White House: "We are going to have a system of merit"

By Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

The White House put corporate America on notice that President Donald Trump plans to replace diversity, equity and inclusion with a “system of merit.”

Appearing alongside press secretary Karoline Leavitt during a Thursday morning briefing, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller trumpeted the president’s efforts to dismantle DEI in the federal government and the private sector.

“This administration is not going to let our society devolve into communist, woke, DEI strangulation,” Miller said.

“It’s not just a social and cultural issue, it’s an economic issue,” he continued. “When you hire, retain and recruit based on merit as President Trump has directed, you advance innovation, you advance growth, you advance investment, you advance job creation.”

Trump’s anti-DEI campaign began during his first term but is in hyperdrive in his second.

He has purged diversity initiatives in the federal government and the military, threatened to strip billions of dollars in federal funding and grants from universities and pressured major corporations to roll back diversity initiatives or risk losing federal contracts.

His actions have led to widespread changes in diversity programs at major corporations across the country.

Leavitt told reporters Trump is standing by “the constitution’s promise of colorblind equality.”

“DEI seeks to divide and pit Americans against each other based on immutable characteristics. President Trump put an end to it,” she said.

“In President Trump’s America, individual dignity, hard work and excellence are the only things that will determine if you get ahead.”

DEI initiatives to increase the persistently low percentage of female, Black and Hispanic executives took firmer hold after George Floyd’s 2020 murder forced a historic reckoning with racial disparities in America.

Between 2020 and 2022, the number of Black executives rose by nearly 27% in S&P 100 companies, according to a USA TODAY analysis of workforce data collected by the federal government.

That momentum drew a forceful backlash.

In 2023, the ranks of Black executives fell 3% from the prior year at twice the rate of White executives, USA TODAY found.

Chief among the DEI critics was Miller, a veteran of Trump’s first administration. His America First Legal advocacy organization issued a slew of legal challenges objecting to common practices such as setting diversity hiring targets. Those targets, Miller said, were illegal racial quotas for women and people of color.

“We are going to have a system of merit,” Miller said Thursday.

DEI proponents say DEI is not at odds with merit. In fact, they say, DEI is critical to build systems that ensure individuals are rewarded on merit alone.

“The highest-performing organizations know that having a meritocracy means you need to make sure that diverse candidates have the same chance to show their merit as others,” Paul Argenti, a professor of corporate communication at Dartmouth, wrote in a LinkedIn post championing the business case for diversity.

USA TODAY reported Thursday that the business world does not appear ready to give up DEI despite the growing pressure from the Trump administration.

Even as some corporations scrap commitments, others including Costco, Marriott, Starbucks and Cisco, have publicly defended DEI.

The “silent majority” is continuing the work despite growing political pressure to defund DEI, sociology professor Donald Tomaskovic-Devey told USA TODAY.

Just 8% of business leaders surveyed by the Littler law firm are seriously considering changes to their DEI programs as a result of the Trump administration’s executive orders. Nearly half said they do not have plans for new or further rollbacks.

“The vast majority of organizations have simply gone quiet, neither retreating from or defending their DEI programs in the public square,” said Tomaskovic-Devey, who runs the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

First published on USA Today