Free Republic

Cleaning up diversity, equity and inclusion abuse in the federal government is one of the Trump Administration’s best efforts. And on Wednesday it took on the largest and oldest race and gender preference program in U.S. history In a motion in federal court in Kentucky, the Justice Department said the Transportation Department’s longstanding Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program (DBE) violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. This is the program that sets aside federal contracts for women and minorities. The DBE program doles out some $37 billion in contracts over five years. The case was brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law...

On February 14, the Department of Education officially notified educational institutions receiving federal funding that they must cease race-based practices—including admissions, hiring, promotion, scholarships, administrative support, discipline, and sanctions. The potential loss of federal funding is offered as a consequence for noncompliance. This directive comes on the heels of President Donald Trump’s January 21 executive order aimed at “ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity.” In recent years, many universities had ramped up DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs on campus—some admittedly as a response to the death of George Floyd and the resulting racial climate. Initiatives have run the...

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's efforts to eliminate the racist and sexist Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies of his predecessor Lloyd Austin are being undermined by hold-over Biden Administration bureaucrats. Their strategy is "malicious compliance." Hegseth's intent is to elevate merit and competence over DEI's racial, ethnic, and gender quotas for hiring and promotion. However, this intent has been twisted by a moronic effort to eliminate the word gay and African-Americans from all Department of Defense photos. Examples include photographs of the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima because "Enola Gay" appears on the nose of...

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Purpose. The dishonest and dangerous activity of the law firm Perkins Coie LLP (“Perkins Coie”) has affected this country for decades. Notably, in 2016 while representing failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, which then manufactured a false “dossier” designed to steal an election. This egregious activity is part of a pattern. Perkins Coie has worked with activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary, and democratically enacted election...

Harmeet Dhillon, the attorney nominated to lead the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, said in her confirmation hearing on Wednesday that corporations that use diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) racial quotas could be prosecuted under federal civil rights law.In an exchange with Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Dhillon was asked about a 2023 initiative from retail corporation Target to hire 20 percent more black employees, in what Schmitt said was an “overt racial quota system” prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.“Senator, if the facts are as you just described them, I believe that practice is...

While meritocracy may be embodied on the field, it frequently isn’t on the sideline. Marcus Freeman is an exception.When Notre Dame takes the field for its college football championship game against Ohio State in Atlanta on Monday, its 39-year-old coach will make history. Marcus Freeman will become the first Black head coach in a national championship game at the Football Bowl Subdivision level. For Freeman, it’s a career-defining moment. When he was promoted at 35 to be Notre Dame’s head coach after the 2021 season, questions arose about whether he was ready for the job. He had been defensive coordinator...

Most industries and occupations have trade associations to promote their interests through lobbying, marketing, and public relations. Lawyers are no exception. One difference between, say, the American Urological Association and the American Bar Association, however, is that instead of merely providing opportunities for professional networking and vacation junkets dressed up as “conventions,” the left-leaning ABA is clothed with quasi-governmental regulatory authority over the entire field of legal education. The ABA effectively oversees the operations of nearly 200 law schools in the United States. Absurdly, this professional cartel regulates itself! The U.S. Department of Education limits eligibility for federal student loans...

More than two-thirds of Americans think the Supreme Court was right to hold Harvard's race-based admissions policy unlawful. But the minority who disagree have no doubt about their own moral authority, and there's every reason to believe that they intend to undo the Court's decision at the earliest opportunity. Which could be as soon as this year. In fact, undoing the Harvard admissions decision is the least of it. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have embraced a precooked "privacy" bill that will impose race/gender quotas not just on academic admissions but on practically every private and public decision that matters...

Sports fans like me love gleaming new stadiums. But few of us are aware that the deals made to secure their financing now come with discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) quotas attached. I was relieved last year when officials reached a deal to keep my beloved Bills in Buffalo, where I grew up. But I was unaware of the associated DEI requirements until I noticed recent news coverage on stadium concessions preferences for women, minorities, and other groups. Apparently, such quotas are now common not just in New York and California but also in “purple” states like Nevada, and...

What is racism’s limiting principle? At times, the answer has to do with practicalities: Xi Jinping would presumably enslave every last Uyghur if geopolitical and administrative circumstances allowed it. Or perhaps religion gets involved: One shudders to think, for instance, how the internment of Japanese Americans might have unfolded had not the nation’s residual Christianity stayed certain hands. In most places, thank God, there are not only pragmatic and religious limits on bigotry but social ones, as well. Yes, we humans egg each other on to evil, but we also keep one another in check, perhaps especially where public morality...

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said Thursday that the Supreme Court's decision to overrule affirmative action in colleges should be celebrated. *** the 2024 presidential candidate also hit back at former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, who said "my heart breaks" for young people who are "wondering what their future holds" after the decision. Scott said the Obamas and others on the left are pushing lies "from the pit of hell" about opportunity in America.TIM SCOTT: Well, the good news is we're going to have another African-American president. His name will be Tim Scott. And this is...

South Africa’s opposition party is blasting the ruling African National Congress over draft regulations that would introduce race quotas for water use licenses for businesses. The proposed regulations (see page 91-92), which were published by Minister of Water Senzo Mchunu on May 19, would prove devastating to business sectors like agriculture and forestry, which reportedly account for about 60 percent of the country’s total water use.Under the ANC’s new water race quotas, applicants that use more than 250 000 m3 or withdraw more than a set minimum amount from streams need to meet strict racial quotas in order to get...

A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of a new admissions policy at an elite public high school in Virginia that critics say discriminates against highly qualified Asian Americans. The 2-1 ruling from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond overturns a ruling last year from a federal judge who found that the Fairfax County School Board engaged in impermissible “racial balancing” when it overhauled the admissions policy at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. The school frequently is cited among the best in the nation, and parents jockey and prepare for...

Russia laid out conditions on Monday for agreeing to any further extension of the Black Sea grain deal, and President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow could send free grain to African countries if those conditions were not met. -snip- Speaking at a Russia-Africa parliamentary conference in Moscow on Monday, Putin said grain exports under the Black Sea deal had unfairly prioritised "well-fed European markets" rather than African countries, and that the renewal of the deal on Russia's terms was in the continent's interests.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded the bulk of grain and fertiliser to be exported under the Black Sea Initiative must be channelled to Africa. -snip- Speaking to African government ministers on Monday during the International Parliamentary Conference, dubbed "Africa in a Multipolar World", in Moscow, Putin said his key demands were that Africans should be the biggest beneficiaries. "We insist on the package nature of this deal - above all, in the interests of African and other developing countries, considering that they need large amounts of food - we insist on full compliance with Russia's key requirements, first of...

The vast majority of Americans believe U.S. companies should hire executives based solely on merit, character and quality, according to a CRC Research poll shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Among respondents, 87% supported a merit-based approach, compared to 8% who supported a quota system for race and gender and 5% who were unsure or refused to answer, according to the CRC Research poll conducted for the 85 Fund. The pattern held true across political affiliations, with most Democrats, Republicans and independents favoring a merit-based hiring approach for executives. At 93%, Republicans were only slightly more likely to...

From 2021 to 2022, I worked as a manager in Microsoft’s AI Platform division. I’ve been working in the software industry for over a decade, and while I’ve often encountered some combination of the words “diversity” and “inclusion,” how those words have been translated into culture and policy has varied dramatically over time and between companies. At Microsoft, I became concerned about diversity and inclusion policies that required me to sacrifice what I viewed as the best way to serve the company’s mission, particularly as it affected work prioritization, hiring, and promotions. Large companies like Microsoft have a major impact...

Some of the nation’s most famous corporations, including Lions Gate Entertainment and Live Nation, have not reported compliance with a California law that required boards of directors to meet a diversity quota. The law has just been declared unconstitutional by a Los Angeles judge, and yet a “shame list” remains online for the public to scrutinize which corporations have the most ethnic minorities on their boards.

At work, white people are being told to check their privilege at the door. But a court ruling on Friday indicates there's still hope for fair treatment in the corporate world, even if you're not a racial minority. On April 1, a California court struck down a state law mandating that corporate boards seats be reserved for people of minority groups. The court said quotas violated the state's constitutional guarantee that everyone is treated equally under the law. Equal protection isn't just for minority races. It's everyone's right. Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African American on the U.S. Supreme Court,...

The NFL’s dismal number of black head coaches shows a lack of “generic decency” from a league that hasn’t kept its promises, President Biden said in an interview airing Super Bowl Sunday. “They haven’t lived up to what they committed to and lived up to being open about hiring more minorities to run teams,” Biden told NBC News, referencing the football league’s purported commitments to diversifying leadership. “The whole idea that a league that is made up of so many athletes of color as well as so diverse, that there’s not enough African American qualified coaches to manage these NFL...