This should be fun

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On Monday Trump took the first step to undo one of the most egregious and harmful parts of Lyndon Johnson’s (failed) War on Poverty that has plagued the nation since 1965. Conservatives have noticed; the left will too, soon.

It’s a big deal.

Ending the affirmative action regime

Scott Johnson, PowerLine:

With the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, equal treatment without regard to race became the law of the land — for about 30 seconds. As he shepherded the bill through the Senate, then Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey declared on the Senate floor: “I will eat my hat if this leads to racial quotas.”

Humphrey served as vice president at the time President Johnson began the great undoing with Executive Order 11246 in 1965. EO 11246 mandated “affirmative action” in federal contracting. Humphrey rolled with the development of the affirmative action regime through his death in 1978 without keeping his promise.

As I understand, EO 11246 was the first brick in the wall of the vast edifice of racial discrimination that materialized under the rubric of affirmative action, though the term itself originated in earlier years. ….

Like The Monster That Devoured Cleveland in the horror movie that Maynard G. Krebs loved to cite, the affirmative action regime fathered the DEI monster. It is Son of the Monster That Devoured Cleveland.

President Trump has now grasped the nettle and repealed EO 11246 and its progeny. On Monday he promulgated an executive order “ending DEI programs and preferencing.”

The executive order:

Revokes Executive Order 11246 contracting criteria mandating affirmative action

Bars the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs from pushing contractors to balance their workforce based on race, sex, gender identity, sexual preference, or religion.

Directs all departments and agencies to take strong action to end private sector DEI discrimination, including civil compliance investigations.

It mandates the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education issue joint guidance regarding the measures and practices required to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard….

Ed Morrisey has more on this over at HotAir:

Trump Launches War on DEI ... And Affirmative Action?

…. [L]ate yesterday. Christopher Rufo reported that Trump has issued an EO that reverses much of the basis for affirmative action, and then extends the ban on DEI and other discriminatory practices to federal contractors:

This has not received very much specific attention, but it would represent a ground-shaking change for the federal government. How much of affirmative action is grounded in LBJ's EO and how much in statute? If it's entirely grounded in an EO, then a later EO can completely reverse it. I suspect that this program has mainly survived because Congress never had to vote on it, and public pressure kept LBJ's successors from tinkering with it ... until now, when the program has grown deeply unpopular through its continued focus on discrimination via immutable characteristics.

Of course, a successor could reissue LBJ's order in a new EO to restore it, too. However, that would carry the political weight of having to impose discriminatory practices again, which is a much different thing than simply allowing them to continue through political inertia. This time around, DEI and affirmative-action opponents will fight much harder in Congress and the courts to keep this zombie Great Society approach from emerging from the grave, and they will have Supreme Court precedents on their side this time as well. 

The Protection Racket Media will no doubt push back hard on these new policies, as will Democrats, which amounts to the exact same thing. Besides calling Trump a racist (which has worked so well for them), they will find 'victims' of the new policies while using the not-so-subtle argument that minorities can't compete for jobs, which makes them the real racists. Expect a full-court press on both strategies in the days ahead.