In a 2024 campaign video, Donald Trump on Thursday vowed to rescind Joe Biden’s executive order on “racial equity,” which Trump said amounts to a “woke takeover” of the U.S. government.
Last month, Biden issued his “Executive Order on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government.”
Biden called on Susan Rice to head up the so-called “White House Steering Committee on Equity” in which she will have sweeping powers to remodel the federal government with a focus on “racial equity.”
With implications that call to mind the fictional UK agencies depicted in George Orwell’s classic “1984,” the order calls for “Agency Equity Teams” to be created in all federal government departments. All such teams will answer to Rice.
Trump said he would “eradicate any attempt to weaken America’s institutions through these harmful and discriminatory ‘equity’ programs.”
“Instead of making decisions based on merit or qualifications, these policies from Biden are enforced based on skin color and sexual identity,” Trump said.
“Biden is weaponizing every tool of government power to push this racism and this Communism and Marxism,” Trump said. “I will instruct the Department of Justice to make clear that any such discrimination is completely and totally illegal, and to investigate the unlawful domination and discrimination and civil right abuses carried out by the Biden administration.”
All staff, offices, and initiatives connected to Biden’s order would be immediately terminated.
Trump also said he would create a team to review and reverse actions under Biden’s “equity” agenda and request Congress to establish a restitution fund for those unjustly discriminated against by the “destructive” policies.
The goal of Biden’s order is “to put equity at the center of how this government operates,” Chiraag Bains, Biden’s deputy assistant for racial justice and equity, told The Associated Press last month.
In announcing the order, Team Biden said that it has “embedded a focus on equity into the fabric” of federal policymaking and services, leading to “better decision-making and more equitable outcomes.”
Trump said that Biden’s order “re-establishes discrimination in America’s federal programs and forces the creation of an insidious system that discriminates based on race and sex.”
“From day one, Biden has made it his mission to infuse radical policies into the federal government,” Trump added. Biden abolished Trump’s 1776 Commission “and quickly rolled out an education agenda that encourages teaching American children to erase the Declaration of Independence and its timeless truth that ‘all men are created equal.’ ”
Trump said that judges have found that Team Biden “has engaged in unconstitutional discrimination under the guise of ‘equity.’ ”
- The Biden administration attempted to grant loan forgiveness to certain groups of farmers while excluding others before the program was blocked by a federal judge.
- Another federal judge found that the Biden administration was engaging in race based discrimination in the allocation of Covid relief to restaurant owners.
Trump said: “With his action, Biden is weaponizing every tool of government power to push this racism and this Communism and Marxism, or whatever you want to call it. When FEMA, the EPA, and the FAA, and IRS are corrupted and tasked with enforcing ‘equity,’ freedom and equality under the law are absolutely dead. I will revoke this executive order on my first day back in office. I will look forward to it.”
