Progressive nonprofit leaders reacted defiantly to President Donald Trump’s long promised executive order to snuff out diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts based on race and gender within the federal government, among its contractors, and for the first time, inside large foundations.
Through the order, Trump aims to roll back decades of affirmative action policies and recent Biden administration rules, which instituted a federal agency mandate that government spending decisions include equity as a criterion.
While Trump targeted DEI in his first administration, his recent order expands to include diversity programs at for-profit and nonprofit government contractors, universities with large endowments, and foundations with assets north of $500 million.
The order states that DEI programs violate “the text and spirit” of federal civil-rights laws by discriminating on the basis of race.
“Immoral and demeaning” DEI efforts “undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system,” the order reads.
The order directs federal agency heads to investigate up to nine publicly traded corporations, large nonprofits and foundations, and universities with endowments of more than $1 billion and report findings to the attorney general. No specific institutions were named as potential targets of investigation.
Trump also put all federal government staff members involved with DEI efforts on leave. Institutions with a relationship to the federal government, such as the federally funded National Gallery of Art, where outgoing Ford Foundation leader and equity champion Darren Walker serves as president, announced it would shut down its DEI office.
The order invited a swift response from Richard Besser, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which in recent years has made health equity the cornerstone of its work.
In response, Robert Wood Johnson will increase its support of efforts to diversify the health care profession and intensify its support of legal, communications, and organizing efforts undertaken by leaders in the health care field, Besser said.
“It is unconscionable that the Trump administration would co-opt the language and vision of the civil rights movement in these executive orders as it attempts to send our nation back to an era of rampant, state-sanctioned discrimination, " Besser said in a statement.
The order was no surprise to nonprofit leaders, including Olivia Sedwick, counsel for the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Since a 2023 Supreme Court decision in a pair of cases invalidated affirmative action in college admissions, nonprofit and foundation leaders who make grants on the basis of race have watched a fusillade of legal challenges directed at corporate and nonprofit DEI programs.
The order has the force of law but can be overturned by Congress or in the courts. As written, it does not impose any new laws, Sedwick said, adding that nonprofits that engage in diversity, equity, and inclusion training and grant making are exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech. The federal government, she said, cannot interfere with that tax-exempt mission, but it can take steps to pressure organizations to comply with its wishes.
“We don’t know what that encouragement is going to look like,” she said. “It might teeter on the side of coercion or some type of more forceful intimidation.”
The executive order notes that nothing prevents federal contractors, state and local government agencies, and universities from engaging in their First Amendment rights. It makes no mention of private foundation or corporate free speech rights. Sedwick said foundations and businesses may not have been included because it is obvious those private institutions’ First Amendment rights can’t be abridged by the order to begin with.
Affirmative action critics, however, do not believe activities like race-based grant making are protected by the First Amendment. They argue that a foundation grant based on race, even if it was meant to benefit historically marginalized populations like Black people, is illegal discrimination.
Sedwick anticipates increased “surveillance” of diversity activities stemming from the order. Nonprofit leaders should expect to receive notices from federal and state leaders, or even others masquerading as government officials, inquiring about their diversity practices, she said.
While progressive nonprofit leaders warned this scrutiny will have a chilling effect, they “should have been chilled already,” said Michael Hartmann, senior fellow at the Capital Research Center, a conservative research and advocacy group.
The White House order is a “trailing indicator” of anti-establishment populism and distrust of well-endowed institutions that has been long brewing, he said.
“Philanthropy will no longer be treated with any special deference, and the inclusion of private foundations in this order is evidence of that,” he said.
