Some quick history:

* On September 24, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued a landmark
executive order prohibiting employment discrimination by federal contractors.

* Two years earlier, a federal ban on employment discrimination was one of the
core demands of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his legendary “I Have a Dream”
speech.

* Sixty years later, we almost take workplace anti-discrimination laws and
practices for granted (though of course they are still violated with
disturbing frequency).

On Tuesday, Donald Trump issued an executive order revoking LBJ’s original ban
on employment discrimination by federal contractors. (It’s worth noting that
every president since LBJ — including Trump himself in his first term — had kept
the ban in place.)

And that was just one of the moves Trump made this week in a full-scale assault
on efforts to foster diversity and fairness in America’s workplaces, including
the federal government.

Trump also ordered essentially the entire federal government to immediately
discontinue initiatives meant to make the federal workforce more diverse.

He even ordered various agencies to start making lists of businesses and
universities that don’t stop efforts to improve diversity. (We know — from our
own history and that of other nations — that it’s never anything but bad when
governments start making lists of this sort.)

Trump and the MAGA crowd love whining about “DEI.” In fact, it was a pillar of
Trump’s platform — such as it was — in the last election. (From MAGA’s unhinged
obsession with the term, you might think “DEI” is about forcing companies to
hire deranged, evil, and immoral people. Just to clarify, it stands for
diversity, equity, and inclusion — you know, really horrible stuff.)

They’ve also been tossing in phrases like “merit-based” and “meritocracy”
whenever they can.

But to Trump and his adherents, “DEI” means when a woman or a person of color —
or someone who is disabled, indigenous, LGBTQ+, a veteran, or not a Christian
nationalist — gets just about any job or opportunity.

And the only thing that has “merit” in their eyes is being a white man
(preferably rich, or at least desperate to be rich) who is willing to align with
Trump.

What’s going on here is clear as day:

Donald Trump and his MAGA adherents have gone all in on white supremacism,
patriarchy, and toxic masculinity. (Donald Trump’s entire existence in politics
is a disgusting exercise in racism and misogyny, from “birtherism” to “grab ’em
by the p*ssy” to “sh*thole countries” and on and on and on.)

In contrast, millions upon millions of Americans believe that diversity is a
strength, that fairness is an ideal worth striving for, and that white
fundamentalist men are not simply entitled to anything and everything they want.

Public Citizen is calling on officials throughout the federal government to
denounce Trump’s morally bankrupt attempt to force his rank prejudice and
misogyny on the entire federal workforce and on the American people.
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- Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen


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