second term.
People’s Guide to Project 2025 reports that: “Threatened by decades of progress in advancing civil rights and equality for all, the authors of Project 2025 want to create a country that allows for more discrimination where we live, study, work, and play — and roll back hard-fought victories by our movements for progress.” (Ref. 1, page 25)
A People Magazine article by Kyler Alvord writes that: “Project 2025 also brands diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts — which seek to mitigate discrimination and promote fair treatment of all Americans — as discriminatory and “racist.” The mandate says that in addition to squashing DEI programs around the nation, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division should spend its first year of the Trump administration “using the full force of federal prosecutorial resources to investigate and prosecute all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers” who engage in DEI efforts. Federal rules and legislation would also be scrubbed of the term diversity, equity and inclusion.” (Ref. 2)
References:
- People’s Guide to Project 2025:
- People Magazine article “What is Project 2025? Inside The Far-Right Plan Threatening Everything From the Word ‘Gender’ to Public Eduction” by Kyler Alvord, July 11, 2024. https://people.com/what-is-project-2025-inside-far-right-plan-trump-presidency-8622964
Read more below.
Project 2025 Statements on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” (Ref. 1, pages 4 – 5)
“States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women.” (Ref. 1, page 5)
- “Bureaucrats at the Department of Education inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms;…
- Woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon force troops to attend “training” seminars about “white privilege” (Ref. 1, page 8)
Eliminate the Legal Standard of Disparate Impact
“Project 2025 proposes that the federal government stop the long-standing use of “disparate impact” in assessing discrimination by ending its use in discrimination cases and even bringing lawsuits that challenge the standard’s constitutionality. The disparate impact standard has long been used in determining discrimination, under Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. It is important for evaluating when ‘facially neutral’ programs have disparate impacts on certain groups of people. The Civil Rights Division of the DOJ determines disparate impact as, “does the adverse effect of the policy or practice fall disproportionately on a race, color, or national origin group?” This standard provides an important remedy for DOJ and others to bring civil rights cases when groups of people have their civil rights violated in areas such as employment discrimination and fair housing, so discontinuing its use will make it harder for the federal government to enforce civil rights protections in everything from housing to education to employment. Disparate impact standards have long been ruled constitutional by the United States Supreme Court, so Project 2025’s attempts are baseless.” (Ref. 2, page 26)
United States Coast Guard (USCG)
“USCG is facing recruitment challenges similar to those faced by the military services. The Administration should stop the messaging on wokeness and diversity and focus instead on attracting the best talent for USCG.” (Ref. 1, page 156)
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
“The next conservative Administration should dismantle USAID’s DEI apparatus by eliminating the Chief Diversity Officer position along with the DEI advisers and committees; cancel the DEI scorecard and dashboard; remove DEI requirements from contract and grant tenders and awards; issue a directive to cease promotion of the DEI agenda, including the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda; and provide staff a confidential medium through which to adjudicate cases of political retaliation that agency or implementing staff suffered during the Biden Administration. It should eliminate funding for partners that promote discriminatory DEI practices and consider debarment in egregious cases. As federal departments and agencies cannot play partisan politics, staff—irrespective of hiring mechanism—as well as implementers and grantees that engage in ideological agitation on behalf of the DEI agenda should be dismissed, and entities should be debarred. The next conservative Administration should return the authority over all civil rights issues at USAID to the agency’s Office of Civil Rights, which is the appropriate locus for ensuring that all Americans have guaranteed equality of career opportunity at USAID.” (Ref. 1, page 258)
Department of Education
“…the Secretary of Education should insist that the department serve parents and American ideals, not advocates whose message is that children can choose their own sex, that America is “systemically racist,” that math itself is racist, and that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ideal of a colorblind society should be rejected in favor of reinstating a color-conscious society.” (Ref. 1, page 286)
“Safeguarding civil rights. Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.” (Ref. 1, page 322)
“Title VI—School Discipline and Disparate Impact
Assuring a safe and orderly school environment should be a primary consideration for school leaders and district administrators. Unfortunately, federal overreach has pushed many school leaders to prioritize the pursuit of racial parity in school discipline indicators—such as detentions, suspensions, and expulsions— over student safety. In 2014, the Obama Administration issued a Dear Colleague Letter that muddied the standard for civil rights enforcement under Title VI for student discipline cases. Before the DCL, a school would be in violation of federal law for treating black and white students differently for the same offense (disparate treatment); under the Obama Administration schools were at risk of losing federal funding if they treated black and white students equally but had aggregate differences in the rates of school discipline by race (disparate impact).
OCR leveraged federal civil rights investigations as policy enforcement tools; these investigations could only end when school districts agreed to adopt lenient discipline policies, commonly known as “restorative justice.” Academic studies, as well as student and teacher surveys, suggest that academics and school climate have been harmed substantially by this push.
The Trump Administration rescinded the Obama Administration’s guidance on school discipline and corrected the Obama Administration’s overreach in Title VI enforcement.
- The next Administration should continue the policy of the Trump Administration in this area and direct the department to conduct a comprehensive review of all Title VI cases to ascertain to what extent these cases include allegations of disparate impact.
- OCR should also review all resolution agreements with school districts to conform with this policy.
- As part of this effort, the new Administration should also direct the department and DOJ jointly to issue enforcement guidance stating that the agencies will no longer investigate Title VI cases that exclusively rest on allegations of disparate impact.
- To the extent that the Biden Administration publishes guidance or promulgates a regulation on this topic, the next Administration should rescind the guidance and commence rulemaking to rescind the regulation.
Getting the federal government out of the business of dictating school discipline policy is a good start. But if the next conservative Department of Education simply rescinds the Biden-era regulation, it could very easily be enforced again on Day One through a Dear Colleague Letter by another leftist Administration.
- In addition to rescinding the policy and any related guidance, the next Secretary should work with the next Attorney General on a regulation that would clarify current regulations to state that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act does not include a disparate impact standard.
As law professor Gail Heriot has noted, the alleged existence of a disparate impact standard under Title VI makes everything presumed illegal unless given special dispensation by the federal government.
- Although it would require political capital from the White House, given that mainstream news outlets are sure to frame it as an attack on civil rights, the next conservative Administration should take sweeping action to assure that the purpose of the Civil Rights Act is not inverted through a disparate impact standard to provide a pretext for theoretically endless federal meddling.”
(Ref. 1, pages 334-336)
Note: DCL is Dear Colleague Letter, OCR is Office for Civil Rights and DOJ is Department of Justice.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and DEI
“Assistance to States for the Education of Children with Disabilities; Preschool Grants for Children with Disabilities (Equity in IDEA)
- Effective January 18, 2017, the department issued final regulations under Part B of IDEA that require states to consider race and ethnicity in the identification, placement, and discipline of students with disabilities. The new Administration should rescind this regulation.
Students should never be denied access to special education services because of their race or ethnicity, but this is happening in school districts across the country thanks to the Obama Administration’s Equity in IDEA regulation. This was not the intent of the regulation, but it is an inevitable byproduct of its flawed assumptions. The Obama Administration looked at the racial statistics on special education assignment and made two assumptions: that African American students were disproportionately overrepresented, and that this overrepresentation constituted a harm that required federal pressure to ameliorate.
School districts deemed to overrepresent minority students in special education assignment, or in discipline amongst special education students, are tagged by their state education agencies as engaging in “significant disproportionality,” and are required to reallocate 15 percent of their IDEA Part B money into coordinated early intervening services that are intended to address the “root causes of disproportionality.” In practice, this can mean raiding special education funding to pay for CRT-inspired “equity” consultants and professional development.
This is especially problematic given that both of the assumptions behind Equity in IDEA are flawed. Special education services provide extra assistance to students; they do not harm them. And according to the most rigorous research on the subject, conducted by Penn State’s Paul Morgan, black students are actually underrepresented in special education once adequate statistical controls are made. That means that this regulation effectively further depresses the provision of valuable services to an already underserved group.
- The next Administration should immediately commence rulemaking to rescind the Equity in IDEA regulation. No replacement regulation is required. l The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) should prepare a digest of the best research on this subject and share it directly with state superintendents and state special education leaders across the country, who have been led by this regulation to believe a false problem diagnosis. Every effort should be made to dissuade states from continuing to operate on the assumption that overrepresentation requires state intervention after the federal pressure is rescinded.” (Ref. 1, pages 336 – 337)
Note: CRT is Critical Race Theory.
Critical Race Theory (CRT)
“So, when critical race theory is used as part of school activities such as mandatory affinity groups, teacher training programs in which educators are required to confess their privilege, or school assignments in which students must defend the false idea that America is systemically racist, the theory is actively disrupting the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness.
- As such, lawmakers should design legislation that prevents the theory from spreading discrimination.
- For K–12 systems under their jurisdiction, federal lawmakers should adopt proposals that say no individual should receive punishment or benefits based on the color of their skin.
- Furthermore, school officials should not require students or teachers to believe that individuals are guilty or responsible for the actions of others based on race or ethnicity.
Educators should not be forced to discuss contemporary political issues but neither should they refrain from discussing certain subjects in an attempt to protect students from ideas with which they disagree. Proposals such as this should result in robust classroom discussions, not censorship. At the state level, states should require schools to post classroom materials online to provide maximum transparency to parents.
- Again, specifically for K–12 systems under federal authority, Congress and the next Administration should support existing state and federal civil rights laws and add to such laws a prohibition on compelled speech.” (Ref. 1, pages 342 – 343)
HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM
Higher Education Act (HEA): Accreditation Reform
“Prohibit accreditation agencies from leveraging their Title IV gatekeeper role to mandate that educational institutions adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.” (Ref. 1, page 352)
“Transparency Around Program Performance and DEI Influence
The next President should issue a series of executive orders requiring:
- An accounting of how federal programs/grants spread DEI/CRT/ gender ideology,…” (Ref. 1, page 358)
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (NIH)
“Woke Policies. Under Francis Collins, NIH became so focused on the #MeToo movement that it refused to sponsor scientific conferences unless there were a certain number of women panelists, which violates federal civil rights law against sex discrimination. This quota practice should be ended, and the NIH Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, which pushes such unlawful actions, should be abolished.” (Ref. 1, page 462)
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
“Repeal the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation reinstituted under the Biden Administration30 and any other uses of special-purpose credit authorities to further equity.” (Ref. 1, page 509)
“Even though numerous federal laws prohibit discrimination based on notable immutable characteristics such as race and sex, the Biden Administration— through the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and other federal entities—has enshrined affirmative discrimination in all aspects of its operations under the guise of “equity.” Federal agencies and their components have established so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices that have become the vehicles for this unlawful discrimination, and all departments and agencies have created “equity” plans to carry out these invidious schemes.” (Ref. 1, page 561)
Department of Labor
“NEEDED REFORMS
Reverse the DEI Revolution in Labor Policy.
Under the Obama and Biden Administrations, labor policy was yet another target of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) revolution. Under this managerialist left-wing race and gender ideology, every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subjects and others, including pro-life views. The next Administration should eliminate every one of these wrongful and burdensome ideological projects.
Eliminate Racial Classifications and Critical Race Theory Trainings.
The Biden Administration has pushed “racial equity” in every area of our national life, including in employment, and has condoned the use of racial classifications and racial preferences under the guise of DEI and critical race theory, which categorizes individuals as oppressors and victims based on race. Nondiscrimination and equality are the law; DEI is not. Title VII flatly prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, and national origin. The President should:
- Issue an executive order banning, and Congress should pass a law prohibiting the federal government from using taxpayer dollars to fund, all critical race theory training (CRT).
- Direct DOJ and EEOC to enforce Title VII. The President should direct the Department of Justice and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title VII to prohibit racial classifications and quotas, including human-resources classifications and DEI trainings that promote critical race theory.
- Eliminate EEO-1 data collection. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission collects EEO-1 data on employment statistics based on race/ ethnicity, which data can then be used to support a charge of discrimination under a disparate impact theory. This could lead to racial quotas to remedy alleged race discrimination. (The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) also has a right to the data EEOC collects.) Crudely categorizing employees by race or ethnicity fails to recognize the diversity of the American workforce and forces individuals into categories that do not fully reflect their racial and ethnic heritage.
- Amend Title VII. The next Administration should work with Congress to amend Title VII to prohibit the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from collecting EEO-1 data and any other racial classifications in employment for both private and public workplaces.
- Eliminate disparate impact liability. With interracial marriages in America increasing, many Americans do not fit neatly into crude racial categories.1 Under disparate impact theory, moreover, discriminatory motive or intent is irrelevant; the outcome is what matters. But all workplaces have disparities.
Congress should:
- Eliminate disparate impact as a valid theory of discrimination for race and other bases under Title VII and other laws. Disparities do not (and should not legally) imply discrimination per se.
The President should:
- Sign an executive order explicitly forbidding OFCCP from using disparate impact in its analysis.” (Ref. 1, pages 582 – 583)
Note: EEOC is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Department of Veteran Affairs (VA)
“…the current VA leadership is focusing very publicly on “social equity and inclusion” within departmental policy discussions toward ends that will affect only a small minority of the veterans who use the VA.” (Ref. 1, page 642)
Department of Commerce/Decennial Census
“Review forthcoming changes to race and ethnicity questions. The current Administration has announced its intent to change data collection methods regarding race and ethnicity by combining the two questions on the decennial questionnaire and increasing the number of available options. A new conservative Administration should take control of this process and thoroughly review any changes. There are concerns among conservatives that the data under Biden Administration proposals could be skewed to bolster progressive political agendas. Government data should be unbiased and trusted—and an incoming conservative Administration should ensure that is the case. This work must be coordinated with the Office of Management and Budget, which governs federal data collection standards via its statistical directives.” (Ref. 1, pages 680 – 681)
“Abolish the National Advisory Committee and reevaluate all other committees. The Census Bureau National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations (NAC) was established by the Obama Administration in 2012 and rechartered by the Biden Administration in 2022. The committee is a hotbed for left-wing activists intent upon injecting racial and social-justice theory into the governing philosophy of the Census Bureau. The NAC should immediately be abolished by the incoming Administration. The NAC charter gives the Secretary of Commerce the authority to terminate the committee. Since the Secretary of Commerce established the NAC in 2012 under the FACA, the Secretary is authorized to terminate the NAC. The new Administration should also reevaluate and potentially abolish all non-statutory standing committees within the Census Bureau, including the Census Scientific Advisory Committee.” (Ref. 1, page 682)
Department of Treasury
“THE “EQUITY” AGENDA
Under the Biden Administration, the Treasury Department has appointed a Counselor for Racial Equity, established an Advisory Committee on Racial Equity, and created an office for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility. All these should be eliminated. Treasury has created several new offices to promote “equity” and has made this its first of five strategic goals in its Fiscal Year 2022–2226 Strategic Plan. “Equity” is identified as a cross-cutting theme in 15 of 19 of the plan’s objectives.
The avowed purpose of these initiatives is to implement policies that deliberately favor some races or ethnicities over others. The casual acceptance and rapid spread of racist policymaking in the federal government must be forcefully opposed and reversed. The next conservative Administration should take affirmative steps to expose and eradicate the practice of critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) throughout the Treasury Department. These steps will include:
- Identify every Treasury official who participated in DEI initiatives and interview him or her for the purpose of determining the scope and nature of these initiatives and to ensure that such initiatives are completely ended.
- Make public immediately all communications relating to the work of the Treasury’s critical race theory and DEI initiatives.
- Treat the participation in any critical race theory or DEI initiative, without objecting on constitutional or moral grounds, as per se grounds for termination of employment.
- Expose and make public all training materials and initiatives designed to single out any race, ethnicity, or sex for special treatment.
The Administration should eliminate the 25-member Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity.” (Ref. 1, page 708)
References:
- Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise, Project 2025, Presidential Transition Project; https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
- People’s Guide to Project 2025: