What does ‘woke’ mean? How ideology is being used ahead of 2024.
Co-author of “Stay Woke,” Tehama Lopez Bunyasi, breaks down how “woke” began and how it is being used in the run-up to 2024 elections.
Claire Hardwick, USA TODAY
On a cold January night before the New Hampshire primary, Donald Trump traveled to Rochester, a city of blue-collar, culturally conservative voters who swung his way in 2016 and again in 2020.
“We will terminate every diversity, equity, and inclusion program across the entire federal government,” the former president declared to a packed auditorium.
It was more than just a popular applause line at Trump rallies. Behind the scenes, a coalition of dozens of right-wing groups is preparing to make Trump’s words a reality.
Led by the Heritage Foundation think tank, which has helped mold the policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency, conservative interests are preparing a sweeping plan known as Project 2025 in anticipation of Trump’s return to power. Part of that agenda goes after the decades-long corporate drive to increase racial diversity in cubicles and executive suites.
“The Biden Administration has pushed ‘racial equity’ in every area of our national life, including in employment,” according to Project 2025 which runs nearly 900 pages.
Conservatives behind Project 2025 say the private sector has been corrupted by doctrines such as critical race theory which argues that historical patterns of racism are embedded in law and other American institutions, harming Black people and other people of color. They want to reverse “the DEI revolution in labor policy” in favor of more “race neutral” policies.
“Getting rid of critical race theory from federal agencies, diversity, equity and inclusion policies, unconscious bias — we are certainly going to have ideas and proposals ready for a possible new administration,” former Trump administration official Russ Vought, who is advising Project 2025, told USA TODAY in an interview.
Civil rights advocates say Project 2025 is the work of a small group of vocal conservatives who are laying the groundwork for a far-reaching rollback of civil rights laws that would water down federal safeguards against racial discrimination if Trump is re-elected.
“They are trying to take apart the legacy of these laws that made us a multiracial democracy,” said Alvin B. Tillery Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Diversity at Northwestern University. “Trump is just picking up the mantle.”
What Trump would do on DEI if elected
The presidential transition plan calls for purging liberal policies and dismantling some federal agencies.
“The next conservative president must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors,” Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, wrote in the foreword to the policy agenda.
The think tank declined to comment, but Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, told Steve Bannon‘s “War Room” podcast: “We want everyone walking into office to be literally on the same page” for the first 180 days of the next Republican presidency.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Trump has said that he alone is responsible for the policies of a future administration, but Project 2025 − which outlines an agenda that touches every government agency − offers insights into what those policies might look like.
Jonathan Berry, a veteran of the Trump administration and lead author of a chapter on the Labor Department and related agencies, says Project 2025 continues the work of the first Trump White House which banned diversity training by the federal government and government contractors.
The plan broadly reflects where Trump’s policy stood at the end of his presidency in 2020, Berry said, adding that “it also represents the direction you would expect to see a second Trump administration go.”
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