America's Talking - DEI Gone?: GOP Lawmakers Prep to Clean House in Federal Government

Episode Date: November 23, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump’s win and his subsequent creation of a Department of Government Efficiency have galvanized lawmakers to pave the way for legislation to clean out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, staff and programs that have ballooned under the Biden-Harris administration. The Center Square was given advance copy of two bills filed Thursday by U.S. Rep. Bob Good, R-La., to end DEI practices at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The first bill, the Flexibility in Housing Act of 2024, would block a Biden-Harris administration rule at HUD. That rule is about to be finalized and would require HUD grant recipients to implement “equity-driven housing plans.” Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulam, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, also known as FEMA, was under significant scrutiny this week as House Republicans grilled FEMA's director at a hearing over its responses to the natural disasters, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Joining me to discuss this today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C.

Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, you covered that hearing. Tell us about it. Yeah, the hearing was, it was really interesting. And what would have otherwise been a pretty boring hearing about how aid is being distributed in the processes and ways that they go about informing the community about, you know, what could have been normally a boring hearing turned out to be pretty explosive, really interesting.

And that's because, Dan, FEMA has four big problems right now. The first is that they're giving hundreds of millions of dollars to illegal immigrants, to migrants who are coming into the U.S. to help them get housed and settled. And that spending became really controversial because of those hurricanes you mentioned, Milton and Haleen, where a lot of Americans were struggling, felt like they weren't getting enough aid. And of course, the Biden administration's defenders and FEMA's defenders have been quick to point out that the aid to the migrants does not directly take out of the same pot

of money, that it goes towards, you know, hurricane relief. But at the same time, it was a bad look. And critics said it was misplaced priorities. Why are the migrants getting hundreds of millions? And Americans weren't getting, you know, in the eyes of some, the relief they needed. And there's many people who still have not really gotten the relief they need from the hurricane. And so that's one point. They have this migrant problem.

The second problem they have is one of their news broke that one of their employees was telling people not to go to help homes that had Trump signs in front. And of course, as you'd imagine, this was very explosive. And then when the employee was fired, the employee is going on cable news saying, I was just following orders. We were told not to go to homes with Trump. So this came from my leadership. And by the way, this was the culture at FEMA anyway. I was just going according to the culture, which was explosive. It came up at the hearing.

And lawmakers are grilling about that. The third problem is FEMA does a lot of spending on DEI. and that has become, you know, they may have gotten, they've gotten away with it mostly, but now that they're under the microscope, it's like, hey, what about all this DEI spending? You know, Dan, at the cindersquare.com, I've reported about FEMA's DEI spending. And in particular, in FEMA's strategic plan for 2022, 2026, their number one priority is, you know, equity, diversity, inclusion, putting equity back into emergency response and emergency management. Responding to actual disasters is their third priority. Number two is related to climate change.

So that's the third problem they have from lawmakers. And number four, quickly, is Doge. The Trump administration is taking power and he has a few very powerful allies who are wielding an axe and looking for government agencies to cut, to trim down, to clean house in. So it's a bad time for, for FEMA to be in the spotlight for all their controversy. Let's talk about points two and three there, Casey, because they seem to be in conflict with each other. As you mentioned, Fina's top priority, according to their strategic plan, is diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Yet you have FEMA people essentially saying avoid homes with Trump signs in response to the hurricane. That doesn't seem very equitable to me. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely some hypocrisy and irony in it. DEI has become a nice packaging on what is really just kind of the liberal racial identity, politics, gender identity politics agenda being, it's kind of turning every agency into a religious institution, but instead of a traditional religion, it's this moral code and hierarchy and, you know, sort of other gospel about what it takes to be.

what it takes to be a good person and that's basically being as diverse as possible and deferring as much to the diverse people as possible. And so on that chain, Trump supporters are at the bottom of the food chain. They're the opposite of diverse and equitable. And so it's really not about everyone being even. It's more about ranking everyone in a new social strata into different classes. And Trump supporters are at the lowest class in that system. And you also referenced Doge,

the new federal agency that's being headed by private citizens, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, they're targeting these DEI initiatives and DEI spending across agencies, not just FEMA, but every single agency. Do you think DEI and the federal government under Trump is going away? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I obtained some exclusive, you know, the CenterSquare.com. got some exclusive access to some legislation that was coming, coming out in Congress this week. And there was other legislation as well.

And they're all targeting DEI, cleaning the federal government out of these DEI policies. There's staff. There's trainings. There are all kinds of different ways it manifests at different agencies with various strengths. But it costs a lot of money. And so Congress has power over it. So you're seeing it from Congress.

And you're also seeing Trump's nominees like Brendan Carr, who's picked to lead the FCC. He's talking about cleaning out DEI, Pete Hagseth. It's sort of embattled now nominee to be the secretary of defense. He's talking about getting rid of DEI. And so I think you're seeing a lot of momentum of it. And of course, Vivek Ramoswamy and Elon Musk are ready to take an axe to DEI. I mean, Musk has called it the woke mind virus. He's made it kind of his mission to destroy it.

and he has the president's ear right now. So all the markers are pointing in that direction. Casey, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.