Trump’s 100 Days: Three Important Changes That Impact People All over America
One hundred days after returning to power, Donald Trump has accused federal cuts, including tariffs, immigration crackdowns and the dismantling of the DEI.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day at the White House, with a swirl of black Sharpie markers, cracking down on what he called “illegal and radical” diversity, equity and inclusive practices.
This was the first in a series of actions that successfully carried out the promise of a campaign to wipe out the DEI.
Over the course of his ten-hundred days in office, the president has removed federal and military diversity initiatives, threatening to strip billions of dollars in federal funds and grants from universities, and threatening to roll back diversity initiatives to large corporations or risk losing federal contracts.
Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened investigations and prosecution as the anti-DEI campaign, which began in his first term, has broken through the White House economic and cultural agenda. The Federal Communications Commission has opened probes at Comcast and Disney.
“I have finished all of the lawless, so-called diversity, equity and inclusion bullshit across the federal government and the private sector,” Trump served on Tuesday for the 100th day at a Michigan rally.
But what about him? Day is not dead yet, people on both sides of the political aisle say.
The White House “must focus on making sure they say they’re going to do it when companies announce they’re turning their backs from Day,” said Jonathan Butcher, a senior researcher at a conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. “Goldman Sachs, Disney, IBM and others just made an announcement this year. Are they just changing the name of the program or actually finishing employee training focused on race-based employment policies and DEI?”
Dei Retreat or reset?
The Trump administration suffered a strong hit in its first 100 days, restructuring Dei’s policies across the industry, touching virtually every American workplace.
Even before Trump’s inauguration, Facebook owner Meta abandoned the practice of considering diverse candidates for open roles. McDonald’s removed the executive blank diversity target.
During Trump’s first week at the White House, defense contractor Lockheed Martin said “we will take immediate steps to ensure continued compliance and full alignment with President Trump’s recent executive order.”
Software Giant Salesforce.com told USA Today in 2023 that it would stand up to DEI’s Trump, removing the word “diversity” from its annual report and abolishing its goal of diversifying the workforce.
“They’re making the most of the sociology of Washington University in St. Louis,” said Adia Harvey Wingfield.
Even if large companies save their backback or flatline diversity commitments, some, including Costco and Cisco, are publicly defending DEI. American Express, Apple and Levi shareholders voted in favour of DEI. Donald Thomaskovic Day, a sociology professor who runs the Employment Equity Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, said the “silent majority” continues to work despite increasing political pressure to refund DEIs.
“The majority of organizations are simply quiet and have not retreated or advocated from the DEI program in public squares,” said Tomaskovic-Devey.
The data seems to be responsible for that.
Only 8% of business leaders surveyed by Littler’s law firms are seriously considering changes to the DEI program as a result of the Trump administration’s executive order. Almost half said they have no plans for a new rollback or further rollback.
Instead of retreating, businesses are evolving their diversity programs to focus on what works and what doesn’t work, says Joelle Emerson, CEO of Culture and Inclusion Platform Paradigm.
A recent paradigm survey shows that around 85% of companies report that their executive teams are committed to building a fair and inclusive workplace just like they did a year ago.
“We see us not only setting and sharing our representative goals, but also moving away from the organization away from highly scrutinized, increasingly legally dangerous efforts, such as evolving the language away from the politically charged acronym “Dei,”,” Emerson said. “But most people seem to continue or even double the initiative that has the biggest impact. The advantage that allows a wider range of people to thrive in the workforce. The process by which businesses throw a wider net, hire the best talent and move forward.
Is Dei doubled?
More than half of the country’s 3,000 large companies continue to build and expand DEI-related programs, according to Olivia Knight, Racial and Environmental Justice Manager at the shareholder advocacy group, which advocates the company’s DEI program.
For good reason, said Meredith Benton, workplace equity manager at As Sow, founder of As Sow and Whistle Stop Capital. Over the next few years, minority groups will become the majority of the US population, and we hope that businesses will reflect the diversity of the country.
“Early there was a sincere confusion about the association with the financial interests of these topics,” Benton said. “We’re no longer having that conversation. The conversation we’re talking now is the best way to ensure that the workplace manages against bias and discrimination.”
Businesses are trying to “fly under the radar” this week in the words of large retailers, Benton said.
Some businesses don’t sit on the sidelines.
In a great place to work at All Summit, a leadership event in Las Vegas, CEO Anthony Capuano recalled the debate over whether Marriott should make changes to DEI policies.
Looking back at his conversation with his mentor and former chairman Bill Marriott, he told the staff: “The wind blows, but in ’98 there are some basic truths. We welcome all hotels, we create all the opportunities, and basically they will never change.”
24 hours later, Capuano said he had 40,000 emails thanking him.
At Starbucks’ annual meeting, CEO Brian Nicole spoke about the DEI, telling shareholders that it is important for the coffee giant to reflect the diversity of its customers and staff “at all of our stores.”
“Starbucks is a very diverse and diverse organization and will continue to be a very diverse organization,” Nicole said.
“It’s still early on and I’m sure this administration has more items in their bags of tricks, but it’s worth noting that much work continues despite the diversity, inclusion, and being part of the NYU undergraduate schools of David Glasgow at Meltzer Center.
A “myopic” organization that abandons Dei will not do that for a long time, predicted by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.
Rather than checking the box, successful companies are building policies that support a “wide range of people,” entrepreneurs and investors told Forbes.
“I think the biggest fake is that we have identified these types of goals as not meritocrats in any way,” Ohanian said. “We have built billion-dollar businesses with an eye on having diversity, equity and inclusion, and we are hiring for greatness. That never stopped.”
Paul Argenti, a professor of corporate communications at Dartmouth, said the business case for diversity is stronger than ever.
“Choosing isn’t between merit and diversity. The best performing organization knows that having meritocracy requires ensuring that diverse candidates have the opportunity to show benefits just like everyone else.” “Companies with diverse leadership outweigh their homogeneous counterparts in innovation, risk management and financial returns.”
Back bunker
After George Floyd’s 2020 murder forced him to make historical calculations with race in America, the DEI initiative took the Corporate America and the federal government.
These efforts to increase the stubbornly low proportion of women, black and Hispanic executives appear to have achieved results.
The number of black executives rose nearly 27% between 2020 and 2022 at S&P 100 companies, according to a USA Today analysis of federal government-gathered workforce data.
The momentum was filled with strong repulsion. Critics like Stephen Miller and Edward Blum have abandoned the legal challenges that reformed these DEI efforts as illegal discrimination. The threat of consumer boycotts from anti-DEI activists like Robby Starbuck has intensified.
In 2023, the rank of black executives fell 3% from the previous year at a rate twice as high as white executives in 2023, USA Today found.
During the 2024 presidential election, Trump telegraphed a dramatic change in America’s approach to civil rights and vowed to assume “anti-white” racism.
“There’s a clear anti-whiteness in this country, and I don’t think we can allow that,” Trump said.
Some of Day’s most keen critics now hold strong positions in the Trump administration, and they are leaning towards deep division beyond Day.
The narrow majority (53%) of the public disapprove of the Trump administration’s actions to end the DEI, but 44% have approved it, according to the Pew Research Center. The split is sharp along the party line. Nearly eight out of 10 Republicans have approved, and nearly nine out of 10 Democrats have disapproved.
According to Data Intelligence Firm’s Morning Consult, Dei is one of the hot button issues that create the widest partisan gaps in what Americans want to talk to brands.
Democrats are much more likely to want to hear about DEI than Republicans, but even they haven’t fallen from 78% to 71% since last year, Morning Consulting found.
“If you want to have a government that enforces civil rights laws, you need to have a government that enforces civil rights laws for everyone, not just a favorable group, but also for all individuals.” “So, what does that look like? It looks like what the Trump administration is doing. Anti-white bias should face just as severe sanctions as anti-black bias.”
Much of the Trump administration’s actions over the first 100 days were drawn directly from the pages of Project 2025, the blueprint of Trump’s second term legacy, from overhauling the Civil Rights Bureau, which enforces civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, to the removal of the foundations of civil rights and anti-discrimination laws known as exclusive exclusion liability for employment.
At the Justice Department, Hermet K. Dillon, the new head of the civil rights division, which has been at the heart of the struggle for racial equality since its inception in 1957, has repositioned top lawyers and focused on fighting anti-Semitism in women’s sports and trans athletes as well as other Trump priorities.
“The job here is to enforce federal civil rights laws that don’t awaken ideology,” Dillon told conservative commentator Glenn Beck.
In the coming weeks, Bondi is expected to submit a report with a recommendation that “encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEIs,” including a list of up to nine civil compliance investigations from each agency.
“That’s when the rubber really hits the road as we move from the realm of intensity and threat to the realm of areas where ‘illegal days’ are as widespread as it appears to be thinking,” Glasgow said.