Under Joe Biden, the Department of Education has spent a shocking amount of taxpayer money on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) grants since 2021, a new analysis has found.
This news comes as colleges and universities nationwide are cutting DEI programs, even in states like Michigan. Numerous states are even passing legislation to outright ban the use of DEI in hiring and in practice at public schools. DEI is on its way out.
FOX News reports:
Biden Education Department spent over $1 billion on DEI grants: reportThe U.S. Department of Education spent at least $1 billion on grants advancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in hiring, programming and mental health training in America’s schools since 2021, according to a new report.Parents Defending Education “PDE”, a right-leaning organization that pledges to “reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas,” shared its new report exclusively with Fox News Digital.Researchers at the organization pored through nearly four years of publicly available data from the Department of Education to determine the number of grants and the dollar amount awarded to students and school districts for grants that had a clear DEI “motive.”From 2021 to present, they found the Biden administration awarded 229 grants across 42 states and Washington, D.C. that met that criteria.According to the report, $489,883,797 was spent on grants for race-based hiring; $343,337,286 went toward general DEI programming; and $169,301,221 went to DEI-based mental health training and programming, totaling $1,002,522,304.81 spent in all…Examples in the report include a $3,974,496 grant given to the School District of Philadelphia for a restorative justice program headed by a former Communist Party USA member; a $4,000,000 grant given for a 3-week residential “culturally responsive” computer science summer camp for 600 11th and 12th graders; and $38,000 grant to a Michigan school district for a one-day professional development training by an equity consultant, along with copies of the consultant’s book.
Chris Rufo, who has been a leader in the fight against DEI, recently wrote an open letter to the incoming Trump administration on this topic.
From City Journal:
The Coming Fight to Abolish DEIThere is a great clanging and clamoring around the offices in Washington, D.C. and Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Political operatives, policy wonks, and opposition figures are all planning for the arrival of the second Donald Trump administration.I’ve spoken with many of the people in the president-elect’s orbit who are planning how to staff Cabinet departments and set a new tone on the administration’s first day. Much of our discussion has focused on the approach to DEI, or “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”While the officials in Trump world are all committed to abolishing DEI in theory, they have yet to settle on a practical approach for doing so. With this in mind, I’m writing this open letter to Trump’s incoming Cabinet, outlining how to shut down DEI and win the fight for public opinion.The first step is to understand how DEI bureaucracies became embedded in the federal government. That is the result of actions by two presidents: Barack Obama, who issued Executive Order 13583, which laid the groundwork for many national “diversity” initiatives; and Joseph Biden, who signed Executive Orders 13985 and 14035, which entrenched DEI principles into every federal department and routed billions of dollars toward advancing this ideology throughout American society.Having understood this history, Cabinet officials must work with President Trump to rescind President Obama and President Biden’s executive orders. In their place, the 47th president should sign an order advancing the principle of colorblind equality, stating that the government shall treat all individuals equally according to their merit, rather than unequally according to their ancestry.
Rufo commented on Twitter/X:
The 2024 election was a clear rejection of DEI and everything that comes with it. The second Trump administration should take aggressive actions to get this ideology out of education and other institutions, just as Rufo suggests.
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