dei

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T-Mobile follows orders from Trump FCC, ends DEI to get two mergers approved

dei, Policy, T-Mobile / /

Update: Shortly after this article was published, the Department of Justice announced that it has closed its investigation into the T-Mobile/US Cellular deal and will not try to stop the merger. The FCC had not yet announced its own approval of the merger.

Firm reassigns employees, scrubs DEI from training

In March, T-Mobile obtained FCC approval for a joint venture to acquire fiber provider Lumos. That happened one day after T-Mobile sent Carr a letter saying it “is fully committed to identifying and rooting out any policies and practices that enable such discrimination, whether in fulfillment of DEI or any other purpose,” and was thus “conducting a comprehensive review of its DEI policies, programs, and activities.”

This week’s letter described the results of that internal review. “First, the handful of T-Mobile employees who focused on diversity and inclusion will be redirected within Human Resources to focus on employee culture and engagement,” Nelson wrote in the letter to Carr. “As a result, T-Mobile will no longer have any individual roles or teams focused on DEI. T-Mobile is also removing any references to DEI on its websites and will ensure that company websites and future communications do not have any references to DEI or ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ and are consistent with T-Mobile’s commitment to promote nondiscrimination and equal employment opportunity.”

T-Mobile said it hires “the best person for the job” without favoring one demographic group over another and does not use “hiring quotas, goals, or percentages based on race, sex, sexual orientation, or other protected characteristics.” T-Mobile also said it removed all DEI references from employee training materials “and will ensure that all future training materials are focused on achieving the company’s core business objectives and anti-discrimination instruction, without reference to separate DEI objectives.”

T-Mobile follows orders from Trump FCC, ends DEI to get two mergers approved Read More »

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“Things we’ll never know” science fair highlights US’s canceled research

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Congressional Democrats host scientists whose grants have been canceled.

Like a research conference, but focused on research that may never happen now. Credit: John Timmer

Washington, DC—From a distance, the gathering looked like a standard poster session at an academic conference, with researchers standing next to large displays of the work they were doing. Except in this case, it was taking place in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, and the researchers were describing work that they weren’t doing. Called “The things we’ll never know,” the event was meant to highlight the work of researchers whose grants had been canceled by the Trump administration.

A lot of court cases have been dealing with these cancellations as a group, highlighting the lack of scientific—or seemingly rational—input into the decisions to cut funding for entire categories of research. Here, there was a much tighter focus on the individual pieces of research that had become casualties in that larger fight.

Seeing even a small sampling of the individual grants that have been terminated provides a much better perspective on the sort of damage that is being done to the US public by these cuts and the utter mindlessness of the process that’s causing that damage.

“It’s no way to do science,” one of the researchers told us.

Targeting diversity and more

While many of the scientists were perfectly willing to identify themselves at the event, more than one asked us not to name them in any coverage. Another noted that, while she wasn’t concerned about retaliation from the federal government, she was at a state university in a state with a Republican governor and so could still face problems. As a result, we’re not identifying any of the scientists we talked to in this article.

With a few exceptions, most of these scientists could only surmise why their research was cut. A couple of them were funded by programs that were meant to increase minority participation in the sciences and so were targeted as DEI. Another was at Harvard and saw his materials science research into new refrigerants canceled, ostensibly because Harvard hadn’t cracked down hard enough on campus antisemitism (“ostensibly” because the government has also issued a series of demands that have nothing to do with antisemitism).

In their rush to terminate grants, each agency settled on a single form letter that told researchers that their work was being defunded because it no longer reflected agency priorities. A number of said researchers surmised that they lost their support because, at the time the grant was initially funded, many federal agencies required attempts to, as the National Science Foundation termed it, “broaden participation.” This left them at risk of falling afoul of the new administration’s anti-DEI efforts.

A few of them planned to eliminate the language they suspect offended DOGE and send in a new grant request. But, given the lack of details in the termination letters, all of them would have to guess as to the problem. And at least one said that the entire program that had funded her grant had since been eliminated, so this wasn’t even an option.

Many of the grants were focused on STEM education, and it’s extremely difficult to imagine that people will be better off without the work happening. One involved figuring out how to better incorporate instruction in quantum mechanics into high school and college education, rather than limiting this increasingly important topic to a handful of physics specialists. Another was focused on trying to help engineers communicate better with the communities that would ultimately use the things they were designing (she cited Google Glass and the Segway as examples of the problems that result when this doesn’t happen).

A large multi-university collaboration had put together a program to help deaf students navigate careers in science, providing support at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral levels. The effort received multiple grants from different sources, but a number were part of a diversifying science effort, and all of those have been cut.

For a couple of the researchers present, the damage being done to the educational pipeline was personal: they had received prestigious grants that are intended to ease the transition between post-doctoral training and starting a faculty job. This funding helps them stay in a post-doctoral position long enough to develop a solid research program, then partially funds the process of starting up a lab to pursue that program. But for these researchers, the rug had been pulled out from under them partway through the process—funding that was cut even though (in one case) they were simply studying the regeneration of the retina in an experimental organism.

Pandemics, misinformation, and confusion

The damage is far from limited to education and diversity issues. Despite having been in power during a pandemic that ultimately killed well over a million Americans, the administration has decided that any pandemic-related work is not a priority. So, an entire pandemic preparedness program was scrapped. A pair of researchers was there to talk about the Antiviral Drug Discovery program (AViDD), which had been funded to develop drugs that target various emerging viral threats, such as coronaviruses and the families that include Ebola, Zika, and measles. The idea behind AViDD is to have treatments ready that could limit the spread of any new, threatening version of these viruses in order to give us time to develop vaccines.

AViDD had been funded to the tune of $1.2 billion, included nine dedicated research centers, and involved researchers at 90 institutions. In total, it had spent about half that money in developing 35 treatment candidates that targeted seven different viral families. And then the funding for the entire program was eliminated before any of those candidates could be pursued any further—the researchers likened it to building half a bridge.

Another area that has been targeted is misinformation research. One small team included an academic who’s also a Reddit moderator; they trained an AI model to flag posts that might require moderator intervention, potentially cutting down on the workload of human moderators, who are often volunteers. The project had gotten to the point where they were looking for a company willing to test the system on some user-generated discussions it hosted; now it’s on indefinite hold.

In other instances, it was hard to tell what had triggered the elimination of funding. One team was developing baseline data to allow us to track the presence of antibiotic resistance genes in municipal wastewater, which could be useful for various public health measures. It’s not entirely clear why that funding was canceled—possibly it was considered pandemic-related? The same uncertainty applies to a group of researchers who were trying to develop methods to identify which Arctic infrastructure projects would benefit the most people in Alaska. The researchers involved suspect their efforts to engage native communities probably triggered DOGE’s DEI filters, but they received the same form letter as everyone else.

Even when it was obvious why a given bit of research was cut, it didn’t feel any less stupid. One grant that was targeted funded research on prostate cancer in African Americans, which undoubtedly set off diversity alarms. But the researcher who had received it highlighted that, because of a complicated mix of genetics, environmental exposures, and occupational risks, prostate cancer is diagnosed at a 76 percent higher rate in African Americans, and they die because of it at twice the rate of whites. By stopping this sort of research, we’re committing to perpetuating these disparities, despite the administration’s rhetoric of eliminating racial preferences.

No way to do science

Although the likely loss of a large amount of interesting science is obviously a major problem, in many ways the uncertainty is worse. A number of the people there had seen funding restored due to temporary restraining orders issued in response to a number of lawsuits. But they couldn’t be confident that the money wouldn’t go away again due to a different ruling during the appeals process. And, even if they were to prevail in the courts on the initial cancellation, there were already fears that the government would think of some other justification to try to take the money away a second time.

The uncertainty makes it impossible to plan any significant distance ahead or hire anyone to do the work for longer-term projects. Many researchers are starting to write grants targeting non-federal funding sources, increasing the competition for that money and making it less likely that the effort will have any payoff.

Looming over all of this are the huge research cuts in the recently passed budget, which will cripple many of the agencies involved here starting in the next fiscal year. This raises questions about how much of this money might ever come back, even if the grants were reformulated to get past whatever issue got them cut.

Is there anything to be done? The event was being put on by the Democrats on the House Science Committee, and one of their members tried to offer some hope for the long-term situation. “Many of us on this committee are going to fight to claw back some of these cuts,” said Representative April McClain Delaney of Maryland. But that would require some cooperation with Republicans in the House and Senate, who hold a decisive number of votes and have so far seemed comfortable with the cuts to science funding. And they’d need to find a bill to attach it to that Trump would feel compelled to sign.

But that’s the future. For now, nobody offered much hope for the grants that are currently being targeted—after all, Congress had already given the federal government the money and, in many cases, directed it to spend it on these issues. At this point, the most scientists can hope for is that the US legal system ultimately acknowledges that the decision to cut their funding runs afoul of these congressional directives. And that may take years to be resolved.

Photo of John Timmer

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

“Things we’ll never know” science fair highlights US’s canceled research Read More »

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Judge: You can’t ban DEI grants without bothering to define DEI

dei, lawsuit, NIH, Policy, Science, science funding, Trump / /

Separately, Trump v. Casa blocked the use of a national injunction against illegal activity. So, while the government’s actions have been determined to be illegal, Young can only protect the people who were parties to this suit. Anyone who lost a grant but wasn’t a member of any of the parties involved, or based in any of the states that sued, remains on their own.

Those issues aside, the ruling largely focuses on whether the termination of grants violates the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs how the executive branch handles decision- and rule-making. Specifically, it requires that any decisions of this sort cannot be “arbitrary and capricious.” And, Young concludes that the government hasn’t cleared that bar.

Arbitrary and capricious

The grant cancellations, Young concludes, “Arise from the NIH’s newly minted war against undefined concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion and gender identity, that has expanded to include vaccine hesitancy, COVID, influencing public opinion and climate change.” The “undefined” aspect plays a key part in his reasoning. Referring to DEI, he writes, “No one has ever defined it to this Court—and this Court has asked multiple times.” It’s not defined in Trump’s executive order that launched the “newly minted war,” and Young found that administrators within the NIH issued multiple documents that attempted to define it, not all of which were consistent with each other, and in some cases seemed to use circular reasoning.

He also noted that the officials who sent these memos had a tendency to resign shortly afterward, writing, “it is not lost on the Court that oftentimes people vote with their feet.”

As a result, the NIH staff had no solid guidance for determining whether a given grant violated the new anti-DEI policy, or how that might be weighed against the scientific merit of the grant. So, how were they to identify which grants needed to be terminated? The evidence revealed at trial indicates that they didn’t need to make those decisions; DOGE made them for the NIH. In one case, an NIH official approved a list of grants to terminate received from DOGE only two minutes after it showed up in his inbox.

Judge: You can’t ban DEI grants without bothering to define DEI Read More »

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FCC Chair Brendan Carr is letting ISPs merge—as long as they end DEI programs

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Verizon’s letter said that because of the “changing landscape,” the firm “has been evaluating its DEI-related programs, HR processes, supplier programs, training programs and materials, and other initiatives.” Among other changes, Verizon said it “will no longer have a team or any individual roles focused on DEI” and will reassign DEI-focused employees to “HR talent objectives.”

“Verizon recognizes that some DEI policies and practices could be associated with discrimination,” the letter said.

T-Mobile sent a similar letter to Carr on March 27, saying it “is fully committed to identifying and rooting out any policies and practices that enable such discrimination, whether in fulfillment of DEI or any other purpose,” and is thus “conducting a comprehensive review of its DEI policies, programs, and activities.” One day later, the FCC approved a T-Mobile joint venture to acquire fiber provider Lumos.

With the Verizon and T-Mobile deals approved, Carr has another opportunity to make demands on a major telecom company. On Friday, Charter announced a $34.5 billion merger with Cox that would make it the largest home Internet provider in the US, passing Comcast. Several Charter and Cox programs could be on the chopping block because of Carr’s animosity toward diversity initiatives.

Verizon criticized as “cowardly”

Media advocacy group Free Press criticized Verizon for agreeing to Carr’s demands.

“Verizon’s cowardly decision to modify or kill its diversity, equity and inclusion practices is the latest shameful episode in a litany of surrenders to appease our authoritarian president,” Free Press Vice President of Policy Matt Wood said. “The government alleges no specific instances of unlawful employment discrimination, and Verizon admits none. Yet to win a merger approval and the prospect of a few extra dollars, the company meekly suggests that some of its ‘DEI policies and practices could be associated with discrimination’—lawyer-speak for we’ve done nothing wrong, but we can see which way the political winds are blowing.”

Wood said that Carr “once defended his agency’s independence from the White House when a Democrat was in charge” but is “now gleefully carrying out the president’s orders to roll back civil-rights protections and equal-opportunity gains at all costs.”

FCC Chair Brendan Carr is letting ISPs merge—as long as they end DEI programs Read More »

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In war against DEI in science, researchers see collateral damage

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Senate Republicans flagged thousands of grants as “woke DEI” research. What does that really mean?

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at a hearing on Tuesday, January 28, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Tom Williams

When he realized that Senate Republicans were characterizing his federally funded research project as one of many they considered ideological and of questionable scientific value, Darren Lipomi, chair of the chemical engineering department at the University of Rochester, was incensed. The work, he complained on social media, was aimed at helping “throat cancer patients recover from radiation therapy faster.” And yet, he noted on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and X, his project was among nearly 3,500 National Science Foundation grants recently described by the likes of Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican and chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, as “woke DEI” research. These projects, Cruz argued, were driven by “Neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” and “far-left ideologies.”

“Needless to say,” Lipomi wrote of his research, “this project is not espousing class warfare.”

The list of grants was compiled by a group of Senate Republicans last fall and released to the public earlier this month, and while the NSF does not appear to have taken any action in response to the complaints, the list’s existence is adding to an atmosphere of confusion and worry among researchers in the early days of President Donald J. Trump’s second administration. Lipomi, for his part, described the situation as absurd. Others described it as chilling.

“Am I going to be somehow identified as an immigrant that’s exploiting federal funding streams and so I would just get deported? I have no idea,” said cell biologist Shumpei Maruyama, an early-career scientist and Japanese immigrant with permanent residency in the US, upon seeing his research on the government watch list. “That’s a fear.”

Just being on that list, he added, “is scary.”

The NSF, an independent government agency, accounts for around one-quarter of federal funding for science and engineering research at American colleges and universities. The 3,483 flagged projects total more than $2 billion and represent more than 10 percent of all NSF grants awarded between January 2021 and April 2024. The list encompasses research in all 50 states, including 257 grants totaling more than $150 million to institutions in Cruz’s home state of Texas.

The flagged grants, according to the committee report, “went to questionable projects that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) tenets or pushed onto science neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle.” The committee cast a wide net, using a programming tool to trawl more than 32,000 project descriptions for 699 keywords and phrases that they identified as linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Cruz has characterized the list as a response to a scientific grantmaking process that had become mired in political considerations, rather than focused on core research goals. “The Biden administration politicized everything it touched,” Cruz told Undark and NOTUS. “Science research is important, but we should want researchers spending time trying to figure out how to cure cancer, how to cure deadly diseases, not bean counting to satisfy the political agenda of Washington Democrats.”

“The ubiquity of these DEI requirements that the Biden administration engrafted on virtually everything,” Cruz added, “pulls a lot of good research money away from needed research to satisfy the political pet projects of Democrats.”

Others described the list—and other moves against DEI initiatives in research—as reversing decades-old bipartisan policies intended to strengthen US science. For past Congresses and administrations, including the first Trump term, DEI concepts were not controversial, said Neal F. Lane, who served as NSF director in the 1990s and as a science adviser to former President Bill Clinton. “Budget after budget was appropriated funds specifically to address these issues, to make sure all Americans have an opportunity to contribute to advancement of science and technology in the country,” he said. “And that the country then, in turn, benefits from their participation.”

At the same time, he added: “Politics can be ugly.”

Efforts to promote diversity in research predate the Biden administration. A half a century ago, the NSF established a goal of increasing the number of women and underrepresented groups in science. The agency began targeting programs for minority-serving institutions as well as minority faculty and students.

In the 1990s, Lane, as NSF director, ushered in the requirement that, in addition to intellectual merit, reviewers should consider a grant proposal’s “broader impacts.” In general, he said, the aim was to encourage science that would benefit society.

The broader impacts requirement remains today. Among other options, researchers can fulfill it by including a project component that increases the participation of women, underrepresented minorities in STEM, and people with disabilities. They can also meet the requirement by promoting science education or educator development, or by demonstrating that a project will build a more diverse workforce.

The Senate committee turned up thousands of “DEI” grants because the broad search not only snagged projects with a primary goal of increasing diversity—such as a $1.2 million grant to the Colorado School of Mines for a center to train engineering students to promote equity among their peers—but also research that referenced diversity in describing its broader impact or in describing study populations. Lipomi’s project, for example, was likely flagged because it mentions recruiting a diverse group of participants, analyzing results according to socioeconomic status, and posits that patients with disabilities might benefit from wearable devices for rehabilitation.

According to the committee report, concepts related to race, gender, societal status, as well as social and environmental justice undermine hard science. They singled out projects that identified groups of people as underrepresented, underserved, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or excluded; recognized inequities; or referenced climate research.

Red flags also included words like “gender,” “ethnicity,” and “sexuality,” along with scores of associated terms — “female,” “women,” “interracial,” “heterosexual,” “LGBTQ,” as well as “Black,” “White,” “Hispanic,” or “Indigenous” when referring to groups of people. “Status” also made the list along with words such as “biased,” “disability,” “minority,” and “socioeconomic.”

In addition, the committee flagged “environmental justice” and terms that they placed in that category such as “climate change,” “climate research,” and “clean energy.”

The committee individually reviewed grants for more than $1 million, according to the report.

The largest grant on the list awarded more than $29 million to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which contributes to the vast computing resources needed for artificial intelligence research. “I don’t know exactly why we were flagged, because we’re an AI resource for the nation,” said NCSA Director William Gropp.

One possible reason for the flag, Gropp theorized, is that one of the project’s aims is to provide computing power to states that have historically received less funding for research and development—including many Republican-leaning states—as well as minority-serving institutions. The proposal also states that a lack of diversity contributes to “embedded biases and other systemic inequalities found in AI systems today.”

The committee also flagged a grant with a total intended award amount of $26 million to a consortium of five institutions in North Carolina to establish an NSF Engineering Research Center to engineer microbial life in indoor spaces, promoting beneficial microbes while preventing the spread of pathogens. One example of such work would be thinking about how to minimize the risk that pathogens caught in a hospital sink would get aerosolized and spread to patients, said Joseph Graves, Jr., an evolutionary biologist and geneticist at North Carolina A&T State University and a leader of the project.

Graves was not surprised that his project made the committee’s list, as NSF policy has required research centers to include work on diversity and a culture of inclusion, he said.

The report, Graves said, seems intended to strip science of diversity, which he views as essential to the scientific endeavor. “We want to make the scientific community look more like the community of Americans,” said Graves. That’s not discriminating against White or Asian people, he said: “It’s a positive set of initiatives to give people who have been historically underrepresented and underserved in the scientific community and the products it produces to be at the table to participate in scientific research.”

“We argue that makes science better, not worse,” he added.

The political environment has seemingly left many scientists nervous to speak about their experiences. Three of the major science organizations Undark contacted—the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Institute of Physics—either did not respond or were not willing to comment. Many researchers appearing on Cruz’s list expressed hesitation to speak, and only men agreed to interviews: Undark contacted eight women leading NSF-funded projects on the list. Most did not respond to requests for comment, while others declined to talk on the record.

Darren Lipomi, the chemical engineer, drew a parallel between the committee report and US Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist campaign in the early 1950s. “It’s inescapable,” said Lipomi, whose project focused on developing a medical device that provides feedback on swallowing to patients undergoing radiation for head and neck cancer. “I know what Marxism is, and this was not that.”

According to Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Republican interest in scrutinizing purportedly ideological research dovetails with a sweeping executive order, issued immediately after Trump’s inauguration, aimed at purging the government of anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Whether and how the Senate committee report will wind up affecting future funding, however, remains to be seen. “Between the executive order on DEI and now the list of terms that was used in the Cruz report, NSF is now in the process of reviewing their grants,” Carney said. One immediate impact is that scientists may become more cautious in preparing their proposals, said Carney.

Emails to the National Science Foundation went unanswered. In response to a question about grant proposals that, like Lipomi’s, only have a small component devoted to diversity, Cruz said their status should be determined by the executive branch.

“I would think it would be reasonable that if the DEI components can reasonably be severed from the project, and the remaining parts of the project are meritorious on their own, then the project should continue,” Cruz said. “It may be that nothing of value remains once DEI is removed. It would depend on the particular project.”

Physicist and former NSF head Neal F. Lane said he suspects that “DEI” has simply become a politically expedient target—as well as an excuse to slash spending. Threats to science funding are already causing huge uncertainty and distraction from what researchers and universities are supposed to be doing, he said. “But if there’s a follow-through on many of these efforts made by the administration, any damage would be enormous.”

That damage might well include discouraging young researchers from pursuing scientific careers at all, Carney said—particularly if the administration is perceived as being uninterested in a STEM workforce that is representative of the US population. “For us to be able to compete at the global arena in innovation,” she said, “we need to create as many pathways as we can for all young students—from urban and rural areas, of all races and genders—to see science and technology as a worthwhile career.”

These questions are not just academic for cell biologist and postdoctoral researcher Shumpei Maruyama, who is thinking about becoming a research professor. He’s now concerned that the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to funding from the National Institutes of Health, which supports research infrastructure at many institutions, will sour the academic job market as schools are forced to shutter whole sections or departments. He’s also worried that his research, which looks at the effects of climate change on coral reefs, won’t be fundable under the current administration—not least because his work, too, is on the committee’s list.

“Corals are important just for the inherent value of biodiversity,” Maruyama said.

Although he remains worried about what happens next, Maruyama said he is also “weirdly proud” to have his research flagged for its expressed connection to social and environmental justice. “That’s exactly what my research is focusing on,” he said, adding that the existence of coral has immeasurable environmental and social benefits. While coral reefs cover less than 1 percent of the world’s oceans in terms of surface area, they house nearly one-quarter of all marine species. They also protect coastal areas from surges and hurricanes, noted Maruyama, provide food and tourism for local communities, and are a potential source of new medications such as cancer drugs.

While he also studies corals because he finds them “breathtakingly beautiful,” Maruyama, suggested that everyone—regardless of ideology—has a stake in their survival. “I want them to be around,” he said.

This story was co-reported by Teresa Carr for Undark and Margaret Manto for NOTUS. This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

In war against DEI in science, researchers see collateral damage Read More »

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NASA moves swiftly to end DEI programs, ask employees to “report” violations

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NASA’s acting administrator is moving swiftly to remove diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility—or DEIA—programs from the space agency.

In an email sent to agency employees on Wednesday afternoon, acting administrator Janet Petro wrote, “We are taking steps to close all agency DEIA offices and end all DEIA-related contracts in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders titled Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions.”

During his run for a second term as president, Trump campaigned on ending programs in the federal government that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. He signed executive orders to that effect shortly after his inauguration on Monday.

Programs seen as divisive

These programs had their roots in affirmative action but exploded in popularity half a decade ago amid Trump’s first presidency and the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. DEI programs and officers became commonplace in academia and major US corporations. However, even before the election of Trump, the DEI movement appeared to have crested. For example, last year the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ended the use of diversity statements for faculty hiring.

In explaining NASA’s position, Petro said of the agency’s existing DEIA activities, “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”

Petro’s email is notable for its suggestion that some civil servants at NASA may have sought to shroud DEIA programs from the Trump administration since the presidential election in early November.

“We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language,” she wrote. “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.”

NASA moves swiftly to end DEI programs, ask employees to “report” violations Read More »

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Meta kills diversity programs, claiming DEI has become “too charged”

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Meta has reportedly ended diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that influenced staff hiring and training, as well as vendor decisions, effective immediately.

According to an internal memo viewed by Axios and verified by Ars, Meta’s vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, told Meta employees that the shift was due to “legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing.”

It’s another move by Meta that some view as part of the company’s larger effort to align with the incoming Trump administration’s politics. In December, Donald Trump promised to crack down on DEI initiatives at companies and on college campuses, The Guardian reported.

Earlier this week, Meta cut its fact-checking program, which was introduced in 2016 after Trump’s first election to prevent misinformation from spreading. In a statement announcing Meta’s pivot to X’s Community Notes-like approach to fact-checking, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that fact-checkers were “too politically biased” and “destroyed trust” on Meta platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Trump has also long promised to renew his war on alleged social media censorship while in office. Meta faced backlash this week over leaked rule changes relaxing Meta’s hate speech policies, The Intercept reported, which Zuckerberg said were “out of touch with mainstream discourse.”  Those changes included allowing anti-trans slurs previously banned, as well as permitting women to be called “property” and gay people to be called “mentally ill,” Mashable reported. In a statement, GLAAD said that rolling back safety guardrails risked turning Meta platforms into “unsafe landscapes filled with dangerous hate speech, violence, harassment, and misinformation” and alleged that Meta appeared to be willing to “normalize anti-LGBTQ hatred for profit.”

Meta kills diversity programs, claiming DEI has become “too charged” Read More »