During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Donald Trump made a bold claim about diversity, equity, and inclusion. “We ended DEI in America,” he said after touting his administration’s record on job creation. 

The remark was an echo of previous claims Trump has made about DEI, which have been critiqued for misrepresenting his legal authority over DEI programs in the private sector. “I’ve ended all of the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the entire federal government and the private sector, and notified every single government DEI officer that their job has been deleted,” Trump said in a speech last year at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “They’re gone. They’re fired.”

It’s true that the Trump administration’s repeated attacks on DEI have had a chilling effect on corporate America, and have more directly derailed DEI efforts in the public sector. Immediately after assuming office, Trump issued multiple executive orders that targeted DEI, which slashed DEI offices and roles across the federal government and threatened private companies with potential legal action if they maintained “illegal” DEI programs.

The sweeping federal layoffs in 2025 ultimately affected about 277,000 workers—including those culled from DEI teams at government agencies—and had a disproportionate impact on women and people of color. 

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Under the Trump administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—the agency tasked with enforcing anti-discrimination laws—has also adopted an anti-DEI posture. EEOC chair Andrea Lucas has set her sights on “DEI-related discrimination,” recently mounting an investigation into Nike over its DEI policies, claiming the company had discriminated against white employees and job applicants.

Despite these setbacks, Trump’s actions have not exactly ended DEI—far from it. 

Some employers, including Google and Meta, have moved away from certain types of DEI programs due to legal risk, whether that means cutting representation goals or no longer tying executive compensation to DEI metrics. But many private companies are still doing the work quietly, or have simply stopped using the term “DEI,” reframing their efforts as “belonging” instead. 

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