#Trump Officials Are ‘Pretending’ a Judge Didn’t Bar His #AntiDiversity Orders
A judge blocked the administration from forcing organizations to accept anti-diversity contract terms. Trump officials haven’t let them know
By Asawin Suebsaeng, Andrew Perez
March 12, 2025
"Last month, a federal judge issued an injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing multiple executive orders designed to purge the government of anything related to diversity — including an order to prohibit contractors and grant recipients from doing literally anything to promote the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion (#DEI) within their organizations.
"Trump’s Justice Department decided the fairly broad injunction only covered certain agencies. This month, certain parts of the administration, including the U.S. State Department, continued attempting to force this provision on contractors and grant recipients, threatening their funding if they failed to sign it, according to three knowledgeable sources in and outside of government. Rolling Stone has also reviewed documentation supporting these accounts.
"After the judge clarified on Monday that his injunction does, indeed, bar the whole federal government from enforcing Trump’s anti-diversity orders, the administration hasn’t bothered to inform various nonprofits and grant recipients they do not currently have to comply with the president’s orders, according to two of the sources. The new contract terms the Trump administration attempted to foist on these organizations and recipients remain on their desks, with the threats about failure to sign still dangling over them.
"'We haven’t even received a generic email about the judicial ruling,' says one senior executive at an international nonprofit and longstanding implementing partner with the U.S. government. ' They are just pretending it didn’t happen, it seems.'
"The episode is part of a broader pattern in which the second Trump administration has operated under the impression that judges’ orders and rulings don’t much matter. Vice President J.D. Vance has publicly argued that Trump can ignore judges’ orders, asserting: 'Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.' Trump, for his part, has threatened to 'look at' judges who rule against Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Over Presidents Day weekend, Trump admitted he thinks he can break any law he wants to — so long as he can loosely define doing so as part of his mission to ' save' the country.'"
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-officials-diversity-orders-dei-pretending-1235294937/
#ResistDOGE #Resistance #BadDOGE #Fascism #Authoritarianism #CharacteristicsOfFascism #USPol