Air Force • DOD • Woke Agenda

Here’s How The Trump Admin Can Purge DEI From America’s Military And Foreign Policy

22 November 2024

By Spencer Lindquist | The Daily Wire

From “anti-racism” trainings to bans on “misgendering,” the Biden administration made the American people all too familiar with the increasing “wokeness” of the United States government.

Now, President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to undo the Biden-Harris administration’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) push. His allies and opponents alike anticipate Trump will quickly shutter DEI offices.

But thoroughly purging woke people and policies from the government will take more than a few executive orders. Trump has his work cut out for him.

Fortunately, he’s building a team that will help him achieve this goal. If confirmed, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Pete Hegseth, and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard will be instrumental to Trump’s DEI purge as Secretaries of State and Defense and Director of National Intelligence, respectively.

The Trump team will have no shortage of targets on their quest. So, we here at The Daily Wire dug through our past reporting on government wokeness and thought we could offer some suggestions as to where they could start.

End Pride Month Celebrations

Every June agencies throughout the federal government use taxpayer dollars to celebrate Pride Month — and they spare no expense.

This year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which Gabbard is slated to helm, hosted a series of events, including a talk on “trans rights” from a “transgender non-binary first generation Filipinx-American activist” and a nail painting session, where intelligence agents could get the transgender flag painted on their nails during work hours. Agents were also invited to take a crochet class, to learn how to make pride flags.

The Air Force, meanwhile, hosted a keynote speech from Brian Bond, the head of a far-left non-profit organization called PFLAG that opposes legislation protecting minors from irreversible medical sex change attempts that threaten to render them infertile. PFLAG also compiled a “transgender reading list for children,” including one about a child who began identifying as transgender at two years old.

The Pentagon also hosted Lieutenant Colonel Bree Fram, an engineer with the United States Space Force and activist for pro-transgender policies in the military, as a speaker at an annual Pride Month celebration.

​​“Remember that we mark Pride not beginning with a celebration, but with a riot,” he went on to say in the speech. “I’m not asking you to pick up your bricks, but I am asking you to pick up your ideas about how we can be a more inclusive service.”

Abolish ‘Affinity Groups’

The most ostentatious displays of fealty to the woke agenda aren’t always the handiwork of formal DEI offices, however. Some bureaucrats have taken it upon themselves to push their agencies farther to the Left, coalescing in identity-based employee organizations that seek to promote DEI and change agency policies.

Affinity groups, sometimes referred to as “employee resource groups,” are organizations divided by racial or sexual identity that are often used as activist nodes within agencies to advance left-wing agendas.

Biden gave his stamp of approval to the employee organizations in his June 2021 executive order pushing DEI, and many have since gone on to enlist rank-and-file bureaucrats in the DEI crusade, leveraging civil servants as woke activists.

In the ODNI, for example, one leaked document obtained by The Daily Wire revealed that one of the agency’s employee resource groups was able to modify the language guidelines used when intelligence agents discussed one of our foreign adversaries.

“IC employee resource groups advocating for Asian and Pacific Islander heritage have been particularly successful in creating a new framework and language guidelines for how we talk about the People’s Republic of China,” the leaked document, a newsletter called “The Dive,” explained.

That same edition of The Dive also highlighted ways in which discussions about Islamic terrorism could be changed in order to avoid “problematic phrases.” The newsletter goes on to include an article from an anonymous agent who claims that cross-dressing while at work makes him a better intelligence agent.

The ODNI’s aforementioned pride celebrations, complete with nail painting and pride-flag crocheting, were organized in part by the office’s Pride Employee Resource Group.

Similar organizations are also common in the State Department, which boasts chapters like Blacks in Government, LGBTQIA+ Pride in Foreign Affairs Agencies, and the Hispanic and Latin Employee Council of Foreign Affairs Agencies, among several others.

Eliminate The State Department’s Race And LGBT-Based Special Envoys

In addition to shutting down DEI offices and firing the personnel that staff them, there are other roles, most notably in the State Department, which the new administration could scrap as it works to banish the far-left agenda from the halls of government.

While not officially existing under the umbrella of the DEI office, the State Department has two prominent roles that exist for blatantly ideological reasons.

Desiree Cormier Smith, spotlighted by The Daily Wire, serves as the State Department’s first Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice in a new role that was created under the Biden-Harris administration. Cormier, whose role could be eliminated under the Trump administration, previously worked for Democrat megadonor and billionaire George Soros.

Smith is tasked with creating “global partnerships to combat systemic racism, discrimination, and xenophobia” and has repeatedly endorsed the core tenets of Critical Race Theory. “Structural racism, discrimination, and xenophobia are global scourges that require global solutions,” Smith said in one interview, also adding that “violent white supremacy” is a “global threat.” Smith’s role could be left vacant or axed under Trump altogether.

Smith is not the only left-wing activist who now occupies an influential role at the State Department. Jessica Stern, the Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons, travels the globe pushing pro-transgender ideology.

Stern has marched alongside transgender Brazilians and celebrated at the sight of children at LGBT pride events. The State Department official’s priorities under the Biden-Harris administration have included establishing “legal gender recognition based on the principle of self-determination” and addressing the “vulnerability of LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees.”

Both of these roles could be axed entirely or, at the very least, left vacant. And Smith and Stern are well aware. The special envoy admitted as much in one interview, where she said,  “We can’t say for sure that we’ll exist in two years,” adding, “Our eye is always on the clock.”

Review Grant-Making To Ensure The DEI Agenda Isn’t Outsourced

Even if DEI offices are shuttered and the personnel that staffs them are sent pink slips, there’s still another way bureaucrats can push their far-left agendas in federal agencies, albeit somewhat indirectly.

A sprawling network of non-profits and think tanks are more than happy to promulgate DEI dogma, especially when they’re rewarded with federal dollars.

Under the Biden administration, the DEI agenda hasn’t just been pursued by federal agencies themselves, but by a litany of external organizations that have been contracted by the federal government to advance the cause.

Accordingly, the full scope of the left-wing agenda may not be immediately apparent unless a review of grant-making is conducted.

The DOD, for example, has enlisted various outside organizations to assist it in advancing the DEI agenda. 

A Daily Wire investigation found that the Air Force paid an undisclosed sum of money to the Rand Corporation to commission a report outlining how the Pentagon could fight resistance to DEI.

In their report, the Rand Corporation encouraged the Air Force to “develop techniques and tools to mitigate resistance” to DEI, warning that “across organizations, a resistance to DE&I is growing, while discriminatory and xenophobic expressions are increasing.”

“Some researchers describe the presence of ‘denial perspectives’ and ‘diversity defiance,’ or ‘White fatigue,’” the report said, also urging the Defense Department to “exercise caution to guard against” opposition to DEI.

A thorough review of DOD grantmaking could ensure that the Pentagon hasn’t simply outsourced its DEI activities to outside organizations like academic institutions or nonprofits.

The State Department has similarly used taxpayer dollars to push a far-left agenda.

One Daily Wire investigation found that the State Department was planning to spend roughly $50,000 to push pro-transgender policies in Indian corporations in Chennai and Hyderabad. The department awarded another $30,000 to an organization in Kyrgyzstan to promote transgender sensitivity training.

Investigate And Abolish Any Identity-Based Employment And Recruitment Programs

Conservatives slammed critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi when he infamously stated that “the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination.” While some blasted Kendi for his endorsement of race-based discrimination, others took his advice.

Over the last four years, federal agencies have sought to “diversify” the bureaucracy and the armed forces, with some programs openly attempting to recruit certain demographics while disadvantaging others.

One Daily Wire investigation revealed that the Pentagon used taxpayer dollars to implement race-based job candidate selection practices in the name of DEI. The Department of Defense awarded a $760,000 grant to the University of Missouri — Kansas City to create an “equity-focused” career pipeline program that gave preferential treatment to women and non-white students in STEM.

“To meet our equity-focused programmatic goals, campus internship selection will be equitable such that qualified applicants from underserved and underrepresented cohorts … will be provided first choice,” the DOD explained, outlining its race and gender-based career program.

The Pentagon later had to revise its program at the University of Missouri — Kansas City after the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in 2023.

Other efforts to diversify the DOD were far more blatant, however. Internal Air Force documents revealed that the military branch set specific demographic recruiting goals, with one presentation slide explaining that the “white male population will decline as other demographics increase” if the goals are met.

Much of the military’s push to diversify its ranks has been justified by a flawed McKinsey study, which erroneously claimed that there was a positive correlation between private sector profits and the racial and ethnic diversity of its executive team.

The study has since been debunked, though not before it was used in multiple reports from the United States Navy advocating for DEI policies.

First published on The Daily Wire

Military Service Academy Affinity/Culture Clubs

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