Trump demands discrimination in America’s workplaces

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.

Click to add your name to our message now.

Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

- Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
 
 
Donate | Public Citizen | 1600 20th Street NW | Washington DC 20009 | Unsubscribe