The federal government is the largest employer in the United States. It is the largest employer in every single state. But the federal government is no longer an “equal opportunity employer,” thanks to a series of executive orders and directives passed by the white-supremacist Trump administration that collectively allow for racial discrimination by claiming to eliminate racial discrimination against the poor, downtrodden white man—you know, the guy who’s never been able to get a fair shake in this country.

Trump signed the first of these orders, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” within hours of taking the oath of office on Monday. The order describes diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs as “illegal and immoral discrimination” as well as sources of “immense public waste.” The well-known conceit here is that people who get their government jobs through DEI are not “deserving” of their positions, while every white man who works for the government is allegedly there on his “merits” and nothing more.

This conceit was made even more explicit with a second executive order called “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” This order proclaims: “These illegal DEI and DEIA policies also threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination when selecting people for jobs and services in key sectors of American society, including all levels of government, and the medical, aviation, and law-enforcement communities.” The fact that a twice-impeached convicted felon and fail-son king of bankruptcy is lecturing the country on individual “merit” and “aptitude” is a joke that can only be brought to us by white America.

DEI programs, of course, do not do what Trump imagines. If anything, the country is beset by mediocre white men who got their positions through an old-boys’ network of family, friends, connections, and frat buddies who now gum up and dumb down the system at every level. If you have the option of getting a Black doctor, for instance, I encourage you to take it. They’ve likely worked harder to get there, and a Black doctor’s seemingly preternatural ability to treat all patients with care and professionalism regardless of their race is apparently a very rare asset in the medical profession. If you want a doctor who sees your maladies before your skin color, always bet on Black.

But I digress. I’m not going to relitigate the utility of DEI programs here. That debate has raged, and a majority of white people, both men and women, decided to install a white supremacist president to defend the white male patriarchy. I will simply stipulate that mediocre white men need government jobs, and taking those jobs away from racial minorities and women makes the white guys feel better about themselves while they’re waiting for their mommies to wash their sheets before they head out to their little rallies.

All that said, it is more or less legal, and constitutional, to end DEI programs. I want to be very clear about that, because there is legal nuance here that often gets flattened when talking about them. DEI is just a policy, and while that policy is supported by the 14th Amendment (at least it was before MAGA took over the courts), it is not required by the 14th Amendment. The Constitution just wants whites with hiring authority to stop being racist assholes; it doesn’t care how they do it.

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What is illegal and unconstitutional is discrimination against non-whites and women in hiring. And that’s the problem with the executive orders. They assume that every single person hired through a diversity program is undeserving of their position, that their qualifications are lesser and that their literal work ethic and talent are suspect. They treat people hired under these programs as if they’re one distinct class of people (apparently, we all look the same to the Trump administration), and instead of looking on a case-by-case basis at who was hired for “diversity” and who was hired simply because they were the best applicant for the job (which is often the exact same person), they cast the whole lot out. And, they effectively warn people not to hire anybody except white guys, because they suggest that anybody who isn’t might be a “diversity” hire which will trigger a lawsuit.

The memo on how to execute Trump’s order shutting down DEIA programs —which was issued by the Office of Personnel Management to all the heads of departments and agencies—illustrates the inherent discriminatory problems with these policies. One section of the memo, for instance, informs the agency heads that all employees of “DEIA offices” must be placed on administrative leave, immediately. But what defines a DEIA office? The memo doesn’t say. Instead, it says that some allegedly DEIA offices are “disguised” with “coded or imprecise language.”

What that means, effectively, is that anybody who is in a DEIA office or looks like they might be can immediately be placed on administrative leave without due process or any other legal determination. That is straight-up employment discrimination. The government itself is saying that it can’t say exactly who it’s going after, but it will know that person when it sees them. It creates two different classes of government employees: one group that the white supremacist government deems worthy, and another group that is deemed suspect, based on as little as an eye test.

Maybe some DEIA employees can “pass” as worthy government employees, while others only get three-fifths of their employee rights. Who can say? Among other things, the order almost certainly violates the Administrative Procedures Act, because you cannot design a policy that’s more arbitrary, capricious, and unconstitutionally vague than this one is.

And that’s for people who are already employed who, arguably, have actual work records that can attest to their value. For people not yet hired, the situation is even more bleak. Trump’s executive orders create a profound disincentive to hire people who are not white, not men, or have disabilities, because the person doing the hiring could then be accused of engaging in DEIA.

The OPM memo also creates a hostile work environment in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It does so by effectively instructing white people to snitch on colleagues they think might be part of a DEIA program. Here’s the language from memos that went out all through the government this week:

If you are aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies, please report all facts and circumstances to [email protected] within 10 days.

There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.

What is a “similar ideology”? The memo doesn’t say. Instead, the memo gives some people the ability to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against colleagues suspected of being DEIA, whatever the hell that means.

As of this moment, the entire federal government should be considered in violation of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and sued appropriately—not because the government has ended DEIA programs, but because the government is discriminating against employees based on those employees’ “race, religion, gender, national origin, disability, age, or genetics,” to use the language from the Civil Rights Act. People are not simply being targeted because they are part of a DEIA program; they’re being targeted because they look like they might be. That is a violation of the law and the Constitution.

But because white people have installed white supremacists not only in the White House but at and throughout all levels and branches of government, these legal and constitutional violations will go unaddressed and unpunished.

That’s because Trump has neutered the agency that is supposed to sue employers for unconstitutional discrimination: the Department of Justice. Specifically, Trump ordered a “freeze” on all new cases and investigations by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.

I imagine that the NAACP and other private groups are working up lawsuits right now against the Trump administration for its violations of the Civil Rights Act, but they’re going to run into a problem once their cases get to court. Chief Justice John Roberts, and his white judicial friends, probably don’t really believe that the Civil Rights Act should be a thing in the first place.

Remember, Roberts has spent his career arguing against and eviscerating the Voting Rights Act. I keep trying to get white Democrats and moderates to understand that Roberts is and always has been an enemy of racial equality in this country. In this case, I don’t expect Roberts (or his Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court) to take the Civil Rights Act seriously and enforce it against the Trump administration.

It’s possible, of course, that some of these executive orders and directives may be knocked down by the Roberts court on some other basis; again, they’re unconstitutionally vague and arbitrary and capricious. But that will just be Roberts’s way of giving Trump (and his apparently still terrible legal team) a second (or third, or fourth) bite at the apple, just like Roberts did with Trump’s Muslim ban. Roberts will keep giving Trump chances to violate the 14th Amendment in ways that are not arbitrary and not vague, until he gets it right. He will never call the whole thing off under the Civil Rights Act, because white people like Roberts never want to use the Civil Rights Act to stop white people like Trump from having their way.

I keep telling folks: This is what white people want. This is what they voted for, and not just in the most recent election. Majorities of white folks have steadfastly elected, appointed, and supported whites who don’t think the Civil Rights Act should be a thing. White media has promoted and normalized the idea that hiring non-white people and women is a benevolent gesture from white employers, not constitutionally required nondiscrimination under 14th Amendment. And now that those powerful whites don’t feel so generous anymore, they can stop pretending to have ever cared about following the law. Trump is simply allowing white folks to behave like some of them have always wanted to, and Trump’s courts will back them up.

That behavior is disgusting, of course. But it almost always is. Remember, Black people and women did not invent DEI; white people invented it to try to comply with the law and the Constitution. White people invented it, because they could not trust themselves to treat potential employees equally and fairly as the Constitution requires.

DEI was a solution to deal with white men and their shitty behavior and hiring practices. That solution is now gone, but the white male problem very much remains. I wonder what solution for their own crapulence white folks will come up with next.