DEI

Those who wonder why more Americans haven’t risen up in rebellion against the Trump administration’s assault on affirmative action, its gutting of university departments, its violation of the neutrality of the American legal profession, should keep in mind the epigraph from the 20th-century philosopher Will Durant that appears in the opening moments of Mel Gibson’s 2006 movie Apocalypto: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” As he promised to do, Donald Trump is dismantling large parts of the government he conquered at the ballot box last November. You don’t have to approve. Roughly half of Americans do not. But the regime he is undoing has yielded diminishing returns for most of this century.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE) continues merrily to chop programs and departments left, right and center. Federal diversity, equity and inclusion officials were suspended on his first day in office, prior to being given their marching orders. Government employees have been ordered to justify their existence by explaining what, if anything, they achieved last week. All of this ought to be a positive influence on how the US is governed. Some will claim it to be an ideological war waged by the Trump administration. Yet it is really just the same process that private corporations undergo constantly in their search for greater efficiency and profits. Yet there is a chink in Trump’s strategy.

Firefighters do not run into a blaze like you see on TV. We crawl with purpose like rats in a maze, which is what a well-involved structure fire feels like, the smoke so thick our high-powered flashlights can’t cut through it. We are trained to locate windows and leave furniture in place as reference points while we conduct search and rescue then scurry to the nearest walls. It makes it all the more vital to have another firefighter with you. The fire was consuming a construction site on Yale’s campus. “The security guard’s inside.” The water company hadn’t arrived yet. No matter, we were going in. I ordered the firefighter to grab the forcible entry saw. He didn’t know where it was. Precious seconds gone.

For the past several years, the air traffic I see out the windows of my office has been constant — a regularly occurring string of flights headed north up the Potomac toward Ronald Reagan International Airport, and others headed south after taking off. Yesterday morning was the first time I can remember seeing the skies utterly clear of traffic, as the ferry boats that normally take tourists and visitors from port to port along the river were instead repurposed as salvage vehicles for divers seeking out the remains of the passengers lost in the crash of American Eagle Flight 5342 and soldiers flying the Army Black Hawk it collided with a mere 400 feet above the water.

President Donald Trump is making quick work of his first week in office, signing a flurry of executive orders on everything ranging from the southern border to abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs for much of the federal workforce.Starting this week, Trump wants “radical and wasteful” DEI offices to be placed on paid leave, according to a memo issued by the Office of Personnel Management. “President Trump campaigned on ending the scourge of DEI from our federal government and returning America to a merit-based society,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of the move.

The newly sworn-in President Trump had a busy inaugural day. Between swearing into office and waving a saber around while dancing to “YMCA” at an inaugural ball, he also signed several executive orders and proclamations. After signing his cabinet and other nominations, President Trump’s first order of business was to proclaim that all flags should be flown at full staff for this and all future inauguration days. Following the inaugural parade, President Trump signed a bevy of additional executive documents as thousands of his supporters cheered.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, military veteran and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, had his first hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday. In his opening remarks, the author of The War on Warriors admitted that he is an unorthodox pick. “It is true that I don’t have a similar biography to defense secretaries of the last thirty years. But, as President Trump also told me, we’ve repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly ‘the right credentials’  — whether they are retired generals, academics or defense contractor executives — and where has it gotten us?” his opening statement read. “It’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm.

Amid lingering questions about what Kamala Harris stands for — plus a precipitous decline of the momentum the vice president enjoyed after leaping to the top of the Democratic ticket — her campaign decided it was time to send her into the media fray. This was a very calculated media tour, of course. With the exception of the traditional 60 Minutes interview on CBS (which Trump declined this time around, as his team claimed the outlet wanted to do “live fact-checking”), Harris stuck to friendly, low-risk outlets where she was unlikely to make any major fumbles.Unfortunately for the Harris campaign, this simple task would prove to be too much for the veep.