The Claim

Eliminated discriminatory “diversity, equity, and inclusion” offices, employees, and practices across the bureaucracy alongside a return to merit-based hiring and promotion.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

Two connected assertions: (1) the administration eliminated DEI offices, employees, and practices government-wide, and (2) the administration replaced these with merit-based hiring and promotion. The word “discriminatory” embeds a contested legal and factual conclusion as a presupposition — presenting it as established fact that the eliminated programs were discriminatory.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That federal DEI programs constituted discrimination against white or male employees. That “merit-based” hiring is a new concept introduced by this administration, rather than the longstanding legal framework governing federal employment. That the federal workforce was previously hired on something other than merit. That the elimination of DEI offices improved how government serves people.

What is conspicuously absent?

Any evidence that federal DEI programs were discriminatory. Any acknowledgment that the federal merit system has been codified in law since the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and existed in practice since the Pendleton Act of 1883 — DEI programs operated alongside it, not instead of it. Any mention that the DEI purge extended far beyond DEI offices to employees who had merely attended trainings or participated in affinity groups, that the Department of Education put 100 employees on leave when only two worked in DEI, or that the administration’s “merit-based” reforms include a politicized essay test asking applicants about their “patriotism” and “founding principles.” Also absent: the overlap with items 191 and 201, which cover the identical action within the Department of Defense.

Overlap with Items 191 and 201

This claim covers the government-wide DEI elimination. Items 191 and 201 cover the same action within the Department of Defense specifically. The core executive orders — EO 14151, signed the same day as EO 14185 (the military DEI order) — emerged from the same January 20, 2025 policy cluster. The civilian-side and military-side actions share the same rationale, the same framing (“discriminatory” programs replaced by “merit”), and the same implementation problems (overbroad targeting, collateral damage). However, this item is broader in scope — covering all federal agencies, federal contractors, and grant recipients — so it stands as a distinct claim rather than pure padding.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

The administration signed three interlocking executive orders on January 20-21, 2025, that dismantled DEI infrastructure government-wide. EO 14151 (“Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing”) directed all federal agencies to terminate DEIA offices, positions, equity action plans, equity-related grants and contracts, and DEI performance requirements within 60 days. EO 14173 (“Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity”) revoked Executive Order 11246 — the 60-year-old affirmative action framework for federal contractors signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 — and directed the Attorney General to investigate “illegal” DEI programs in the private sector. EO 14170 (“Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service”) directed OPM to develop a merit hiring plan. ¹

OPM directed agencies to place DEI employees on administrative leave immediately and prepare reduction-in-force plans. On January 21, 2025, OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell issued guidance directing agencies to place employees of DEIA offices on paid leave, close all DEIA offices, remove outward-facing DEIA media, cancel DEIA-related trainings, and terminate DEIA-related contractors. Agencies were required to submit lists of all DEI offices and employees and written plans for RIFs. The VA placed 60 employees on leave (collectively earning $8 million annually). DEI offices were shut across the federal government within weeks. ²

The total number of federal employees terminated in the DEI purge is unknown, but the targeting extended far beyond actual DEI positions. The government never disclosed a government-wide total. The Department of Education placed at least 100 employees on administrative leave, but only two of them actually worked in DEI. The Department of Energy placed a double-digit number on leave, with less than a quarter working in DEI roles. The administration directed agencies to identify employees who held DEIA roles as of November 5, 2024 — Election Day, two and a half months before the executive orders were signed — meaning people were targeted for jobs they previously held, not their current positions. A December 2025 class action lawsuit estimated those affected numbered “potentially in the thousands.” ³

The “merit-based hiring” plan issued May 29, 2025, combines genuine bipartisan reforms with politicized elements. The Merit Hiring Plan contains several reforms with bipartisan support: replacing self-assessment questionnaires with skills-based testing, ending the 150-year-old “Rule of Three” in favor of a “Rule of Many” (ranking applicants by skill scores), shortening federal resumes to two pages, and targeting sub-80-day hiring timelines. However, the plan also requires applicants for positions GS-05 and above to answer four essay questions about their “patriotism,” “commitment to the Constitution,” the country’s “founding principles,” and government efficiency. Government Executive characterized the plan as “bipartisan reforms” mixed with a “politicized new test.” The plan also bans agencies from collecting or disseminating workforce demographic data about race, sex, or national origin. ⁴

The companion EO 14173 revoked Executive Order 11246, ending 60 years of affirmative action requirements for federal contractors. EO 11246, signed by President Johnson on September 24, 1965, prohibited employment discrimination by federal contractors and required positive action to address historical inequities. It had been amended and strengthened by seven subsequent presidents of both parties. The Trump administration gave contractors until April 21, 2025, to disband their affirmative action programs. OFCCP enforcement activities related to EO 11246 were paused. The remaining anti-discrimination statutes — Title VII, ADA, ADEA — remain in effect. ⁵

Federal courts initially blocked parts of the executive orders, but appellate courts allowed enforcement to proceed. On February 21, 2025, a federal district court in Maryland issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking EO 14173’s contractor certification requirement and private-sector enforcement provisions, finding they constituted unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination under the First and Fifth Amendments. On March 14, 2025, the Fourth Circuit stayed the injunction pending appeal, allowing the administration to enforce the orders. Multiple parallel lawsuits remain pending. ⁶

Strong Inferences

The claim that federal DEI programs were “discriminatory” is a political assertion, not an established legal or factual conclusion. No federal court has found that the Biden-era DEIA programs — EO 13985 and EO 14035 — constituted unlawful discrimination. The programs directed agencies to create strategic plans, appoint chief diversity officers, and collect data on workforce equity. These are process-oriented directives. Federal hiring has been governed by the merit system since the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (codified at 5 U.S.C. 2301), which requires that “recruitment should be from qualified individuals from appropriate sources in an endeavor to achieve a work force from all segments of society.” DEI programs were implemented alongside — not instead of — the merit system. The OPM’s own guidance under the new merit plan offers no documented examples of prior racial preferences or quotas in federal hiring. ⁷

The DEI purge produced significant collateral damage beyond the elimination of DEI offices. NASA employees were instructed to “drop everything” and scrub websites of content relating to diversity, underrepresented minorities, and women. The National Science Foundation compiled an internal list of flagged keywords — including “women,” “female,” “gender,” “disability,” “trauma,” and “historically” — that triggered grant applications for additional review. Notably, “female” was flagged but “male” was not. Researchers began self-censoring grant applications to avoid rejection. Health disparities research — including maternal and infant health, cancer, and clinical trial diversity — was disrupted. The National Endowment for the Arts restricted grant applications related to DEI or “gender ideology.” More than 1,000 nonprofits rewrote their mission statements in tax filings to remove DEI references. ⁸

The Schedule Policy/Career reclassification (EO 14171, finalized February 2026) — marketed as “accountability” — weakens civil service protections for approximately 50,000 career federal employees. Under the revived Schedule F framework, renamed “Schedule Policy/Career,” agency leaders can remove employees for “performance, misconduct, or policy resistance” without the independent appeals process guaranteed to other federal workers. The final OPM rule describes existing civil service protections as “unconstitutional overcorrections.” These employees also lose eligibility for student loan repayment and recruitment/retention incentives. While technically a separate action, this reclassification operates in tandem with the “merit-based” framing — the same executive cluster redefines “merit” to include political compliance. ⁹

What the Evidence Shows

The factual core of this claim is real: the administration eliminated DEI offices, terminated DEI employees, and revoked DEI-related executive orders across the federal government. This was a rapid, sweeping, and well-documented policy reversal executed within weeks of inauguration. It is one of the most comprehensively implemented actions on the entire 365-item list.

But the claim’s framing embeds two unsupported premises that fundamentally distort the picture.

First, the assertion that the eliminated programs were “discriminatory” is presented as established fact but lacks supporting evidence. Federal DEI programs under the Biden administration directed agencies to create strategic plans, appoint officers, collect data, and conduct trainings. These are administrative processes. Federal hiring itself was — and always has been, since 1883 — governed by the merit system. No federal court found that Biden-era DEIA programs constituted unlawful discrimination. The OPM’s own post-purge guidance cites no documented instances of racial preferences or quotas in federal hiring. The word “discriminatory” is doing rhetorical work, not describing a legal finding.

Second, the “return to merit-based hiring” framing implies the administration introduced merit principles to a system that lacked them. In reality, the federal merit system predates DEI by 140 years. What the administration actually introduced was a hiring process that adds political loyalty tests — essay questions about “patriotism” and “founding principles” — while banning the collection of demographic data that would reveal whether hiring is equitable. It also reclassified 50,000 career employees under Schedule Policy/Career, stripping them of independent appeal rights and making them fireable for “policy resistance.” Whether this constitutes a “merit” system or a compliance system depends on how one defines the term.

The implementation itself was conspicuously overbroad. The Department of Education put 100 employees on leave for a two-person DEI office. The administration retroactively targeted employees for roles they held on Election Day, not Inauguration Day, punishing people for lawful work performed under a prior administration. Federal courts found provisions of the orders constituted unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, though appellate courts allowed enforcement to continue pending appeal. The collateral damage to scientific research — the NSF flagging “female” and “disability” as suspect terms in grant applications — suggests the implementation went well beyond eliminating bureaucratic overhead and into the suppression of entire areas of inquiry.

The Bottom Line

Steel-man acknowledgment: The administration did comprehensively eliminate DEI offices and positions across the federal government, fulfilling an explicit campaign promise. There is a legitimate debate about whether formal DEIA programs became bureaucratically excessive or drifted from their original purpose. Some of the hiring reforms — skills-based testing, the Rule of Many, shorter resumes, faster timelines — draw on bipartisan proposals that predated this administration. A president has the authority to set workforce policy priorities.

The claim that the administration “eliminated discriminatory DEI offices alongside a return to merit-based hiring” is true in its factual core but misleading in its framing. No evidence supports the premise that the eliminated programs were discriminatory — they operated alongside, not instead of, the century-old merit system. The “return to merit-based hiring” obscures the introduction of politicized essay tests about patriotism, the ban on demographic data collection, and the reclassification of 50,000 workers to strip their civil service protections. The implementation went well beyond eliminating DEI offices: it retroactively targeted employees for work performed under a previous administration, fired people whose jobs had nothing to do with DEI, disrupted scientific research through keyword censorship, and revoked a 60-year-old anti-discrimination framework for federal contractors. The action was real. The framing — “discriminatory” programs replaced by “merit” — is a political narrative that inverts the evidence.

Footnotes

1. White House, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” (EO 14151), January 20, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/; White House, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” (EO 14173), January 21, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-illegal-discrimination-and-restoring-merit-based-opportunity/; White House, “Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service” (EO 14170), January 20, 2025. ↩

2. OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell, “Initial Guidance Regarding DEIA Executive Orders,” January 21, 2025. https://www.opm.gov/media/e1zj1p0m/opm-memo-re-initial-guidance-regarding-deia-executive-orders-1-21-2025-final.pdf; Government Executive, “White House collects lists of federal DEI office employees as punishments begin,” January 2025. https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/01/white-house-collects-lists-federal-dei-office-employees-punishments-begin/402534/ ↩

3. NPR, “Some federal employees fired under anti-DEI orders weren’t doing DEI work,” April 3, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/03/nx-s1-5345858/some-federal-employees-fired-under-anti-dei-orders-werent-doing-dei-work; NPR, “They had left their DEI roles. Trump still fired them,” April 7, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/07/nx-s1-5348922/trump-dei-federal-employees-firing; Federal News Network, “Federal employees who left DEI roles still fired under Trump administration purge, lawsuit claims,” December 18, 2025. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-report/2025/12/federal-employees-who-left-dei-roles-still-fired-under-trump-administration-purge-lawsuit-claims/ ↩

4. OPM, “Merit Hiring Plan,” May 29, 2025. https://www.opm.gov/chcoc/transmittals/2025/Merit%20Hiring%20Plan%205-29-2025%20FINAL.pdf; Government Executive, “OPM ‘merit’ hiring plan includes bipartisan reforms, politicized new test,” May 2025. https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/05/opm-merit-hiring-plan-includes-bipartisan-reforms-politicized-new-test/405687/; Federal News Network, “OPM finalizes long-awaited ‘rule of many’ to add flexibility to federal hiring,” September 2025. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/hiring-retention/2025/09/opm-finalizes-long-awaited-rule-of-many-to-add-flexibility-to-federal-hiring/ ↩

5. CRS Report LSB11268, “Rescission of Executive Order 11246, ‘Equal Employment Opportunity’: Legal Implications.” https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11268; Duane Morris LLP, “LBJ’s Executive Order 11246 Revoked, Ending Decadeslong Race and Gender Affirmative Action Obligations for Federal Contractors and Subcontractors.” https://www.duanemorris.com/alerts/lbjs_executive_order_11246_revoked_ending_decadeslong_race_gender_affirmative_action_0125.html ↩

6. NADOHE v. Trump (D. Md.), preliminary injunction February 21, 2025; Fourth Circuit stay March 14, 2025. Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, “Nationwide Preliminary Injunction Partially Blocks Federal DEI Executive Orders.” https://www.bclplaw.com/en-US/events-insights-news/nationwide-preliminary-injunction-partially-blocks-federal-dei-executive-orders.html; Seyfarth Shaw LLP, “Federal Contractor DEI Certifications Allowed to Resume After Fourth Circuit Temporarily Blocks District Court’s Nationwide Injunction.” https://www.seyfarth.com/news-insights/federal-contractor-dei-certifications-allowed-to-resume-after-fourth-circuit-temporarily-blocks-district-courts-nationwide-injunction.html ↩

7. Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, 5 U.S.C. 2301 (Merit System Principles); CRS Report R48080, “Executive Order 14035 Implementation: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) in the Federal Workforce.” https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48080; FedSmith, “From DEI to Meritocracy: The Federal Government’s Shift in Hiring Practices,” May 30, 2025. https://www.fedsmith.com/2025/05/30/from-dei-to-meritocracy-the-federal-governments-shift-in-hiring-practices/ ↩

8. Scientific American, “Inside the NSF’s Effort to Scour Research Grants for Violations of Trump’s Orders.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/inside-the-nsfs-effort-to-scour-research-grants-for-violations-of-trumps/; Inside Higher Ed, “NSF hunts for ‘female,’ other flagged terms,” February 5, 2025. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/02/05/nsf-hunts-female-other-flagged-terms; Inside Higher Ed, “NSF Terminates Grants Focused on DEI or Misinformation,” April 22, 2025. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/04/22/nsf-terminates-grants-focused-dei-or ↩

9. White House, “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce” (EO 14171), January 20, 2025; Government Executive, “Final Schedule F regulations to describe civil service protections as ‘unconstitutional overcorrections,’” November 2025. https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/11/final-schedule-f-regulations-describe-civil-service-protections-unconstitutional-overcorrections/409616/; NPR, “Trump removes civil service protections with Schedule F plan,” April 18, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/18/nx-s1-5369550/trump-federal-workers-schedule-f; CNN, “Trump administration plans to reclassify 50,000 federal workers, making them easier to fire,” February 5, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/05/politics/trump-administration-federal-workers ↩