Weaponizing DEI: Trump launches all-out war on workers and the oppressed
WW commentary
As soon as Donald Trump occupied the Oval Office again on Jan. 20, he did not waste any time before beginning a campaign of white supremacist attacks against the multinational, multigenerational working class, especially the most oppressed. His preferred focus was to target progressive DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs in the areas of the workplace and education on all levels within the federal government. These anti-DEI attacks took aim at trans people, migrants, women, Black, Latine, AAPI, Indigenous Nations, Arab, disabled people and other marginalized sectors.

A torched Minneapolis, Minn., 3rd Police Precinct in protest of murder of George Floyd, May 28, 2020. Credit: WHYY
According to NBC News, Trump issued executive orders on Jan. 31 to dissolve programs that politically and culturally observe “Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, Juneteenth, LGBTQ Pride Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day,” [and Women’s History Month], especially amongst federal workers. (Jan. 31)
These political attacks on oppressed nationalities and groups are an attempt to drive a wedge between all sectors within the working class. Many of these observances commemorate hard-won gains made possible with decades of mass struggles led by the most oppressed.
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the country’s intelligence services, recently issued written guidance to employees saying that DEI-related boards and working groups have been ‘curtailed’ and that no official work time or work spaces should be used for DEI-related activities. Future travel related to these activities also has been cancelled, the memo stated.” (NBC News)
Attack on Civil Rights investigations
In keeping with his anti-DEI policies, Trump immediately has put a freeze on all new federal Civil Rights violation cases brought before the Civil Rights Division under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Justice. Many of those cases center around systemic police violence, where criminal convictions of the police are all too rare in state courts.
Once these cases resulted in the acquittals of police officers, if police went to trial at all, the victims’ families would turn to the federal courts for some form of redress. They would be seeking to win either convictions of police or any financial compensation based on Civil Rights violations.
These cases were spurred on under the Joe Biden administration with the police murders of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor in March 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky, followed two months later by the shocking lynching on video of 46-year-old George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Both Taylor and Floyd were unarmed Black victims killed by white police officers.
These high profile murders prompted millions of activists inside the U.S. and internationally to demand “disarm the police” and in some instances “abolish the police.” Both of these cases and many more forced the DOJ to demand that police departments revamp their policies with “reforms” to make them more accountable for their actions or else provide financial compensation as settlements of lawsuits for their crimes.
Any consent decrees or agreements that were worked out with local police departments intended to overhaul biased police practices, based on nationality or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disabilities, now face being overturned by reactionary Trump appointees who dominate the DOJ.
These same appointees will have the authority to bar lawyers working in the Civil Rights Division from filing “motions to intervene, agreed-upon remands, amicus briefs or statements of interest” on behalf of police victims unless they receive the approval of senior Trump appointees. This pushback will give the police an even bigger green light to abuse and kill more people of color, especially those with disabilities, with impunity.
In a bit of irony, it was Trump who recently unconditionally pardoned many of his MAGA supporters who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol in opposition to the results of the 2020 presidential elections. These right-wing riots on Jan. 6, 2021, resulted in the deaths of five Capitol police officers.
It remains to be seen just how far these racist, xenophobic, transphobic, sexist, anti-disabled orders will actually take effect once the workers and oppressed unite and take to the streets to say, “Hell no, we won’t go back!”