Nearly five years after major companies declared their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion following the police killing of George Floyd, some are publicly pulling away from those commitments amid intense pressure from the political right, including President Trump.

In the past year, iconic brands including McDonald’s, Meta, Walmart, Harley-Davidson, John Deere and Lowe's have rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives — a broad term that refers to programs, policies, personnel and practices intended to create a more inclusive, representative workplace.

“The anti-DEI movement has done an incredible job vilifying the acronym and defining DEI as the hiring of unqualified candidates or the unfair distribution of funding. This is a very narrow view of how DEI actually shows up in the private sector,” said Elle Arlook, head of equity and justice at the advisory and advocacy firm APCO.

But critics of DEI, many of whom have been working to topple these programs for years, call it an ineffective talking point at best and an affront to equal opportunity and reverse racism at worst.

"Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris on November 5 sealed DEI’s fate. Corporate America, including companies such as Walmart, and Meta, interpreted the event as an incentive to change, voluntarily terminating their DEI programs before Trump took office," wrote conservative activist Chris Rufo, who has long written against DEI and worked with public officials to snuff out DEI initiatives, on his Substack last week.

Trump took a sledgehammer to DEI initiatives in the federal government on his first day in office, doubling down on criticisms that they are divisive, discriminatory and anti-American. On Monday, he also did away with DEI programs within the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, which houses the U.S. Coast Guard.

“My administration has taken action to abolish all discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense — and these are policies that were absolute nonsense — throughout the government and the private........

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