Here are some of the impacts and some general thoughts of Trump's Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity executive order.

The basis of Trump's argument, as set out on page two of the executive order (linked here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25500435-trump-eo-discrimination/) , is that DEI policies go against the core ideology of the civil rights laws. By focusing on diversity and equity, the policies are, effectively, legally discriminating on the basis of race, or whatever other characteristics are being supported by the DEI policy. The idea is without the DEI policies that hiring, selection, contracting etc. would be more in line with meritocracy, where your work will speak for itself.

Section 3 is the one that revokes all of the prior executive orders. One of them is executive order 13279. Which protects faith based organizations and community organizations ensures that faith based and community organizations can't be discriminated on on the basis of religion or other beneficiaries. So this kind of has an opposite effect, where federal funding doesn't have to use the same criteria for community based organizations, faith based organizations. So the feds can choose to discriminate against these instead of these being under a protected class.

Alarmingly, section four wants to identify and report to the President on whether or not these entities are ending "illegal dei practices":

• Publicly traded corporations, large non-profits and associations, foundations with assets of $500 million or more;
• State and local bar, medical associations; and
• institutions of higher education with endowments over $1 billion

I do want to note that executive orders do not mandate the operations of these entities but it can restrict whether or not it gives funding to these entities.

Section Five discusses institutions of higher education that receive federal grants must follow students for Fair admissions versus the fellows of Harvard College Ruling. This ruling basically states that a student's race is not a criteria to be used to discriminate in their application for enrollment. I think here and the provisions of section 4 place a lot of risk on equity-based grant funds.

Throughout the executive order the Office of Management and Budget is referenced. This is the federal office that regulates grant funding and how federal aid is distributed. They enforce all of the boring accounting laws. Having this agency included definitely mucks up the works for any recipient of federal funds.

Ironically, veterans are still given contracting and employment preference despite that being a diversity metric.