America's Talking - Republicans Blast National Archives’ Taxpayer-Funded Equity Policies, Trainings

Episode Date: September 16, 2023

The federal archive agency that helped spark former President Donald Trump's first federal indictment has come under fire from Republicans after reporting showed the agency has embraced far-left diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Republicans blasted the National Archives and Records Administration after The Center Square reported that the agency’s latest 2022 DEI plan pledges to double down on equity training for employees. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I am Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you. We are recording this on Friday, September 15th. Casey, the National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, that's the agency that helped spark

formal President Donald Trump's first federal indictment over the classified documents found it as Mar-a-Lago home. Anyway, NARA has come under fire for embracing what Republicans call far-left diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. You reported last week, Casey, that the archives is refusing to turn over certain records to the House Committee investigating President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, and their overseas business dealings that netted the Biden family millions of dollars from entities in China, Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere. The archive says it is not turning over the documents because it deems them personal in nature. Then he did some digging into the agency and found they've spent millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, promoting such DEI

programs through policy, training, and the like. Tell us why this matters. Yeah, I mean, this matters because this little-known agency has been thrust in the national spotlight and now is the center of an indictment, and what, in my opinion, is the strongest indictment against former president at Donald Trump and could actually, you know, put him behind bars and his presidential ambitions. And so what I noticed, though, was that these, like I said, little known agency, these federal employees had so much, we're making these judgment calls, basically, Dan. They were saying, you know, we need to report this to hand this evidence over to the DOJ about Trump.

Now, they did report, reportedly they did tell the DOJ about Mike Pence and Joe Biden, who also had classified documents in their possession, though they have not been indicted, which is its own story and its own mystery. But, you know, I thought it was very interesting that these federal employees had a record keeping archives, what we think of as kind of a historical, maybe boring agency, was making these judgment calls and saying, yeah, we need to turn Trump in. And then when Congress says, we need Biden, we need President Biden's records, they're saying, well, that may be personal.

We're not sure we can do that. And it was just amazing to me that some little-known agency, based on the judgment calls of some employees were actually impacting, Yeah, bureaucrats were impacting the election in such a way. So I started looking at the agency and I just thought it was really interesting that the same bureaucrats who were making these judgment calls had to the tune of millions of dollars, I mean, they weren't indoctrinated as a strong word. I could probably find a better one, but had just been inundated with DEI trainings for years now.

And you can't help but wonder if that affects the judgment of those employees or maybe just the kind of person who would want to work at that agency, right? I mean, so what kind of is this, is this agency full of a certain kind of employees and is that impacted their judgment in making these judgment calls about which documents Congress gets to see about which Republicans and which and which Democrats? Yeah, and so the National Archives is currently refusing to turn over these documents that it deemed personal in nature, but isn't that what the House Republicans investigation in the Biden family has to do that when President Biden was vice president during the Obama administration, he used his position, the allegations are just allegations at this point. He used his position

as vice president to help his son and his son's business associates gain influence personally to personally benefit the Biden family. So the personal nature of it is part of the investigation. Yeah, you're right. I mean, wouldn't it be nice if, Dan, if you were being charged with the crime and you could say you guys can have any evidence you want as long as the evidence isn't personal. I mean, I don't know. You probably would get off Scott Free if they weren't allowed to use personal evidence. I don't know what kind of standard that is. But you're right. I mean, it's very personal in the sense that, you know, allegedly Biden and his family were, we're benefiting from it. And so that's, you know, and it may, it may be now with this pressure that,

you know, the archives agency ends up handing over some of these documents. but I just thought we needed more scrutiny on them. And some of these trainings were, you know, they also had a civil rights task force, which was recommending some pretty aggressive measures, really pushing for training on white privilege, some of these buzzwords that have become very, I would say, politically divisive. And that's the other reason I wanted to write about it is I think half the country doesn't like DEI trainings, doesn't like these things, but pretty much all federal agencies have embraced them. and tax dollars are being spent on these things, even though it's really a 50-50 issue.

So there's not broad agreement on it, but there is broad implementation and broad spending on this. And that's why, you know, we had some senators respond to our reporting sent Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, Representative Bob Good and others were tweeting and commenting on our work. And I think it could maybe lead to some further inquiries into the Archives agency. I don't know. Certainly the committee, Representative Comer and the committee investigating the Biden family, aren't just going to say, oh, okay, thank you, National Archives. Those records are personal.

We don't need them. Certainly, they're going to push harder, maybe even subpoena, the National Archives for that. Just briefly, Casey, want to read one line, sentence from your story, and it's 2022 budget. NARA, the National Archives, asked Congress for more than $28 million and nearly 150 new staff to, quote, advance racial equity and support underserved communities. Now, unless I'm missing something, the National Archives. archives are responsible for essentially storing historic presidential, vice presidential congressional documents. So there's a record for future generations to see here's what happened

in the past. I don't understand what has to do with supporting underserved communities. Yeah, well, President Biden signed this executive order directing all these federal agencies to go all in on DEI and this racial equity stuff. And the other reason agencies like it, as you know, Dan, agencies are incentivized to spend their entire budgets, right? So if they only spend 97% of their budget, then Congress will come back and say, oh, you don't need all this money. We're going to cut you by 3%. So agencies always spend exactly how much money you give them. And they always say they need more money because they're really afraid of getting cut. So they always say they need more money. And what this DEI stuff does, it gives them kind of a bottomless pit to continue pouring money into because there's no real way to measure success. There's no objective markers if you're becoming more equitable or anything. It's just kind of, of like a way to put money in agency and grow your agency by hiring hundreds of, you know,

we're seeing the universities and colleges do this too, just hiring tons of tons of DEI staff to balloon things out. But at a certain point, you kind of look up and you have hundreds of DEI employees and you know, I'm wondering what this has to do with the mission of the organization. And of course, that's taxpayer dollars we're talking about. That's our listeners. That's yours, mine, our listeners, tax dollars. The federal government is more than, $31 trillion in debt, massive budget deficits year and year out. Anyway, Casey, that's a good reporting on this story. Listeners can keep up with it and more at thecentersquare.com, but we are out of time.

For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKalb. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.