Today we have bad news and good news for you. Let's start with the bad news: Donald Trump is about to cause an upward bump in the unemployment rate. 

The good news? The epicenter of the bump will be in DC and its environs. Late yesterday, Trump put his executive order to end DEI programs into action, ordering the furloughing of all DEI staff throughout the executive branch. The war on government discrimination for social-engineering purposes has begun in earnest:

Within his first 24 hours in office, President Donald Trump is ending all federal affirmative action programs and closing all diversity, equity, and inclusion offices across government, including the Department of Defense. Federal employees working in those offices were told to go home and look for other jobs. While initially, they will be placed on paid administrative leave, their jobs are expected to be eliminated shortly thereafter.

A memo from Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, directed agency heads to “take prompt actions” to implement Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” which included “all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions.”

“Send a notification to all employees of DEIA offices that they are being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately as the agency takes steps to close/end all DEIA initiatives, offices, and programs,” Ezell directed. “Take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) of DEIA offices.”

Oh yeah, that was the other bad news ... they're still getting paid. For now. Terminating employees and closing positions requires following a process, so these bureaus won't get shut down entirely overnight. However, their functions will get shut down immediately, and the new administration is ensuring that by putting them on leave -- which means no more access to the offices.  

And let's not miss the effort here to stamp out "environmental justice" either. That radical notion had found favor in both the Obama and Biden administrations and served as an extension of the progressives' nature cult. They weaponized federal authority to punish private property owners for the normal use of their land to essentially force its redistribution or to conduct virtue-signaling crusades. Most if not all of that authority came from executive-branch regulation and interpretation, not statutes and due process, and should never have been allowed in the first place.

That isn't the only win for Trump's war on DEI and wokeness in the bureaucratic state. Trump has appointed a DEI critic to run the EEOC, at least temporarily. Andrea Lucas has made no bones about the need to end official discrimination in the workplace, and now has the ability to enforce that policy:

Lucas was appointed acting chair of the agency hours after Trump took office Monday, amid a flurry of appointments throughout the federal government. She has served on the panel since 2020, appointed during the waning months of Trump’s first term. She is the only Republican on the five-member panel, which has one vacancy.

“I am honored to be chosen by President Trump to lead the EEOC, our nation’s premier civil rights agency enforcing federal employment antidiscrimination laws,” Lucas said in a statement Tuesday. “I look forward to restoring evenhanded enforcement of employment civil rights laws for all Americans.”

She added that her priorities will include “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination,” “defending the biological and binary reality of sex” and “protecting American workers from anti-American national origin discrimination.” She also said she will work to protect workers from religious bias and harassment, including antisemitism.

Lucas' position on the panel expires in June, but she can serve as chair until then in an acting capacity. At that point, Lucas will need Senate confirmation, but thanks to Harry Reid, Trump should be able to get her across the line if fewer than four Republicans balk. 

That may take second place to another reported change late yesterday. Christopher Rufo reported that Trump has issued an EO that reverses much of the basis for affirmative action, and then extends the ban on DEI and other discriminatory practices to federal contractors:

BREAKING: President Trump has signed an executive order rescinding Lyndon Johnson's EO 11246, which established affirmative action, and banning all federal contractors and publicly-funded universities from practicing race-based discrimination, including DEI.

A massive shift.

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) January 22, 2025

This has not received very much specific attention, but it would represent a ground-shaking change for the federal government. How much of affirmative action is grounded in LBJ's EO and how much in statute? If it's entirely grounded in an EO, then a later EO can completely reverse it. I suspect that this program has mainly survived because Congress never had to vote on it, and public pressure kept LBJ's successors from tinkering with it ... until now, when the program has grown deeply unpopular through its continued focus on discrimination via immutable characteristics.

Of course, a successor could reissue LBJ's order in a new EO to restore it, too. However, that would carry the political weight of having to impose discriminatory practices again, which is a much different thing than simply allowing them to continue through political inertia. This time around, DEI and affirmative-action opponents will fight much harder in Congress and the courts to keep this zombie Great Society approach from emerging from the grave, and they will have Supreme Court precedents on their side this time as well. 

The Protection Racket Media will no doubt push back hard on these new policies, as will Democrats, which amounts to the exact same thing. Besides calling Trump a racist (which has worked so well for them), they will find 'victims' of the new policies while using the not-so-subtle argument that minorities can't compete for jobs, which makes them the real racists. Expect a full-court press on both strategies in the days ahead.