Wednesday Morning Rant

A week removed from the flurry of executive orders directing the government agencies to eliminate any and all "DEI" type crap from their missions, operations and publicity, I decided to take a peek and see how that's going with a small sample of government websites. I looked at NASA, DOE (both of them), HUD, DOT and HHS. It's been a mixed bag (mostly, I suspect, because they're in a hurry).

Most of the diversity-related pages are now gone, but it's often still lurking just beneath the surface, and presents an opportunity for the Trump Administration to keep pushing and, bluntly, to pour salt in the wound. There's a lot of grousing from all corners over the humiliation of being forced to retrench and purge diversity from the public image of the bureaus, but Trump can - and should - keep pushing them.

First, the job is incomplete. For example, NASA's diversity page (and the equity page) is now a 404 page. Good progress. Purged. But NASA's (former) diversity mission is still easy to find if you search for the keywords. The search index was either not part of the purge, or is running behind.

It's the same at the other sites I checked for. HUD? Gone, though less gone than NASA's. It hasn't been removed, exactly, just hidden by permissions. That's too bad, because it was a doozy that deserves to be destroyed, not merely hidden away. HHS? Gone (archive). But then, not everyone has gotten the message.

DOE has gotten the message and its purge is well underway. Even the agency's internal search engine requires some effort to make the DEI stuff from the past surface and going directly to the offending page now redirects back to the homepage (archive). Some sub-organizations still have DEI pages, but they're starting to vanish. Department of Education's DEI initiative page is not only gone (archive), Linda McMahon appears to be gloating about her agency's enthusiastic compliance. DOT's equity page now redirects back to the home page and while the agency's search engine still turns up plenty of results, the ones I clicked on also either redirect or 404.

So the purge is on. It's incomplete by all means, but it's on. That's refreshing. That's heartening. It's not enough. My brief journey through US government websites exposed something else that was so common and so obvious that I didn't notice it until I went hunting for the vestiges of DEI in the bureaus' public outlets. That obvious thing I barely if ever noticed before is just how much these people love giving each-other awards and accolades. If you delve into the search engines at most of these bureaus, you'll hit a rich vein of DEI results when you search their press release archives. They love to give and receive DEI awards.

HUD won DEI awards. NASA won DEI awards. Lawrence Livermore won DEI awards. DEI-related awards are everywhere, and US government agencies routinely won them. How many of them are proudly on display on executive credenzas and in hallway display cases throughout the agencies? These awards should be the next step. DEI awards are nothing to be proud of. Winning one means you suffer from institutional sickness, and the days celebrating derangement are over.

Once the US government and its various adjuncts, contractors, affiliates and hangers-on finish purging DEI from their public image, it is time to shift from removal to repudiation. I think President Trump should strongly consider another EO for the next stage in excising the cancer of DEI from the government: order the bureaus to publicly reject and return these awards. For every press release trumpeting some DEI award, there should be a press release announcing the rejection and return of the award because DEI is not only no longer part of the mission, it was never something worthy of accolades.

Trump's administration is well on its way to eliminating the public face of DEI, which means the momentum is his. It's nearly time to shift from public elimination to total repudiation - with the added bonus of the humiliation of subjecting the executives to self-denunciation just like they so enthusiastically did to their subordinates. Make them publicly reject and return their coveted DEI awards. Drive the point home and make it crystal clear: DEI is over, it was never good, and even the trappings of its past will be destroyed.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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