During the early days of the second presidency of Donald Trump, federal policies regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), in addition to sometimes accessibility (DEIA), have undergone significant change. Trump attributed societal problems to diversity, equity, and inclusion and wokeness. Equating diversity with incompetence, he reversed pro-diversity policies in the federal government, and downsized divisions working on civil rights. He reoriented remaining civil rights divisions to target state and local officials, companies, and colleges for "illegal DEI", which became a buzzword in his administration. His administration launched worldwide investigations into companies, cities, and institutions for alleged "DEI" programs. The moves came following his 2024 presidential campaign which stated it would reinterpret existing Civil Rights-era protections for minorities to counter "anti-white racism". Trump promised to roll back Biden-era Executive Orders on diversity and racial equity, saying there was a "definite anti-white feeling in the country".
In response to anti-DEI executive actions and against what the administration called "improper ideology", numerous agencies and websites altered or removed material related to women, racial minorities, and transgender individuals.
At a press conference held in January 2025, the day after a mid-air collision between an airplane and helicopter that killed 67 people, the worst aviation accident in the U.S. since 2001, Trump read from a January 2024 New York Post article that falsely said "the FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency's website."
On January 20-21, 2025, Trump signed several executive orders targeting DEI efforts:
The orders demanded that all governmental DEI programs be shut down by January 23, and placed employees on administrative leave and eventual layoff.
An internal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) report obtained by the Washington Post outlined a three-phase process by which DOGE would lead a purge of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from the federal government:
In February 2025 it was reported that the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department "suspended access to thousands of pages of training materials" related to DEI, and the Internal Revenue Service "deleted any mention of the words 'diversity', 'equity' and 'inclusion' from its procedural handbook, including from anodyne passages on taxes and finance." It was also reported that career civil servants in the United States Department of Agriculture who had previously worked to implement policies intended to reduce racial, sexual-orientation, and gender-identity discrimination were "placed on leave and faced potential firing." It was also reported that the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) told the heads of agencies that any staff members working on DEI programs before November 5, 2024 (election day) should be targeted for termination, and the OPM encouraged workers to "report colleagues who were continuing to do DEIA-related work."
Women, people of color, and LGBTQ individuals have been scrubbed from federal websites, image archives, and physical installations:
The purge resulted in the accidental deletion of various unrelated data, such as references to the Enola Gay and operational data held on NSA servers.
According to two veteran Republican budget experts, the first phase of DOGE's plan "appears driven more by an ideological assault on federal agencies long hated by conservatives than a good-faith effort to save taxpayer dollars".
According to Brenda Sue Fulton, "[this] administration has hung a sign outside the armed forces saying if you're not a white male, you are no longer welcome."
Some experts have suggested that some efforts to protect diversity, equity and inclusion "will continue - but in a different guise, one more suited to the political mood of a country that has just elected a president who has pledged a war on 'woke'".
Early February 2025, a lawsuit was filed against Trump's executive orders, arguing that they were unconstitutional. In March, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit paused the lower court's nationwide preliminary injunction and permitted the enforcement of the executive orders pending the outcome of the appeal.
In June 2025, Reagan-appointed Judge William G. Young declared Trump's reasoning in cutting "DEI" and "gender ideology extremism" programs for the National Institutes of Health "void and illegal", stating that claims of fighting DEI were "appalling" and "palpably clear" racial discrimination, and that "I've never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable. I've sat on this bench now for 40 years. I've never seen government racial discrimination like this".
Roy Campbell, an auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, wrote in a reflection published September 2025, stated "âÂÂThis administration wants to erase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from the American conscience ... However, just think about the letters, DEI. DEI, Dei means God in Latin.âÂÂ
In December 2025, ProPublica reported that after the signing of EO 14151, more than 1000 nonprofits rewrote the mission statements in their tax filings to remove references to DEI efforts.
The administration has: