WASHINGTON, Jan 28, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - For President Donald Trump's allies, his crackdown on the "illegal and immoral discrimination" of equal opportunities programs reflects a shifting US electorate that has lost patience with ineffective and performative political correctness.

For Trump critics, however, it is a frontal assault on civil rights that will chill efforts to create a fairer country, dismantling decades of affirmative action that they argue led to a more skilled, representative workforce.

Trump repeatedly previewed his plan to stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) during his election campaign, but the breakneck pace of the changes -- and the extent of their reach -- has caught many off guard.

Since his return to office last week, administration officials have been racing to prosecute Trump's war on DEI across the federal bureaucracy -- dismantling training initiatives, scrapping grants and sidelining hundreds of workers.

"Woke is not inevitable. It is not invincible. It is not indestructible. The counter-revolution is coming," anti-DEI crusader Christopher Rufo wrote on X in a post marking Trump's first week in office.

The evil of DEI is an article of faith in Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement, but the Republican leader is banking on growing skepticism in the broader public over cultural liberalism in government, education and business.

The enmity is premised on the suspicion that people employed through DEI do not merit their success, and are depriving more deserving candidates who are denied opportunity because they are not in a minority.

- Virtue-signaling -

DEI came to the fore during mass protests against the 2020 murder of African American George Floyd by a white police officer, as institutions scrambled to signal that they were on-message when it came to racism.

Largely focused on hiring practices and corporate culture, DEI has gone from being a marker of professionalism before the Trump era to a bogeyman, held up as an example of counterproductive virtue-signaling.

Rufo was celebrating after websites and social media accounts related to diversity went dark last week, while officials directed agencies to close their DEI offices and place staffers on paid leave, in advance of being laid off.

Federal workers have also been ordered to report colleagues who hide DEI efforts with "coded or imprecise language," and the State Department is freezing passport applications with "X" designated as the gender instead of "M" or "F."

Among the casualties of the new regime was Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan, the first woman to lead a branch of the US military, who was fired after being accused of an "excessive focus" on DEI.

There were further ructions in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which was accused of quietly changing the job title of its "chief diversity officer" to "senior executive" in a bid to save her job.

In the corporate world, top brands from Target and Walmart to Meta, Harley-Davidson and Jack Daniel's have taken similar measures since Trump's election as they face pressure from conservatives to roll back DEI efforts.

- 'Old-boys' network' -

In education, Trump has instructed federal officials to investigate DEI programs at schools with endowments of more than $1 billion -- which includes Harvard, Stanford, Yale and dozens of other institutions.

Last month, the University of Michigan -- facing accusations that it had wasted a quarter of a billion dollars in failed DEI initiatives -- announced that it would no longer demand diversity statements as a part of hiring, promotion and tenure decisions.

Although DEI hate didn't start with Trump, he made it a popular applause line at campaign events, vowing to purge the military of generals he accused of being overly focused on social justice, and planning a crackdown on transgender recruitment.

Liberals argue that diversity and inclusion policies -- such as a 2022 FBI recruitment drive at historically black universities -- help ensure the best and brightest rise to the top when they might otherwise be denied the opportunity.

"DEI programs, of course, do not do what Trump imagines," Elie Mystal, bestselling author of "Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution," said in a commentary for progressive magazine The Nation.

"If anything, the country is beset by mediocre white men who got their positions through an old-boys' network of family, friends, connections, and frat buddies who now gum up and dumb down the system at every level."