As corporate America continues to abandon diversity, equity, and inclusion schemes, Microsoft is doubling down on race-based hiring and pay policies — and a watchdog group is sounding the alarm.
Consumers’ Research, a non-profit that works to “educate and protect consumers,” is sending out a “woke alert” to warn consumers of the tech giant’s campaigns to push far-left ideologies, even as other corporations ditch the ideological agenda.
“Despite many companies distancing themselves from woke ideology, Microsoft continues to double down on its radical agenda,” the Consumers’ Research Executive Director, Will Hild, told The Daily Wire. “From promoting divisive DEI policies and harmful gender ideology targeting children, to advancing a politically charged climate crusade, Microsoft has made one thing clear: it prioritizes activism over innovation.”
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/meta-axes-dei-programs-in-the-lead-up-to-trumps-inauguration?author=Spencer+Lindquist&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=146&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Meta+Axes+DEI+Programs+In+The+Lead-Up+To+Trump%E2%80%99s+Inauguration">Meta</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/disney-walks-back-dei-initiatives-changes-disclaimers-on-classic-films">Disney</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/target-rolls-back-dei-joining-other-major-companies-like-walmart-meta">Walmart</a>, and other major corporations have stepped back from their radical DEI policies in the wake of President Donald Trump’s re-election. Not so Microsoft, whose Chief Diversity Officer <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/doing-work-intention-inclusion-impact-lindsay-rae-mcintyre-cvg4c/?trackingId=S3Le8KssrO0uhupaH0qc8A%3D%3D">wrote</a> in December that the company&#8217;s &#8220;diversity and inclusion work is more important than ever.”
Just two months earlier, the diversity officer wrote in a <a href="https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/10/23/microsofts-2024-global-diversity-inclusion-report-our-most-global-transparent-report-yet/">DEI report</a> that “if ever there were a critical time for the business case for diversity and inclusion in the workplace, it is now.” That report featured a section on “pay equity” comparing the average salaries of employees by their race and gender, irrespective of the roles that are held across the different demographic groups.
Microsoft says its goal is to increase the number of women and non-white employees in leadership roles, in part to ensure a leveling of any pay gaps.
“As we continue to increase representation for women and racial and ethnic minority groups at more senior levels, and continue to ensure pay equity for all,” the report reads, with the Vice President of Global Compensation Mike Cyran adding that “any pay gaps indicate opportunities to increase representation at more senior levels.”
“Microsoft seems to be implying diversity metrics should be a main factor in salaries, rather than professional performance and merit,” Consumers’ Research says in its woke alert.
Microsoft’s commitment to DEI policies — especially those that could be used to engineer specific demographic balances within various roles — may place the tech giant on a collision course with the Trump administration. Shortly after taking office, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1388501/dl?inline">author a report</a> on actions that the federal agency could take to enforce civil rights law to “investigate, eliminate, and penalize illegal DEI and DEIA preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities in the private sector.”
Microsoft has already taken an oppositional posture against the administration and <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/investigations/3398418/microsoft-support-europe-hires-anti-trump-law-firm/">threatened to sue</a> it amid tariff negotiations between the United States and Europe.
The company’s 2023 DEI report appeared to indicate that Microsoft pays white employees <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/microsoft-brags-that-it-pays-white-employees-less-than-non-white-employees-despite-same-job-title">less than</a> non-white employees, often for performing the same job.
“All racial and ethnic minority groups who are rewards eligible combined earn $1.007 total pay for every $1.000 earned by US rewards-eligible white employees with the same job title and level and considering tenure,” the report said.
The company also maintains an “<a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/inclusion-journey/library">inclusion journey library</a>” with videos on “allyship,” “inclusive perspectives,” and how to fight implicit bias. The library, Microsoft says, can be used for “re-learning past behaviors and approaches to constantly improve our self-awareness and adopt inclusive behaviors.”
Microsoft’s left-wing agenda has seeped out from its workplace and into its products. The company <a href="https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/games/articles/2024/06/xbox-pride-2024/#:~:text=Since%202019%2C%20Xbox%20and%20its,head%20over%20to%20Xbox%20Wire.">partnered</a> with the Trevor Project in 2019, an organization that advocates for child transgenderism, to create “more inclusive” video games.
In 2024, the company <a href="https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2024/05/31/xbox-pride-2024/">boasted</a> that one of its video games “allows players to romance and marry characters regardless of their gender,” while another “tells the story of Tyler, a transgender man, with sensitivity and depth.” A third “features openly LGBTQIA+ characters.”
The Trevor Project, which runs an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schools-across-u-s-push-kids-to-chatrooms-where-they-can-talk-transgenderism-with-lgbtq-adults">online chat platform</a> where children can talk to adults about transgenderism and their sexual identity, is just one of the far-left LGBT organizations that Microsoft has bankrolled. The company and its employees have dropped more than $16 million to “organizations that support LGBTQIA+ communities.”
Hild says that it is time for the tech giant to drop its left-wing agenda.
“As if subjecting millions of people to Microsoft Teams wasn&#8217;t bad enough, the tech giant has become a megaphone for left-wing politics,” Hild said. “It’s time for Microsoft to get back to what&#8217;s made it successful — rolling out poorly conceived products, full of bugs, with annoying features no one wants, and using their monopoly status to force it on the world.”

Microsoft Building

Woke Alert! Microsoft Slammed For Race-Based ‘Pay Equity’ Scheme

Diversity

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Microsoft

Wokeness

Home Depot, Netflix, and Delta Airlines are just some of the companies being warned to cut ties with a left-wing program that pushes companies to cover sex change procedures for employees, a letter from a former attorney general obtained by The Daily Wire reveals.
The <a href="https://1792exchange.com/">1792 Exchange</a>, which fights the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda in corporate America, is urging 92 companies to end their participation in the Corporate Equality Index, a rubric used by the far-left Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to grade companies’ adherence to left-wing gender ideology.
The Corporate Equality Index, the 1792 Exchange says, “functions as a social credit scoring system, promoting partisan initiatives that impede sound corporate governance” and even “pressures companies to adopt unlawful policies that only sow division.”
“You should cease participation in this index immediately,” the letter charges.
The 1792 Exchange is run by former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who told The Daily Wire that some companies simply don’t understand just how radical the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index really is.
“Unfortunately, many companies have no idea what they’re actually signing up for when they participate in the HRC’s survey. This should be a wake-up call,” Cameron told The Daily Wire. “As we move forward with America’s renewal, 1792 Exchange urges every responsible HR leader to reconsider their involvement with HRC and refocus on merit, excellence, and integrity in the workplace.”
Other notable companies that received the letter include Costco, Cracker Barrel, Lowe&#8217;s, Albertson’s, Autozone, and Rite Aid.
In order to receive a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-left-wing-activists-are-trying-to-save-corporate-wokeness">perfect score</a> on the Corporate Equality Index, companies in previous years had to offer healthcare coverage for so-called “medically necessary” transgender hormone replacement therapy, sex change operations, and puberty blockers for youth, while also establishing supplier diversity pipelines focused on LGBTQ+ suppliers.
Several companies, including Walmart, McDonald’s, and Tractor Supply, have <a href="https://1792exchange.com/dei-tracker/">ended their participation</a> in the Corporate Equality Index in recent years. Ford Motor Company similarly backed out of the left-wing organization’s scoring system, <a href="https://x.com/robbystarbuck/status/1828820035118518737">announcing in a memo</a> last year that it would “stop participating in external culture surveys such as the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.”
Now, Cameron is calling on the 92 corporations addressed in his letter to follow suit.
“As you prepare for the upcoming 2026 CEI survey, I encourage you to carefully consider the risks and consequences of continued participation,” Cameron writes before offering them assistance in decoupling from the far-left organization. “We are here to support you&#8230;your team of experienced professionals offers confidential, pro bono assistance to help you align your company’s policies with both business success and legal prudence.”
“Let’s ensure that workplaces remain welcoming, productive, and focused on excellence,” Cameron’s letter concludes. “Withdrawing participation in the CEI represents a responsible step in this direction.”

Home Depot

EXCLUSIVE: Home Depot, Netflix Hit Over Involvement In LGBT ‘Social Credit’ System

Corporations

LGBT

Netflix

Woke Culture

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it is stripping an additional $450 million in federal grants from Harvard University after $2 billion in federal funding had already been frozen.
The &#8220;Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism&#8221; said the additional freeze comes after the Ivy League school &#8220;repeatedly failed to confront the pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment plaguing its campus.&#8221; The new cuts are to grants handed out through eight different federal agencies.
&#8220;Harvard’s campus, once a symbol of academic prestige, has become a breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination. This is not leadership; it is cowardice,&#8221; the task force wrote in a <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/anti-semitism-task-force-statement-on-additional-harvard-grants.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> announcing the additional cuts. &#8220;And it’s not academic freedom; it’s institutional disenfranchisement. There is a dark problem on Harvard’s campus, and by prioritizing appeasement over accountability, institutional leaders have forfeited the school&#8217;s claim to taxpayer support.&#8221;
The task force added that Harvard, which was founded in 1636 to train clergymen, &#8220;faces a steep, uphill battle to reclaim its legacy as a lawful institution and center of academic excellence.&#8221;
Harvard is in the middle of a legal challenge to the Trump administration&#8217;s funding freeze. The president has gone after the university for allowing anti-Israel protests and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on its campus. Last month, Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-calls-harvard-an-anti-semitic-threat-to-democracy?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Calls+Harvard+%E2%80%98An+Anti-Semitic%E2%80%A6Threat+To+Democracy%E2%80%99" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called</a> Harvard “Anti-Semitic,” “Far-Left,” and “a threat to Democracy.”
&#8220;The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER AND HATE. It is truly horrific!&#8221; Trump said.
Harvard has pushed back against the funding freeze and the Trump administration&#8217;s demands for more oversight over the university. Harvard filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in April, arguing that the federal government is executing “a pressure campaign” that “violates Harvard’s constitutional rights.” The school&#8217;s president, Alan M. Garber, shot back at the Trump administration, writing, “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
As Harvard continued to fight Trump&#8217;s demands, it <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/harvard-renames-dei-office-amid-funding-battle-with-trump-admin?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Harvard+Renames+DEI+Office+Amid+Funding+Battle+With+Trump+Admin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> last month that it was rebranding the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, changing the name to “Community and Campus Life” and focusing on “expanding cross-cultural engagement programs, supporting first-generation and low-income students, and creating more opportunities for dialogue across differences.” Harvard’s chief diversity officer position was also renamed and will now be called the Chief Community and Campus Life Officer, according to <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/29/harvard-oedib-renamed/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Harvard Crimson</a>. The DEI office rebrand was the first step that appeared to align with Trump&#8217;s demands.

Harvard

Harvard Loses Another Massive Chunk Of Federal Funding

antisemitism

Donald Trump

Education

Ivy League

Politics

Trump Administration

A major medical organization that accredits all graduate medical education programs, like internships and residency programs, announced Friday that it was suspending some of its &#8220;diversity&#8221; requirements.
The board of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education released a statement announcing it was pausing certain &#8220;diversity&#8221; requirements due to concerns about compliance with federal law. The announcement comes after President Donald Trump called out the accreditation organization in an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-takes-sledgehammer-to-dei-in-latest-round-of-executive-orders-targeting-education" target="_blank" rel="noopener">executive order</a> asking the Education Department to crack down on accreditation bodies mandating universities adopt DEI programs.
&#8220;The ACGME has heard significant concerns from multiple constituents in several states and from federal Sponsoring Institutions about their ability to comply with some of the ACGME requirements addressing diversity in light of state or federal laws,&#8221; the organization said Friday, noting that it was suspending multiple diversity requirements because of &#8220;uncertainty&#8221; about their legality.
The organization said that it would be further addressing the requirements at its June board meeting.
The diversity <a href="https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pfassets/programrequirements/800_institutionalrequirements2022.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">requirements</a> included mandating that institutions sponsoring medical education programs implement policies to recruit a &#8220;diverse and inclusive&#8221; workforce of residents and faculty.
&#8220;The Sponsoring Institution, in partnership with each of its programs, must engage in practices that focus on ongoing, mission-driven, systematic recruitment and retention of a diverse and inclusive workforce of residents/fellows, faculty members, senior administrative staff members, and other relevant members of its GME community,&#8221; the requirement reads.
<div id="attachment_919167" style="width: 2190px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-919167" class="size-full wp-image-919167" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-1.44.23-PM.png" alt="" width="2180" height="341" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-1.44.23-PM.png 2180w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-1.44.23-PM-300x47.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-1.44.23-PM-1024x160.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-1.44.23-PM-768x120.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-1.44.23-PM-1536x240.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/Screen-Shot-2025-05-12-at-1.44.23-PM-2048x320.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 2180px) 100vw, 2180px" />ACGME Institutional Requirements.</div>
The board also paused a <a href="https://www.acgme.org/globalassets/pfassets/programrequirements/cprresidency_2023.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">similar policy</a> for its residency program requirements.
In an April <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/reforming-accreditation-to-strengthen-higher-education/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">executive order</a>, Trump mentioned the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education as one of the accrediting bodies he said had “abused&#8221; its &#8220;enormous authority” by forcing universities to adopt DEI policies.
“The Secretary of Education shall, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, hold accountable, including through denial, monitoring, suspension, or termination of accreditation recognition, accreditors who fail to meet the applicable recognition criteria or otherwise violate Federal law, including by requiring institutions seeking accreditation to engage in unlawful discrimination in accreditation-related activity under the guise of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives,” Trump wrote.
The announcement from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education earned praised from Dr. Travis Morrell, a senior fellow at Do No Harm, an organization devoted to getting politics out of medicine.
&#8220;ACGME has finally cracked after three months of doubling-down on its commitment to radical identity politics. ACGME’s suspension of absurd diversity rules is an encouraging first step but now it must permanently eliminate these requirements – along with the equity in education rule it still enforces,&#8221; Morrell told The Daily Wire. &#8220;The sudden change of tune is a direct result of President Trump’s historic executive order dismantling accreditors’ ability to impose DEI requirements on schools. By prioritizing expertise over politics, we will slowly but surely restore a culture of meritocracy to American medical institutions.&#8221;

close-up of a doctor’s gown with stethoscope

Major Medical Org Changes Tune On DEI After Trump Executive Order

Department of Education

medical school

U.S.

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth and final part in a series of investigative reports on the African Development Foundation, which gained notoriety for resisting a review by the Department of Government Efficiency. Check out <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend%C2%A0">part one,</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/african-aid-agency-used-foreign-pass-throughs-to-hide-money-that-went-to-d-c-staff-friends">part two,</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aid-agency-pushed-officials-for-profit-pyramid-scheme-on-poor-africans?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Aid+Agency+Pushed+Official%E2%80%99s+For-Profit+Pyramid+Scheme+On+Poor+Africans">part three</a>.
—
A small, USAID-like federal agency called the African Development Foundation refused to hire white people, and treated white employees who did slip through so poorly that one soiled herself because she was afraid to leave her desk to use the bathroom, employees told The Daily Wire.
The agency violated so many rules and laws that its general counsel was flabbergasted — but when he called attention to it, officials framed him for violent threats and removed him from his job with a bizarre manifesto that called him “grimy” and “unwholesome,” the general counsel, Mateo Dunne, who is white, said.
The agency attracted attention by locking the doors to prevent auditors from the Department of Government Efficiency from seeing its books, and suing Elon Musk to prevent a takeover. The lawsuit is pending, but all of its employees have been laid off after the Trump administration gained access to the office space using U.S. Marshals.
From 2021 until February, the agency was led by CEO Travis Adkins, who came to it after a short stint at USAID as a Joe Biden political appointee.
Adkins’ former assistant, who is black, said in a sworn affidavit that “On at least three occasions, Mr. Adkins told me that he wanted his entire team (to include the General Counsel) to consist only of Black people. He wanted all of his direct reports to be Black.”
“He was very adamant in only hiring African Americans, mainly female, and he told me many times he would not hire a white person or a veteran. I said that’s discrimination, and he said ‘I’m the president and CEO, I can do what I want,’” the assistant told The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity. Adkins is also a lecturer at Georgetown University.
The African Development Foundation was created by Congress in 1980 as a board whose members are appointed by the president of the United States to six-year terms, who in turn appoint a CEO to run day-to-day operations. The board chair was Jack Leslie, a white former staffer to former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) who was appointed to the board by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Adkins bragged about concealing operations from the board, saying “them white motherf&#8212;ers, they don’t need to know… I don’t think I should tell them sh&#8211;,” according to the assistant.
A junior employee disappeared a few months after she took complaints to the board, and the assistant asked what happened to her; Adkins replied, “I just put the white b&#8212;h on a contract and then the contract ended,” the assistant said.
The situation was the same under the prior CEO, C.D. Glin, a former Peace Corps DEI officer and later an Obama political appointee to the Peace Corps who led the agency from 2016 to 2021. “C.D. [Glin] literally said to me that he needed to hire black people,” another employee told The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity. “Virtually everyone he hired in programs was black.”
In 2021, the agency had to pay a settlement after it laid off a white senior executive without paying her severance or following federal rules, and she alleged it was because of her race. It conducted a “reduction in force” that was targeted at her, and falsely claimed she didn’t have the qualifications to shift into another job, even though many of those jobs had actually reported to her.
In previous installments in this series, The Daily Wire reported how its agency&#8217;s CFO received payments to his personal bank account from a company to which he steered $1 million. The agency gave money to African grantees and then instructed them to re-route it to the agency&#8217;s employees and friends in America, and even pushed a for-profit multi-level marketing scheme run by a board member on poor Africans.
<blockquote>
<h1>&#8220;I think USADF deserved the fate that it received, because if it couldn’t be run correctly, then it shouldn’t be run at all.&#8221;</h1>
</blockquote>
<h3>Retaliation</h3>
In a government agency, the job of the general counsel is to ensure that rules and laws are followed. Glin ensured that the role was either empty or filled with junior lawyers with no experience in government, even though the agency engaged in complex international finance.
After he departed as CEO in May 2021, there was a brief period in which the agency had no permanent leader, and a traditional general counsel managed to slip through. When Mateo Dunne, a white former high-level Defense Department executive, took the job, he was appalled by how little the African Development Foundation seemed to care about laws and rules.
The lawyer set out to interview employees about conflicts of interest, purchase card abuse, contracting fraud, and a toxic workplace environment. In a matter of days, the evidence started stacking up. He told the acting CEO, Elisabeth Feleke, that outside lawyers would have to be brought in to document the full scope of the lawbreaking.
Instead, Feleke ordered him to stop the investigation, told him to change the preliminary findings, and falsely told the board the probe was complete, he told The Daily Wire. Dunne stopped investigating, but sent his preliminary report to the board.
He soon learned that despite nearly uniform agreement that Glin had been abusive, the organization wasn’t getting a fresh start. The board agreed to hire a decades-long friend of Glin’s, Travis Adkins, to replace him. When Adkins entered the office for the first time, Glin enveloped him in a bear hug.
Adkins later testified under oath that he was selected to lead the African Development Foundation without even applying for the job, and that he couldn’t recall when or how he managed to be selected.
As Adkins’ start date neared, Dunne prepared to show him the lawbreaking he had found so that Adkins could reform the agency. But it seemed that Adkins already knew, and his first priority was shutting Dunne’s investigation down.
Within hours of Adkins being sworn in as president and CEO in January 2022, he put Dunne on leave and cut off his access to evidence before he could even speak, video shows.
“You will be on administrative leave the very moment that we hang up this call. You will have a box mailed to your home to allow you to send back to us any USADF-issued equipment,” he told Dunne. “You are not to contact any of the members of the USADF staff. And again, your access to all of our data and systems will be closed down immediately.”
Dunne replied: “I had prepared this slide deck to introduce myself and what I’ve done at USADF. This conversation obviously went a different way … I guess I have a couple of questions.”
“We’re not going to do questions and answers,” Adkins said. “We’re not going to have a back and forth about this.” Dunne was never told why he was placed on paid leave, which Adkins acknowledged was the first step in a discipline process.
Internally, the agency sought to build a justification for firing the white lawyer, with chief of staff Brandi James compiling a 75-page manifesto that called Dunne “Adversarial, Belittling, Calculating, Combative, Condescending, Deceitful, Defensive, Grimy, Sinister, and Unwholesome.”
The report called Dunne a “danger to USADF’s mission and staff.” But the details made clear that the risk was not to anyone’s life, but rather the livelihoods of law-breaking bureaucrats. The dossier faulted him for his “insistence on tying up staff time on investigatory digs.”
The evidence of insubordination was that he had investigated apparent spending on luxuries and personal items by top staff, when Acting CEO Elisabeth Feleke said, “I have not given Mateo direction or mandate to investigate credit card fraud.”
<blockquote>
<h1>&#8220;Them white motherf&#8212;ers, they don’t need to know… I don’t think I should tell them sh&#8211;.&#8221;</h1>
</blockquote>
As evidence of Dunne “circumventing and breaching USADF protocols,” the dossier complained that Dunne notified Glin that he had not filed years&#8217; worth of mandatory Office of Government Ethics conflict-of-interest forms, carrying a $600 penalty, even though Feleke told him not to raise the issue. As general counsel, Dunne was the agency’s “designated ethics officer” and required to do so by the government-wide ethics office. The forms would have revealed that the African group had paid money to a group associated with Glin, and refusal to file them can carry criminal penalties.
Adkins went as far as implying that Dunne had threatened to kill him, alluding to something “being sent to people regarding the death of government officials, as all of us are government officials.” This, it turned out, was a fantastical distortion of Dunne sharing a sentimental quote from a New York governor acknowledging the passing of a former legislator.
Then a new comment appeared on the agency’s profile on the employer-review site GlassDoor that said, under “Advice to Management”: “die.” The post was attributed to “General Counsel.” The African Development Foundation sicced four different law enforcement agencies on Dunne for making death threats.
The former Sunday school-teaching lawyer said he was framed. “If I was going to do an anonymous post I would obviously not put my job title in there,&#8221; he said.
Adkins was forthright with the board’s chair, Jack Leslie, about what was really going on. He wrote to Leslie that Dunne was placed on leave for his “efforts to damage USADF’s reputation via the Office of Inspector General…Dunne conducted an unauthorized, backward-focused investigation that unsettled staff. &#8230; He then began leveling accusations that USADF senior leadership was ‘interfering’ with his investigations and General Counsel functions.”
<h3>Lies </h3>
The African Development Foundation never told Dunne what he was being investigated for, or formally moved to fire him, which would require proving that he did something wrong. It simply left him on paid leave indefinitely, violating a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/6329b" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law</a> that limits investigative leave to 90 days. After six months, in July 2022, he quit to take another job.
An agency’s top lawyer calling attention to rampant lawbreaking, only for him to be removed from duty, is as remarkable a case of whistleblower retaliation as the government has seen. Dunne provided documentation to the Office of Special Counsel, which exists to investigate whistleblower retaliation. But it closed his file when the employee he’d been working with left her job, he said.
He filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging discrimination on the basis of his race and retaliation. In August 2024, an administrative law judge dismissed his case, even though he had an affidavit from a black employee saying that Adkins had told her repeatedly that he did not want any white people working for him. Dunne is appealing in court.
Dunne deposed African Development Foundation staff in the course of that lawsuit. In his sworn testimony, Adkins denied saying he wouldn’t hire white people — but also claimed he didn’t know how many people worked for him, that he could only remember the names of two, and that he didn’t know what race various employees were.
<div id="attachment_918261" style="width: 746px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-918261" class="size-large wp-image-918261" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/adkins-dep-736x576.jpg" alt="" width="736" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/adkins-dep-736x576.jpg 736w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/adkins-dep-300x235.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/adkins-dep-768x601.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/adkins-dep.jpg 1184w" sizes="(max-width: 736px) 100vw, 736px" />A typical exchange from Adkins’ deposition</div>
Adkins’ sworn testimony was repeatedly contradicted by documents and the testimony of other employees.
Adkins had told the board that a government-wide human resource office had “recommended Mr. Dunne immediately be placed on Administrative Leave for misconduct and performance.” A representative of that office testified that it was not true.
He denied plotting to remove Dunne as general counsel before he even started as CEO in an effort to spare his friend Glin and officials like Mathieu Zahui, the chief financial officer, and a target of the investigation.
But discovery in the lawsuit showed that Zahui had written during that time period that “The board and the incoming president would like to explore the possibilities of a do-over” on the general counsel hire.
Adkins did not return a request for comment from The Daily Wire.
Dunne said it has been painful to watch some turn the African Development Foundation into a “martyr,” seemingly to avoid acknowledging that DOGE’s scrutiny was warranted, when no one cared to fix it, though signs were abundant that it was broken.
He said he left his job at the Defense Department to come to the African agency “because I wanted to help people,” but found that widespread rule-breaking was short-changing both Africans and low-level staff.
“I think USADF deserved the fate that it received, because if it couldn’t be run correctly, then it shouldn’t be run at all. If the leaders of that agency couldn’t act, and members of the foreign policy establishment wouldn’t act,” he said. “It’s an indictment of the entire system.”
READ MORE:
<ul>
<li aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend%C2%A0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend</a> </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/african-aid-agency-used-foreign-pass-throughs-to-hide-money-that-went-to-d-c-staff-friends" target="_blank" rel="noopener">African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aid-agency-pushed-officials-for-profit-pyramid-scheme-on-poor-africans?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Aid+Agency+Pushed+Official%E2%80%99s+For-Profit+Pyramid+Scheme+On+Poor+Africans" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans</a></li>
</ul>

African Development Foundation locked the doors when DOGE tried to gain access

‘Them White Motherf-ers’: Racist Agency Framed Its Lawyer After He Discovered Lawbreaking, He Says

Africa

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

USAID

President Donald Trump said Friday that Harvard University would lose its tax-exempt status, ramping up his fight with the Ivy League institution to a new level.
Trump&#8217;s comments come amid a funding fight with the university as his administration has frozen more than $2 billion in federal funds to Harvard over its pushback on his administration&#8217;s efforts to target diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and handling of anti-Israel protests. Last week, Trump called Harvard a “far left institution” and “a threat to Democracy.”
&#8220;We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!&#8221; Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114437989795464761" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> on his social media platform Friday morning.
The announcement comes after repeated pressure from Trump for Harvard to comply with his executive orders on education or face the consequences. Last month, the Washington Post <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-admin-wants-irs-to-quash-harvards-tax-exempt-status-report?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Admin+Wants+IRS+To+Quash+Harvard’s+Tax-Exempt+Status%3A+Report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that the Treasury Department had asked the IRS to revoke Harvard&#8217;s tax-exempt status.
“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” Trump posted on Truth Social on April 15.
At the time, White House spokesman Harrison Fields said that any probes into entities over their tax-exempt status had begun before that social media post.
“Any forthcoming actions by the IRS will be conducted independently of the president, and investigations into any institution’s violations of its tax status were initiated prior to the president’s TRUTH,&#8221; he said.
Trump took another shot at Harvard on Thursday night during his commencement speech at the University of Alabama.
&#8220;The next chapter of the American story will not be written by the Harvard Crimson. It will be written by you, the Crimson Tide,&#8221; Trump said, saying that Harvard&#8217;s billions of dollars in federal funding wouldn&#8217;t be &#8220;so forthcoming&#8221; now.
Harvard <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/harvard-renames-dei-office-amid-funding-battle-with-trump-admin?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Harvard+Renames+DEI+Office+Amid+Funding+Battle+With+Trump+Admin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rebranded</a> its DEI office this week, renaming it the “Community and Campus Life” and changing its focus to “expanding cross-cultural engagement programs, supporting first-generation and low-income students, and creating more opportunities for dialogue across differences,” according to The Harvard Crimson. The university has also changed its chief diversity officer position, which has been renamed and will now be called the Chief Community and Campus Life Officer.
On Monday, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-admin-launches-probe-into-harvard-law-review-over-treatment-of-white-contributors?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Admin+Launches+Probe+Into+Harvard+Law+Review+Over+Treatment+Of+White+Contributors" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> that it would investigate Harvard and the student-run Harvard Law Journal over its treatment of white contributors.
The Trump administration specifically cited reports that a Harvard Law Review editor said it was “concerning” that four out of five individuals who wanted to reply to an article on police reform were &#8220;white men.” The administration provided another example of an editor saying “that a piece should be subject to expedited review because the author was a minority.”

US-POLITICS-EDUCATION

‘What They Deserve’: Trump Says He’s Ending Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status

Executive

Harvard University

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

The Trump administration this week slashed $1 billion in so-called &#8220;mental health&#8221; grants for educational institutions, many of which were going to promote leftist ideology and train leftist activists.
The Education Department <a href="https://apnews.com/article/school-mental-health-grants-trump-biden-dei-00bec2d96371f023ac56fe3f32f3e92f" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confirmed</a> Wednesday that it was making cuts to grants handed out by the Biden administration ostensibly for the purpose of &#8220;mental health&#8221; because of the focus of many of the recipients on racially-focused programs. In a notice to Congress, the administration said it was going to &#8220;re-envision and re-compete&#8221; the funds allocated for mental health at schools in a gun control bill signed by former President Joe Biden.
&#8220;These grants are intended to improve American students&#8217; mental health by funding additional mental health professionals in schools and on campuses,&#8221; Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications Madison Biedermann <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-discontinues-1-billion-school-mental-health/story?id=121360858" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;Instead, under the deeply flawed priorities of the Biden Administration, grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help.&#8221;
The move was first reported on Tuesday by Christopher Rufo, who <a href="https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1917314079406055660" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> on X that there would be &#8220;no more slush fund for activists under the guise of mental health.&#8221;
In March, the conservative organization Defending Education <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-education-department-spent-100m-funding-university-leftist-activist-programs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">put out a report</a> finding that the Department of Education had given at least $100,964,880 in grants to 25 universities to increase their social worker training programs ostensibly for the purpose of mental health. Defending Education found that many of these grants were going to programs steeped in leftist ideology.
This money was allocated through the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program.
For example, Portland State University was <a href="https://ktvz.com/news/government-politics/2023/04/11/dept-of-education-awards-1-6-million-to-help-osu-psu-train-school-based-mental-health-professionals/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">awarded</a> $1,189,801 by the Department of Education to increase the number of social workers. DEI principles are built into the school’s Master of Social Work program, the stated <a href="https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A42f35593-1dd0-3ca0-b163-1b9431eec989&amp;viewer%21megaVerb=group-discover" target="_blank" rel="noopener">goal</a> of which is to train social workers to dismantle “systems of oppression; build[] racial equity and social, political, and economic justice.”
&#8220;The grants were meant to support school counselors and mental health staff. In reality, they became a pipeline for training activist educators steeped in DEI, CRT, and gender ideology. Federal dollars went to universities pushing &#8216;anti-racist social-emotional learning&#8217; and racially preferential hiring,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/nickineily/status/1917947212341875076" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Defending Education President Nicki Neily on Thursday. &#8220;Parents want real support for children in crisis, not counselors or social workers trained to divide, shame, and re-educate. Good on the Trump administration for ending this. Now, let’s make sure the replacements actually serve students.&#8221;

Department Of Education Plans To Lay Off Half Of Its Staff

Trump Admin Deals Blow To Taxpayer-Funded Leftist Activist Training Program

Joe Biden

Mental Health

President Donald Trump rallied in Michigan on Tuesday night in celebration of his 100 days in office, pointing to actions he has taken, from securing the border to cracking down on woke ideology.
Speaking to thousands at Macomb Community College in Warren, Trump touted the accomplishments of his administration, promising that he was &#8220;just getting started.&#8221; His speech came after he addressed service members at Selfridge Air National Guard Base alongside Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve accomplished more in three months than most administrations accomplish in four years or even eight years—and we&#8217;re just getting started, believe me,&#8221; Trump said, urging Congress to pass a &#8220;big, beautiful bill&#8221; that would deliver the largest tax cuts in American history, and ban taxes on tips and overtime.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>: &#8220;We&#8217;ve accomplished more in 3 months than most administrations accomplish in 4 years or even 8 years—and we&#8217;re just getting started, believe me.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/HYoYm74yDI">pic.twitter.com/HYoYm74yDI</a>
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1917353832566382716?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 29, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Trump also touted his actions to secure the border, pointing to the low number of illegal crossings, a dramatic reversal from the record high number of illegal aliens that crossed in under previous President Joe Biden. He said that while Democrats promised &#8220;mass migration&#8221; and &#8220;mass invasion,&#8221; he was delivering &#8220;mass deportation.&#8221;
Trump also pointed to his actions to eliminate DEI from the federal government and the pressure his administration was putting on schools to drop gender and racial ideologies.
&#8220;I ended all of the lawless so-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion bulls*** all across the entire federal government and private sector,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And I made it the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female!&#8221;
He touted actions he took to keep men out of women&#8217;s sports and push to end transgender medical procedures on children.
&#8220;I also proudly banned the use of puberty blockers &#8230; all these mutilations of our minor youth, I banned it all,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I signed executive orders to abolish Critical Race Theory and transgender insanity from our schools and from our military.&#8221;
Other highlights of his speech included comments in support of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who he described as a &#8220;tough cookie&#8221; in the face of &#8220;fake news attacks,&#8221; and promises that trillions of dollars were being invested by major companies into the American economy.
&#8220;Trillions of dollars are now pouring into the United States because of common sense,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Apple, great company, was building everything in China. Now they just announced that they’re spending $500 billion to invest in America, not in China.”
Trump&#8217;s speech addressed the rash of district court judges attempting to block many of his actions, asking the Supreme Court to reign in the lower court judges.
“We cannot allow a handful of communist, radical Left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws and assume the duties that belong solely to the President of the United States,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;Judges are trying to take away the power given to the president to keep our country safe.&#8221;
Trump praised the people of Michigan, a state that was critical to both his 2016 and 2024 victories, near the close of his speech.
&#8220;We stand on the shoulders of red-blooded Michigan Patriots — what great people, I love you, Michigan — who laid the railroads, worked the factories, tilled the field, forged the steel, fought the battles, and won the victories that built the Motor City and made this state into the pride of the American Midwest,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;Michigan is the state that gave us the assembly line, Motown, Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, and put the world behind the wheel of an automobile — and under our leadership, we are making it greater every single day.&#8221;

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-TRUMP

‘Just Getting Started’: Trump Vows More Action In ‘100 Days Of Greatness’ Rally

Michigan

Pete Hegseth

Harvard University announced on Monday that its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging is getting a rebrand as the school continues its fight against the Trump administration, which has frozen billions of dollars in federal aid.
The office will now be called &#8220;Community and Campus Life&#8221; and will focus on &#8220;expanding cross-cultural engagement programs, supporting first-generation and low-income students, and creating more opportunities for dialogue across differences,&#8221; The Harvard Crimson <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/29/harvard-oedib-renamed/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. Harvard&#8217;s chief diversity officer position has also been renamed and will now be called the Chief Community and Campus Life Officer. Sherri A. Charleston, who holds that position, said in an email that the university would &#8220;reexamine and reshape the missions and programs of offices across the university.&#8221;
Trump has set his sights on Harvard, recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-calls-harvard-an-anti-semitic-threat-to-democracy?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Calls+Harvard+%E2%80%98An+Anti-Semitic%E2%80%A6Threat+To+Democracy%E2%80%99" target="_blank" rel="noopener">calling</a> the Ivy League school “Anti-Semitic,” “Far-Left,” and “a threat to Democracy.” The Trump administration froze more than $2 billion in federal funding for Harvard after the university rejected demands to dismantle its DEI programs and do more to punish antisemitism on campus. Federal agencies sent two letters to Harvard in April, urging the school to eliminate DEI programs.
Harvard President Alan M. Garber said earlier this month that the Trump administration does not have the authority to &#8220;dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.&#8221; The university filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its funding freeze, arguing that the federal government is violating &#8220;Harvard’s constitutional rights&#8221; through a &#8220;pressure campaign.&#8221;
Harvard&#8217;s announcement on Monday is the first change it has made to its DEI programs, an apparent step that aligns with the Trump administration&#8217;s desires for the university, according to The Crimson. Trump has also targeted DEI offices at other Ivy League schools, and multiple universities have scrubbed mentions of DEI from their websites.
On Monday, Trump&#8217;s Education Department and Health and Human Services Department <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-admin-launches-probe-into-harvard-law-review-over-treatment-of-white-contributors?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Admin+Launches+Probe+Into+Harvard+Law+Review+Over+Treatment+Of+White+Contributors" target="_blank" rel="noopener">launched</a> a probe into the Harvard Law Review and its treatment of white contributors. The investigation will look into allegations that the university prioritized race over merit in its law journal&#8217;s membership evaluation and article publication.

Harvard Renames DEI Office Amid Funding Battle With Trump Admin

It’s not an exaggeration to say that conservative shareholder engagement is changing the corporate game. For years, Left-wing activists controlled the agendas at our largest companies, using not only their leverage as stockholders but their perpetual devotion to activism to get in the ear of America’s boards and directors. The result? Leftward drift in virtually every major company. But now conservative shareholders, from ordinary investors to major conservative nonprofits, are stepping into the game — and their engagements are bearing major fruit. The latest proof? IBM.
IBM’s track record on corporate bias and activism is notorious. The company was a member of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a group created by the World Federation of Advertisers that worked to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-daily-wire-addresses-the-ad-industry-following-the-fall-of-garm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">keep ad revenue away</a> from conservative news sites like the Daily Wire to free speech-centric platforms like X. And that’s before all the DEI concerns surfaced. After IBM CEO Arvind Krishna was caught on a <a href="https://x.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1734374423124176944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1734374423124176944%7Ctwgr%5E42e55266e59ec08d85550be6ab044097866bd072%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdallasexpress.com%2Fbusiness-markets%2Fceo-of-tech-corp-ibm-enshrines-dei-hiring%2F">hot mic</a> discussing how the company uses quotas of ‘underrepresented’ minorities in determining their executive pay — in Krishna’s words, execs have “got to move both [race and gender] forward by a percentage point” in order to get a higher bonus. That means DEI. That means quotas. Following these snafus, the reputational, ethical, and (in the case of the Missouri AG who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/missouri-attorney-general-sues-tech-giant-ibm-alleging-discrimination-against-whites-asians-men" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> IBM) legal scrutiny was swift in coming.
IBM’s motto since its early years has been “THINK,” referring to the innovative spirit with which the company solves problems. Yet when it came to political bias, that motto was missing in action — and shareholders took notice. In January, the firm I work for, Bowyer Research, began <a href="https://www.heritage.org/press/heritage-foundation-expands-efforts-hold-corporate-america-accountable-end-its-discriminatory" target="_blank" rel="noopener">work</a> with the Heritage Foundation to hold IBM accountable for the DEI quotas that Krishna described. The argument? Simple — use of non-meritocratic quotas based on race and gender aren’t just bad for reputation, but illegal on their face and bad for business. Shareholders, from major nonprofits to ordinary mom-and-pop investors, shouldn’t have their business returns impacted by IBM’s belief in identity politics.
As the shareholder engagement heated up on the internal front, pressure from <a href="https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5515346/the-ibm-red-hat-leaks-what-weve-learned-so-far" target="_blank" rel="noopener">journalists</a> and <a href="https://x.com/robbystarbuck/status/1910425361034383545" target="_blank" rel="noopener">influencers</a> like Robby Starbuck increased on the external front. That pressure built and built — and the release began earlier this month, when IBM announced the end of many of its DEI initiatives and related goals, including the elimination of its diversity council, the phaseout of its supplier diversity initiatives, and no longer participating in surveys put out by radical corporate <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-radical-intolerance-behind-woke-corporate-activism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">activist groups</a> like the Human Rights Campaign, which pressures companies to cover puberty blocker access for employees’ children in the name of “health care access.”
That would have been news enough — until several days ago, when IBM also <a href="https://www.heritage.org/press/heritage-foundation-secures-commitment-viewpoint-neutrality-ibm-encourages-company" target="_blank" rel="noopener">agreed</a> to include viewpoint neutrality as part of its advertising policy in response to Heritage’s shareholder engagement. That means that biased, activist-driven, political censorship that ad cartels like GARM perpetuate is now explicitly banned under IBM corporate policy. IBM listened to its shareholders, its employees, and its customers — and the result is another company willing to make commitments to political neutrality. This is what happens when authentic shareholder advocacy, championing political neutrality, merges with external pressure to drop corporate bias: change happens, and happens in the form of concrete policy commitments, not just boilerplate PR statements. It’s a praiseworthy step.
But is the scrutiny over? Absolutely not. IBM needs to demonstrate that they’re committed to actually staying the course on being politically-neutral and quota-free. Outstanding questions remain. During our engagement on behalf of Heritage, the company <a href="https://www.sec.gov/files/corpfin/no-action/14a-8/heritageibm3325-14a8.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">notably claimed</a> to the SEC that they couldn’t give a definition of DEI as grounds to ignore shareholder concerns — so how did they go from not knowing what DEI is to getting rid of it? (You can probably guess how.) The company holds its annual meeting of shareholders today, and if they’re savvy will make a point of focusing their messaging on business, not activism.
Achieving the commitment to neutrality at IBM was the result of a myriad of groups, from shareholders like Heritage to <a href="https://adflegal.org/press-release/sec-sides-with-adf-denies-absurd-attempt-from-govt-contractor-ibm-to-hide-from-shareholders-on-dei-proposal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">legal giants</a> like Alliance Defending Freedom to the courageous IBM employees willing to speak out about the bias behind the scenes. And it’s going to take all of those groups to be vigilant now — not paying attention to our boardrooms is what got us into the woke mess in the first place.
This is the next phase of rooting out bias and wokeness from corporate America — watching tirelessly to see whether companies that commit to ditching DEI are actually willing to put their messaging and money where their mouths are. Smart companies will be willing to commit to change. Foolish ones will hope to either avoid scrutiny altogether or reintroduce the same tired DEI policies under the guise of <a href="https://www.shrm.org/executive-network/insights/time-to-add-b-for-belonging-to-workplace-dei-strategy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">phrases</a> like “belonging.” It’s our job, as shareholders, as customers, and as Americans, to keep up the pressure for accountability with the leverage that we’ve been given. And above all, to make the case for what truly makes every company successful: the courage to resist activism and the fortitude to focus on business.
* * *
Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism, as well as a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. His work has been featured at outlets including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Opinion, C-SPAN, and The Daily Wire. He is a member of the Young Voices contributor program and can be found on X <a href="https://twitter.com/IsaacWillour" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@IsaacWillour</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Traders On The Floor Of The New York Stock Exchange As Fed Chair Powell Holds New Conference

IBM Rolls Back DEI, Commits To Political Neutrality

Business

Dow Jones

GARM

Heritage Foundation

Human Rights Campaign

Opinion

Robby Starbuck

Stock Market

Wall Street

The Trump administration&#8217;s war with Harvard University continued on Monday as the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services launched a probe into the university&#8217;s law journal over its treatment of white contributors.
The investigation will focus on reports of the Harvard Law Review evaluating journal membership and article publication on the basis of race as opposed to merit. Civil rights law prohibits federal dollars from going toward entities that practice racial discrimination.
“Harvard Law Review’s article selection process appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. “Title VI’s demands are clear: recipients of federal financial assistance may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin. No institution—no matter its pedigree, prestige, or wealth—is above the law. The Trump Administration will not allow Harvard, or any other recipients of federal funds, to trample on anyone’s civil rights.”
The Trump administration specifically cited reports that a Harvard Law Review editor said it was &#8220;concerning&#8221; that four out of five individuals who wanted to reply to an article on police reform &#8220;are white men.&#8221; Another exampled listed by the administration was an editor at the journal saying “that a piece should be subject to expedited review because the author was a minority.”
Anthony Archeval, the acting Director of HHS Office for Civil Rights, said that these kinds of actions could set back students.
“Law journal membership and publication are crucial achievements that build momentum for law students’ careers and shape legal scholarship,” he said. “This investigation reflects the Administration’s common-sense understanding that these opportunities should be earned through merit-based standards and not race.”
In a statement, a spokesman for Harvard Law School noted that the Harvard Law Review was &#8220;a student-run organization.&#8221;
&#8220;Harvard Law School is committed to ensuring that the programs and activities it oversees are in compliance with all applicable laws and to investigating any credibly alleged violations. The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization that is legally independent from the law school,&#8221; the spokesman told The Daily Wire.
The Trump administration has been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-calls-harvard-an-anti-semitic-threat-to-democracy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">battling with Harvard</a> over its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and handling of anti-Israel protests. Earlier this month, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard.
Last week, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Harvard was a &#8220;Far Left Institution&#8221; and &#8220;a threat to Democracy.&#8221;

Supreme Court Rules Affirmative Action Is Unconstitutional In Landmark Case With Harvard And UNC

Trump Admin Launches Probe Into Harvard Law Review Over Treatment Of White Contributors

Racial Discrimination

On the surface, the group that administers the MCAT seems to have left DEI behind. But behind the scenes, it&#8217;s working on plans to secretly push the ideology, an insider with knowledge of the situation tells The Daily Wire.
The Association of American Medical Colleges, which administers the medical school entrance exam and helps accredit medical schools, purged most DEI content from its website after a damning <a href="https://donoharmmedicine.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Activism-over-Meritocracy-How-the-AAMC-is-Corrupting-Medical-Education-with-Endless-DEI-Ideology.pdf">report</a> from the nonprofit <a href="https://donoharmmedicine.org/">Do No Harm</a> called the AAMC “the organization ruining medical education.”
But an AAMC insider tells The Daily Wire the organization is backtracking, telling employees to stay the course internally despite the outward changes.
“The AAMC has pushed DEI for about a decade. The leaders are not going to change their views overnight,” the AAMC employee explained. “Even though we now talk about it differently, the AAMC is still very much committed to DEI.”
An internal AAMC “language guidance” document obtained by The Daily Wire reveals that the organization is seeking to sanitize its messaging around DEI in order to avoid terms that “have become polarizing.”
The AAMC says it conducted research that found certain phrases “are widely misunderstood or misinterpreted,” including the terms “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” “historically marginalized groups,” and “systems of oppression.&#8221; Other terms that the AAMC warns against include “birthing people,” “anti-racism,” “minority,” and “inclusive excellence.”
<div id="attachment_912353" style="width: 879px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-912353" class=" wp-image-912353" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-25-at-12.54.19-PM-300x139.png" alt="" width="869" height="403" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-25-at-12.54.19-PM-300x139.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Screen-Shot-2025-04-25-at-12.54.19-PM-768x355.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 869px) 100vw, 869px" />Obtained by The Daily Wire</div>
“Rather than use the frequently misinterpreted shorthand ‘DEI,’ be specific about the goals you understand those principles to support, such as solutions that lead to increased access to care for areas and populations that have been underserved,” the guide goes on to read.
In its report, Do No Harm revealed how the AAMC leveraged millions of dollars and its stature in the medical field to push DEI — embedding DEI in the medical school accreditation process, adding ideological questions to the MCAT, and approving race-based scholarships for medical schools.
Since then, the organization has removed webpages that discussed the group’s DEI agenda, including the AAMC’s “equity, diversity, and inclusion” <a href="https://www.aamc.org/about-us/equity-diversity-inclusion">page</a>, which <a href="https://archive.ph/HvJLK">previously</a> outlined the group’s DEI commitment and listed upcoming DEI trainings and seminars.
An AAMC report on “Creating Action to Eliminate Racism in Medical Education,” <a href="https://archive.ph/6W1jD">archived here</a>, is <a href="https://www.aamc.org/media/63076/download?attachment?attachment">no longer</a> publicly available. A page on addressing racism in healthcare has been <a href="https://www.aamc.org/about-us/excellence-academic-medicine/resources-address-racism-academic-medicine">removed</a>, and the organization has also taken down a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250221162046/https:/www.aamc.org/what-we-do/equity-diversity-inclusion/underrepresented-in-medicine">page</a> on its site that discussed demographic groups that are “underrepresented in medicine.”
Still, the insider alleges that various different leaders within the AAMC, including its CEO, reaffirmed the organization’s commitment to DEI in a town hall earlier this year.
David Skorton, the AAMC CEO, told employees at the January town hall that the organization has “no plans to make a statement about DEI” and “no plans to eliminate our DEI cluster of employees,” the AAMC insider told The Daily Wire.
The sentiment was echoed by Danielle Turnipseed, the head of the AAMC’s Public Policy and Legislative Affairs branch. Turnipseed told employees “the important thing for us now is to get the work done and not make statements about [DEI]. We don&#8217;t want to spend time arguing with others about what we are doing. So, we want to focus on doing the work,” the employee explained.
“If we get investigated, we&#8217;ll handle it. We do the legal DEI,” added Frank Trinity, the AAMC’s Chief Legal Officer.
The AAMC did not respond to a request for comment.

Doctor

The Group Behind The MCAT Said It Was Ditching DEI. Insiders Say It Lied.

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