Accuracy in Media has been making these videos for months and somehow the DEI administrators at universities across the country never seem to catch on. Every place they go they manage to find someone basically saying the same thing, i.e. we've changed the name of our DEI department but nothing has really changed. Here's an example from last week:
BREAKING: A Washburn University administrator was just caught admitting they still push DEI in Kansas.
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) March 4, 2026
She says "we absolutely do" have DEI.
She says their DEI office now has "the same principles, different name."
She is confronted with the video evidence and says "OH GOSH!" pic.twitter.com/DoPRf4uKyu
This kind of DEI rebranding has been going on for at least two years now. Sometimes personnel get shuffled around but the bottom line is that not much changes because the same people are still there pushing the same junk-science.
Today, Real Clear Politics has a story up about a similar dynamic playing out in the defense department.
Clear directives were issued: eliminate DEI mandates and return personnel decisions to merit, readiness, and warfighting priorities. Public language shifted quickly—readiness over equity, mission execution over identity signaling, command authority over consensus management. Officials emphasized restoring performance-based standards tied directly to operational effectiveness and mission execution.
Yet within the machinery that determines who serves, advances, separates, retains retirement eligibility, and receives medical evaluations, much of the prior framework continues to function through reorganized offices and retained personnel.
Fortunately, the Trump administration hasn't given up yet. Politico reports today that the administration is gearing up for a new push against DEI through the General Services Administration:
The traditionally independent General Services Administration, which oversees how the federal government operates, is working to change the requirements for any entity that receives federal grants — not just schools. The agency’s proposal would require any entity that receives “grants, cooperative agreements, and financial assistance such as loans, insurance, and direct appropriations” to sign a certification agreement that aligns with the administration’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion policies...
A statement from the GSA supporting the proposal says roughly 222,760 entities could be affected by the changes. The draft proposal includes updates to the certification they must sign to apply for funds by specifically adding a section on anti-discrimination.
Examples of potentially illegal practices, according to the document, include granting what the administration deems to be “preferential treatment based on race or color,” including race-based scholarships or programs, preferential hiring or promotion practices, access to facilities or resources based on race or ethnicity and training programs.
This is similar to an effort the Trump administration made last year when it sent letters to schools demanding that they certify they were in compliance with the administration's DEI restrictions. A federal judge later vacated that letter. Now the Trump administration is trying a different tack.
“This is a way to try to require grantees to align with their ideology as a condition of federal funding while following the required processes that they failed to follow when they issued the Dear Colleague Letter,” Amanda Fuchs Miller, who served as deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs under the Biden administration, told POLITICO.
“It goes way beyond education,” said Miller, who wrote an op-ed sounding the alarm about the move. “This is government wide … anyone who does business with the government will have to sign these certifications in order to apply for federal funds if they go into effect.”
That's coming from a critic obviously but even she seems to recognize that this effort seems more likely to past procedural muster than the previous one. We'll see if it survives the judiciary, but it's clear that DEI is far from gone at this point. At best it has rebranded itself in a few places.
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