Chasten Buttigieg agrees:
Why should we believe this is just meant as a distraction? DEI and its precursor as a hate-object in the Fox/GOP universe, critical race theory, haven't been distractions -- the war on diversity efforts and on institutional acknowledgments of racism has been a central crusade of the right since 2020, when Christopher Rufo first started appearing on Fox. Right-wing propagandists have been talking about equity efforts non-stop since then. The topic didn't just come up in Trump's news conference this week out of nowhere. He was talking about DEI all through the campaign.
If this is merely a distraction floated by Trump because he knows we pay attention to every word he says, why is DEI also coming up in public messages that aren't meant to be seen by normie voters -- this, for instance, from new transportation secretary Sean Duffy?
DEI is central to the plans hatched by Project 2025 henchman Russell Vought to create a government -- and, ultimately, a country -- in which which only right-wing ideologues have political power. The Trump/Vought administration is using DEI (and other crimes against conservatism, such as believing that climate change exists) the way cops use busted taillights.
Let me explain.
If you're running a typically racist American police force, you operate on the assumption that most young black men are guilty of some crime or other. So when you see a black man driving with a busted taillight, that's an opportunity to the pull the driver over, search the car, check for warrants, and subject the driver to intimidation and violence. Sure, the busted taillight is a problem for fellow drivers, but it's also a pretext you can use to put black men in their place.
As the memo cited above makes clear, DEI can be used more or less the same way. If you want to fire career government employees who aren't right-wing zealots, or if you want to withhold aid to Democratic-run cities and states, you just say, "Whoops! You're doing DEI. As of January 20, that's illegal according to federal law." After that, your targets either comply with your ideological edict or they lose their jobs or are starved of funds. Either way, it's a win.
DEI isn't the only the busted taillight these ideologues can get you for. They can also get you for policies favoring renewable energy, for policies that treat trans people as human, or even for nonexistent policies that don't use the water the way Donald Trump would like it used.
None of this is merely rhetorical. The ultimate goal is to make every public and private institution in America conform to extreme right-wing ideology. Vought and his fellow hatchetmen mean this very literally:
Take these attacks on DEI seriously. This is part of an all-out war on liberals and moderates. It's not just angry talk.
