Elite Media Paved Way for Trump’s Targeting of Columbia 

By Ari Paul

March 22, 2025

Source: FAIR

Explaining Columbia’s capitulation, the Wall Street Journal (3/21/25) reported that “the school believed there was considerable overlap between needed campus changes and Trump’s demands.”

President Donald Trump’s campaign against higher education started with Columbia University, both with the withholding of $400 million in funding to force major management charges (Wall Street Journal, 3/21/25) and the arrest and threatened  deportation of grad student Mahmoud Khalil, one of the student leaders of Columbia’s  movement against the genocide in Gaza (Al Jazeera, 3/19/25). The Columbia administration is reportedly acquiescing to the Trump administration, which would result in a mask ban and oversight of an academic department, to keep the dollars flowing.

Trump’s focus on Columbia is no accident. Despite the fact that its administration largely agrees with Trump on the need to suppress protest against Israel, the university is a symbol of New York City, a hometown that he hates for its liberalism (City and State NY, 11/16/20). And it was a starting point for the national campus movement that began last year against US support for Israel’s brutal war against Gaza (Columbia Spectator, 4/18/24; AP, 4/30/24).

And for those crimes, the new administration had to punish it severely. The New York Times editorial board (3/15/25) rightly presented the attack on higher education as part of an attack on the American democratic project: “​​Mr. Trump’s multifaceted campaign against higher education is core to this effort to weaken institutions that do not parrot his version of reality.”

But the response to Columbia’s protests from establishment media—including at the Times—laid the groundwork for this fascistic nightmare. Leading outlets went out of their way to say the protests were so extreme that they went beyond the bounds of free speech. They painted them as antisemitic, despite the many Jews who participated in them, following the long tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism (In These Times, 7/13/20; FAIR.org, 10/17/23, 11/6/23). Opinion shapers found these viewpoints too out of the mainstream for the public to hear, and wrung their hands over students’ attempts to reform US foreign policy in the Middle East.

‘Incessant valorization of victimhood’

The New York Times‘ Bret Stephens (6/25/24) included Columbia on his list of schools that “have descended to open bigotry, institutional paralysis and mayhem.”

I previously noted (FAIR.org, 10/11/24) that New York Times columnist John McWhorter (4/23/24), a Columbia instructor, made a name for himself defending the notion of free speech rights for the political right (even the racist right), but now wanted to insulate his students from hearing speech that came from a different political direction.

Trump’s rhetoric today largely echoes in cruder terms that of Times columnist Bret Stephens (6/25/24) last summer, who wrote of anti-genocide protesters:

How did the protesters at elite universities get their ideas of what to think and how to behave?

They got them, I suspect, from the incessant valorization of victimhood that has been a theme of their upbringing, and which many of the most privileged kids feel they lack—hence the zeal to prove themselves as allies of the perceived oppressed. They got them from the crude schematics of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training seminars, which divide the world into “white” and “of color,” powerful and “marginalized,” with no regard for real-world complexities — including the complexity of Jewish identity.

In fact, in the month before Khalil’s arrest, Stephens (2/27/25) called for swift and harsh punishments against anti-genocide protesters at Barnard College, which is part of Columbia:

Enough. The students involved in this sit-in need to be identified and expelled, immediately and without exception. Any nonstudents at the sit-in should be charged with trespassing. Face-hiding masks that prevent the identification of the wearer need to be banned from campus. And incoming students need to be told, if they haven’t been told already, that an elite education is a privilege that comes with enforceable expectations, not an entitlement they can abuse at will.

Stephens has been a big part of the movement against so-called cancel culture. That movement consists of journalists and professors who believe that criticism or rejection of bigoted points of views has a chilling effect on free speech. As various writers, including myself, have noted (Washington Post, 10/28/19; FAIR.org, 10/23/20, 5/20/21), this has often been a cover for simply wanting to censor speech to their left, and Stephens’ alignment with Trump here is evidence of that. The New York Times editorial board, not just Stephens, is part of that anti-progressive cohort (New York Times, 3/18/22; FAIR.org, 3/25/22).

‘Fervor that borders on the oppressive’

The Atlantic (5/5/24) identified Iddo Gefen as “a Ph.D. candidate in cognitive psychology at Columbia University and the author of Jerusalem Beach,” but not as an IDF veteran who spent three years in the Israeli military’s propaganda department.

The Atlantic’s coverage of the protests was also troubling. The magazine’s Michael Powell, formerly of the New York Times, took issue with the protesters’ rhetoric (5/1/24), charging them with “a fervor that borders on the oppressive” (4/22/24).

The magazine gave space to an Israeli graduate student, Iddo Gefen (5/5/24), who complained that some “Columbia students are embracing extreme rhetoric,” and said a sign with the words “by any means necessary” was “so painful and disturbing” that Gefen “left New York for a few days.” It’s hard to imagine the Atlantic giving such editorial space to a Palestinian student triggered by Zionist anti-Palestinian chants.

The Atlantic was also unforgiving on the general topic of pro-Palestine campus protests. “Campus Protest Encampments are Unethical” (9/16/24) was the headline of an article by Conor Friedersdorf, while Judith Shulevitz (5/8/24) said that campus anti-genocide protest chants are “why some see the pro-Palestinian cause as so threatening.”

‘Belligerent elite college students’

Paul Berman (Washington Post, 4/26/24) writes that Columbia student protesters “horrify me” because they fail to understand that Israel “killing immense numbers of civilians” and “imposing famine-like conditions” is not as important as “Hamas and its goal,” which is “the eradication of the Israeli state.”

The Washington Post likewise trashed the anti-genocide movement. Guest op-ed columnist Paul Berman (4/26/24) wrote that if he were in charge of Columbia, “I would turn in wrath on Columbia’s professors” who supported the students. He was particularly displeased with the phrase “from the river to the sea,” a chant demanding one democratic state in historic Palestine. Offering no evidence of ill will by the protesters who use the slogan, he said:

I grant that, when students chant “from the river to the sea,” some people will claim to hear nothing more than a call for human rights for Palestinians. The students, some of them, might even half-deceive themselves on this matter. But it is insulting to have to debate these points, just as it is insulting to have to debate the meaning of the Confederate flag.

The slogan promises eradication. It is an exciting slogan because it is transgressive, which is why the students love to chant it. And it is doubly shocking to see how many people rush to excuse the students without even pausing to remark on the horror embedded in the chants.

Regular Post columnist Megan McArdle (4/25/24) said that Columbia protesters would be unlikely to change US support for Israel because “20-year-olds don’t necessarily make the best ambassadors for a cause.” She added:

It’s difficult to imagine anything less likely to appeal to that voter than an unsanctioned tent city full of belligerent elite college students whose chants have at least once bordered on the antisemitic.

‘Death knell for a Jewish state’

While “defenders of the protesters dismiss manifestations of antisemitism…as unfortunate aberrations,” Max Boot (Washington Post, 5/6/24) writes. “But if you read what the protesters have written about their own movement, it’s clear that animus against Israel runs deep”—as though antisemitism and “animus against Israel” were the same thing.

Fellow Post columnist Max Boot (5/6/24) dismissed the statement of anti-genocide Columbia protesters:

The manifesto goes on to endorse “the Right of Return” for Palestinian refugees who have fled Israel since its creation in 1948. Allowing 7 million Palestinians—most of them the descendants of refugees—to move to Israel (with its 7 million Jewish and 2 million Arab residents) would be a death knell for Israel as a Jewish state. The protesters’ slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a call not for a two-state solution but for a single Palestinian state—and a mass exodus of Jews.

Boot here gives away the pretense that Israel is a democracy. The idea of “one Palestine” is a democratic ideal whereby all people in historic Palestine—Jew, Muslim, Christian etc.—live with equal rights like in any normal democracy. But the idea of losing an ethnostate to egalitarianism is tantamount to “a mass exodus of Jews.”

Thirty years after the elimination of apartheid in South Africa, the white population is 87% as large as it was under white supremacy. Is there any reason to think that a smaller percentage of Jews would be willing to live in a post-apartheid Israel/Palestine without Jewish supremacy?

The New York Times, Atlantic and Washington Post fanned the flames of the right-wing pearl-clutching at the anti-genocide protests. Their writers may genuinely be aghast at Trump’s aggression toward universities now (Atlantic, 3/19/25, 3/20/25; Washington Post, 3/19/25, 3/21/25), but they might want to reflect on what they did to bring us to this point.

Declassified JFK Assassination Files Expose Covert CIA Operations From The Vatican To Latin America

By Peter Kornbluh, Amy Goodman

March 22, 2025

Source: Democracy Now!

The U.S. government this week released thousands more records on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, long a source of fascination and intrigue. This is the final batch of JFK files after the federal government began declassifying documents in the early 1990s. While these latest files contain no major revelations about the assassination, they do include many previously redacted details about “the CIA global effort to influence elections, sabotage economies, overthrow governments,” says Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst with the National Security Archive, a government transparency organization and research institution. “Now at least we know what was being done in our name but without our knowledge.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show looking at the federal government’s release of around 80,000 pages of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. While the documents have revealed few new revelations on the assassination, the unredacted files are filled with details about covert CIA operations around the world, from the Vatican to Latin America.

One document revealed 47% of political officers working in overseas U.S. embassies in 1961 were actually intelligence agents working under diplomatic cover. At the U.S. Embassy in France, the CIA had 123 undercover agents acting as diplomats. The documents also shed new light on CIA activity across Latin America, including in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia.

Those are just some of the revelations highlighted by the National Security Archive, an independent organization that’s been reviewing the documents.

We’re joined now by Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst for Latin America at the National Security Archive. He’s researched CIA operations for decades with a focus on Latin America. His books include Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana and Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba. He’s joining us from Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

Peter, welcome back to Democracy Now! What’s in these tens of thousands of pages of documents that you’re continuing to plow through?

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, we don’t have enough time to talk about all the details of the early 1960s history of the CIA kind of global effort to influence elections, sabotage economies, overthrow governments. But we’ve learned a lot more of the minutiae, the granular kind of side of these covert operations — names, places, shell companies, expenditures — so many little details that really complete, I think, in many ways, our sense of the universe of covert operations and what they targeted, how they happened, how they, you know, were organized. I mean, it’s fascinating from a historical point of view.

You know, the U.S. taxpayer, Amy, has shelled out a lot of money, for decades now, to have these documents kept secure and clean in the vaults of the national security agencies of the U.S. government. And now, finally, we are accessing this history that we paid for, that we’ve paid to — we’ve paid for it to happen. We financed the CIA with our money way back when. And now at least we know what was being done in our name but without our knowledge.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you write that on the day, President Kennedy’s inauguration in January ’61, nearly half of the political officers serving in the U.S. embassies were CAS, C-A-S, intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover known as “controlled American sources.” What’s the significance of this, Peter?

PETER KORNBLUH: Simply, the significance is that, whereas most people thought these were actually State Department officials in U.S. embassies around the world, almost half of them, almost half the people in these embassies, particularly using the office that was called political officer, were CIA undercover agents. It’s pretty incredible. As Arthur Schlesinger pointed out in this extraordinary memo, that’s been completely declassified now, to John F. Kennedy on June 10th, 1961, 3,700 officers around the world were CIA officials under diplomatic cover, in comparison to 3,900 of actual diplomats around the world. So it was almost 50%. And that’s quite an extraordinary number. And I think a number of countries will be surprised at the kind of level to which the U.S. embassies were being used as cover for the CIA.

Again, this is all in the past. It’s old history. We’ve known for many years that political officers were often used to kind of disguise CIA operations. And there were other parts of the embassies, too — the labor attachés, commercial attachés, etc. And then there were the CIA officers that were operating in countries like Chile and Bolivia and Brazil and elsewhere who weren’t in the embassies at all. But it’s a tidbit of covert operations history that certainly is dramatic and reminds us of what the United States was doing around the world and is capable of doing in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: In light of the U.S. cracking down even more on Cuba right now, especially young people may not know how many assassination attempts there were against Fidel Castro. Is it in the range of 600? And then I want to follow that up with a question about one of the JFK assassination documents being released about the inspector general’s report of the ’61 successful, if you call it that, assassination of Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, revealing the names of CIA officers and others who assisted in the plot. Can you talk about this?

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, the 600 or so figure about assassination attempts on Fidel Castro comes more from Cuban intelligence than from U.S. intelligence. Every attempt by any exile group that Cuban intelligence intercepted or learned about was added up, and those were quite a few. The CIA itself counts about 16 earnest CIA-sponsored attempts, which now have become folklore of covert operations history — exploding sea shells, poison cigars, sniper rifles, etc. So, you know, we’ve known about those assassination plots for a long time.

There is one document, an internal CIA inspector general’s report, on the assassination in late May of 1961 of Rafael Trujillo, the dictator of the Dominican Republic. And it’s quite detailed. It names the names of all the CIA officers involved, including their code names that they used in their discussions with coup plotters and the assassination team in the Dominican Republic. It names all the names of the coup plotters, as well, that the CIA was working with. The name of the actual covert operation, which was called EMDEED, and the actual assassination plot, which was called EMSLEW. There are a lot of details on that history. And, you know, you get to learn not only how the CIA works with foreigners to assassinate a head of state — in this case, the dictator Rafael Trujillo — but you also learn how the CIA goes about investigating its own wrongdoing of the past, the files that it keeps, how they are reviewed, what they yield, etc.. So, it’s quite fascinating from a historical point of view.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ve done a lot on USAID and Trump’s getting — essentially shuttering the agency. You’ve covered foreign policy in Latin America for decades. Can you talk about the story of the USAID’s Office of Public Safety?

PETER KORNBLUH: You know, that’s, again, part of the folklore of covert operations. There was a famous movie made about Dan Mitrione, who was an officer in the Office of Public Safety. It was never completely proven that he was a CIA official. He was kidnapped and executed in Uruguay by the Tupamaros, became a very famous case. There is evidence in these declassified documents that the CIA did use AID as cover.

But, you know, that was a long time ago, and even if it was doing that, there’s still quite a bit more to USAID than CIA covert operations. And so, when we talk about AID being shuttered today, we’re talking about programs that were literally saving lives every day, providing food, food bought from U.S. farmers, by the way, by the federal government, and food, medicine, vaccines — quite a bit of support to many of the causes that we actually care about. So, it’s easy to look back on the older history of USAID when it was first started as a tool of the Cold War. The Cold War has been over for a long time now. So, closing it down now is simply a crime against humanity, frankly, in my opinion, because so many people will die and suffer and become ill and impoverished by this cruel act of simply closing the doors of the USAID programs.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Kornbluh, The New York Times reports a senior official at the main USAID agency, which is being dismantled by Trump, told employees to clear safes holding classified documents and personnel files by shredding the papers or putting them into bags for burning, according to an email sent to the staff. The significance of this, you as an archivist who deeply wants to understand what is happening and has happened in the past?

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, there is a Federal Records Protection Act, a law that prevents documents from just being wantonly destroyed, erased, shredded, burned, as this email that you refer to indicated. And so, that was very alarming when that news broke and that email was shared with the kind of legal community. It also spoke to the issue of whether these documents might have been relevant in the ongoing lawsuits, the legal pushback by AID employees to save their jobs and save their institution, legal efforts that are underway right now. And those documents might have actually been relevant to those legal efforts.

You know, my organization joined in protesting that action. It was the subject of court discussion. We don’t know — we don’t have an index of what documents were actually shredded that day and burned that day, but, hopefully, at some point we will.

But that speaks to a different issue, Amy, that I hope we want to raise before we go, which is, you know, part of what’s important about the declassification of the John F. Kennedy documents is not just what’s in the documents. It is the law that mandated that declassification, which is known as the JFK Act and passed in 1992. And it was a law that’s probably the strongest law on declassification that’s ever been written. It created an independent panel outside of the national security agencies to oversee the declassification of the documents. It mandated that, with very few exceptions, the documents be released without censorship, without redactions. And this is a law that really is very important. Now that it’s been fully implemented, by, ironically, Donald Trump, you know, it’s a law that creates a new standard and a new precedence for openness and transparency. And it’s very important that, now that we have that standard, we apply that standard to the very administration that is in power today.

AMY GOODMAN: And it’s interesting that while he’s released the JFK files, the Shabazz family is asking for the release of the Malcolm X files, which he has yet to do. Peter Kornbluh, in the last 30 seconds, I wanted to get your response to President Trump basically also shuttering Voice of America and Radio Martí, particularly the news, if you could call it that, agency that was broadcasting into Cuba U.S. propaganda.

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, he has shuttered the Cuba programs. USAID had Cuba democracy programs, which were very objectionable to the Cubans. Those are gone now. Radio Martí, TV Martí gone now. That does not mean that Trump is not going to be pressuring Cuba in other ways, but at least the Cuba programs are gone.

People who look closely at the Voice of America will know that they’ve used our documents in many stories that they’ve done. They, too, are not the Cold War product that they once were, and had some value around the world for quite a bit of people.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but we’ll continue in a post-show at democracynow.org. Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst for Latin America at National Security Archive.

 

Trump’s Attack on Union Card Check Looks and Smells Like Project 2025

By Hayley Brown

March 22, 2025

Source: CEPR

Photo: Rick Obst

The Trump regime has taken aim at yet another pro-worker policy, suggesting once again that it is both familiar and on board with Project 2025. Earlier this month, the US Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) ceased facilitating “card check” for union certification – a move designed to hinder workers’ ability to form a union.

Also called majority sign-up, card check is a fair and effective way to determine that workers want union representation. Workers who support a union simply sign authorization cards indicating as much, and if a majority of those eligible sign cards, the union is recognized. From there, the union can commence contract negotiations with the employer. Compared to secret ballot elections, card check reduces opportunities for employer interference, allowing more workers who want unions to form them.

The Trump regime’s actions have so far stopped short of banning card check altogether, which is what Project 2025 proposes (Project 2025’s proposal also involves Congress, but the Trump regime appears to prefer usurping Congressional authority to working with lawmakers). Nevertheless, the move at FMCS took away an important avenue that made card check certification more seamless and accessible. US employers weren’t obligated to honor card check certification before this, but removing FMCS services may further dissuade employers who might have been persuaded otherwise.

Undermining card check may seem insignificant, especially in light of news that the Trump regime is lawlessly disregarding and, in some cases, unilaterally terminating Collective Bargaining Agreements for public sector workers. But evidence suggests that card check is among the more consequential policies that make the path to unionization less fraught for workers. Contrary to claims from bosses, card check is no less democratic than a secret ballot election. The former is also better suited to the proposition because unionizing decisions are fundamentally about whether to undertake a collective endeavor rather than how to fill a pre-existing slot.

Beyond codifying card check as a valid means of union certification, a more pro-worker system would remove employers from certification proceedings altogether. Such a system would also guarantee public sector employees the same rights to form unions and bargain collectively as their peers in the private sector. Given the Trump regime’s anti-worker approach, however, state and local governments must take action to safeguard workers’ union rights. States and localities that have not already done so should pass laws to validate union certifications via card check — laws that would immediately benefit state and local government workers while acting as a potential backstop should the situation continue to unravel at the federal level.

The Trump regime is currently employing a series of bad faith arguments to justify a lawless assault on workers’ rights. The dismantling of card check certification is just one piece of a broader strategy to weaken organized labor and undermine collective bargaining. But with or without official union recognition, workers acting collectively have tremendous power. While federal policy may shift, the labor movement’s strength ultimately depends on workers themselves—and they don’t need permission from those in power to organize. As the Trump regime ramps up its attacks, workers must respond by doubling down on collective action.

The Uphill Battle To Bring Women Into Construction Jobs Could Be Lost Under Trump

Tradeswomen have spent decades fighting for their place in the skilled trades. Now they’re suing the government over its DEI policies.

By Jessica Kutz

March 22, 2025

Source: The 19th

A plumbing apprentice welds pipes at a high rise residence under construction. Photo: Teresa Crawford

For decades, women have worked diligently to carve out a space in the construction workforce, where discrimination and sexual harassment have kept the predominantly male industry, well, male. 

Across the country, they organized for recognition. First in small committees that cropped up in places like Fort Worth, Texas, where in 1953, women came together to create their own support network later called the National Association of Women in Construction. Over the years they worked with their unions and created nonprofits in places like Oregon, Wisconsin, Vermont, Florida and Chicago to advocate for issues affecting women like how to change the hostile workplace culture, and deal with the persistent lack of child care for the early hours they often work. 

The government created its own policies to ensure federal contractors were doing their due diligence to recruit and hire from a diverse workforce. But the Biden administration in particular was a boon to the movement, said Jayne Vellinga, executive director of Chicago Women in Trades (CWIT), a nonprofit aimed at bringing more women into construction jobs. 

Under Biden, the Commerce Department announced its goal to bring a million women into construction jobs, and created a requirement that recipients of large federal grants for semiconductor manufacturing include a plan for child care. The administration had also passed two laws aimed at boosting infrastructure in the country, which created a demand for skilled workers. 

It was the perfect storm of opportunity and funding to expand their programming to bring more women into the workforce. “Our placement numbers have never been higher,” Vellinga said. But when Donald Trump returned to the White House, the forward momentum collapsed almost overnight. In a fiery inauguration speech, he declared he would dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the government and create what he calls a color-blind, merit-based society. He promptly issued two executive orders calling DEI policies immoral and illegal and vowed to claw back funding. 

Just two days later, CWIT received word that all of its federal grants were under review. These grants constitute 40 percent of CWIT’s budget, and the loss would jeopardize the future of the nonprofit’s work. 

“We have complete whiplash,” Vellinga said.

Additionally, the tariffs have disrupted the construction industry, leading to a potential slowdown in projects and consequentially less need for workers, she said. 

The nonprofit, whose participants overwhelmingly identify as Black and Latina women, offers pre-apprenticeship training covering topics like workplace safety and basic technical skills. It also partners with unions and industry leaders to advocate for workplaces free of discrimination and harassment, and trains employers in how to make construction sites more inclusive of women. 

It’s work that is desperately needed in an industry where one in four women say they are always or frequently harassed, and where one in five LGBTQ+ workers say the same, according to findings from the Institute for Women’s Policy and Research. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a report in 2023, which found that discrimination was still rampant in the industry, citing several instances of employers not hiring people because of their gender or race. 

But that report has been erased from the website, and Vellinga said she feels like the reality of who is being discriminated against is being erased, too. “This narrative that women are taking jobs away from more qualified people has never been true. They are qualified and just asking companies to overcome whatever biases to give them a fair shot.” 

The efforts taken to dismantle their work might also not be legal. In February, the nonprofit filed a lawsuit against the administration and several agencies, including the Department of Labor, seeking to declare the DEI executive orders unconstitutional. They are also suing on the grounds that the clawback of federal funds is outside of the jurisdiction of the Executive Branch since they are approved by Congress, and that it’s also infringing on their First Amendment right to free speech. 

“What the Trump administration is trying to do is say that for you to receive this federal funding you have to adopt the administration’s viewpoint that DEI is impermissible, and you have to agree with our political agenda,” said Gaylynn Burroughs, a lawyer from the National Women’s Law Center, one of the organizations that is representing the CWIT in court. “The government is not allowed to do that.” 

Catherine Fisk, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said in effect the orders chill constitutionally protected speech and threaten legal action against organizations who cannot know what it is that they are prohibited from doing because it’s so vague. “That is both a First Amendment violation that is broadly prohibiting advocacy and a due process violation,” she said: “The government is threatening to punish people without being clear of what they are being punished for.”

The 19th reached out to the Department of Labor, The Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Justice, which were all named as defendants, but did not hear back by press time. 

Promoting diversity, equity and inclusion is not illegal, and these executive orders are a way to attack ideals fundamental to American society, Burroughs said. “When you peel it back, what we’re really talking about is the ability for people to not be discriminated against,” she said. “We do a disservice when we’re saying that it’s an attack on DEI. It’s an attack on civil rights, on workplace anti-discrimination.” 

She continued: “The message that is being conveyed is, if you are not a white heterosexual man, and you are in public life, or you are in a job where you are successful, that you must have gotten there because of some unfair advantage, and that is really a poisonous way of thinking.” 

In addition to endangering federal funding for DEI work, the Trump administration also rescinded an executive order that had been in place since 1965. The order prohibited federal contractors from discriminating in its hiring practices and required them to take affirmative actions to ensure that it was trying to recruit and hire women and people of color for its jobs, which are paid for with taxpayer dollars and in theory should be accessible to anyone who is qualified. Because some groups have been so effectively shut out of certain jobs, that work can look like providing opportunities for specific groups like women to learn skills and receive training to be competitive applicants in the job pool. 

To help enforce the 1965 order, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs could perform audits on job sites to also ensure the workplaces were protecting employers equal rights. Jenny Yang, the former director of the office under Biden, said in some cases an audit has uncovered that women don’t have proper fitting personal protective equipment which can pose a safety risk, or are being harassed or discriminated against in other ways. 

“Having an OFCCP investigator auditing those practices is what often catalyzes change because workers see that the federal government is there,” she said. It also offers workers an opportunity to report issues with their workplace anonymously versus having to file a complaint against their employer, which can open them up to retribution. 

The agency has also played a role in correcting pay discrimination by conducting pay audits, said Yang. From 2014 to 2024 the agency obtained $261 million for employees and job seekers who were discriminated against. That money went to over 250,000 employees and applicants. That number included about 25,000 White people and men, who were alleged to have been discriminated against. “Our anti discrimination laws protect everyone,” Yang said.  

But now that agency is being whittled down to a ghost of itself, with reports that the Department of Labor plans to lay off 90 percent of staff. The order announcing the rescindment said the work going forward would only apply to veterans and people with disabilities. 

“The rescission of the executive order will have devastating consequences for workers and especially for women in the trades, many who have said they wouldn’t have an opportunity to support their families because of the discrimination many women face in that industry,” said Yang.

That’s because the opportunities afforded to women without college degrees pay much differently than those offered to men. It’s a phenomena known as occupation segregation, said Vellinga. “Our culture does not value the caretaking role, the roles that women have traditionally played, as much as they have valued the roles that men have traditionally played,” she said. 

An example she likes to use is the difference between how the country pays certified nursing assistants, of which 88 percent are women, versus carpenters. Neither job requires a college degree, and both are physically demanding. But the median wage for nurse assistants is just $40,000 compared to $61,000 for carpenters according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Carpenters are also more likely to have pensions. 

Now she fears that with a loss of protections in the workplace, and a fear from employers to even engage in DEI, those opportunities for women will just dry up. And her organization’s ability to bridge the gap in employment will be crippled. 

If their federal funds are canceled they won’t be able to offer as many trainings, they won’t be able to work with employers to create workplaces free of discrimination and harassment, and they won’t be able to do as much outreach to educate women and girls that these opportunities even exist in the first place. 

“For an organization who has spent decades trying to change a culture, we are still so far from the finish line,” Vellinga said. Nearly 96 percent of construction workers, to this day, are men. “It is really incredible that you could not acknowledge that reality.”