The Trump Effect is in full swing before the new president even takes office.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday that the company would end its major diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
Meta put out a memo to employees explaining the move, which was published by Axios.
“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” the memo reads. “The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms long standing principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics.”
The memo further stated that instead of specific DEI programs, Meta will now “focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background.”
The move comes just days after Meta declared that it would be ending its fact-checking partnership program that was used to censor content on Facebook and its other social media websites.
These are wins insomuch as this indicates the general direction of big business and social media in the age of Trump.
Zuckerberg has been making the rounds in a media blitz to convince everyone that he’s had a change of heart and that all those mean things his company did—like ruthlessly censor content that the Left didn’t like—was really because of the mean old Biden administration.
That’s funny—did Biden officials force Zuckerberg to spend hundreds of millions of dollars supporting Democrats and Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential bid?
Who knows what’s really in Zuckerberg’s heart. In a sense, it doesn’t matter. What’s happening at Meta is indicative of a larger trend that’s a product of the two big blows against the corporate DEI complex.
The first was the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action in higher education that declared racial preferences to be unlawful. This put enormous pressure on universities to end racial preferences in admissions and hiring because they were suddenly subject to costly lawsuits. It didn’t entirely cure the disease.
Higher education is committed to DEI as a matter of faith and university officials have done their best to skirt the law.
In contrast, Big Business is a lot less committed to the bit and a lot more dependent on the bottom line.
DEI programs were already a drag on companies for many reasons. Paying inquisitors who often make the final product worse is hardly a winning strategy for any business, despite what the bogus and now thoroughly debunked McKinsey study said on the matter.
So now that businesses don’t feel they have to have DEI programs, many are voluntarily phasing them out to save money.
That change will be hastened by the fact that Democrats are being swept out of power and President Donald Trump will soon be back in the White House. It’s not just about the “vibe” shift, though to a certain extent that’s a real thing right now.
More importantly, businesses must consider whether it’s worth it to keep DEI programs when they have a chance to be investigated by the Justice Department under Trump. On this end, big business will face serious whiplash. All the pro-DEI nonsense promoted by the Biden White House is now under threat and companies know that. Lawsuits will be filed, funding will be pulled, and businesses will have to ask themselves if it’s worth it to keep up the nonsense.
Zuckerberg, whatever his motivation, is smart to get ahead of this and declare that DEI and censorship will go away and that he’s had an Elon Musk-style conversion moment.
Our system shouldn’t work this way. But thanks to the growth and transformation of our federal government over the last century, presidential elections can have sweeping consequences.
The danger is that DEI policies can all be brought back with a shift in power. This moment of Glasnost could end abruptly if the Left wins a few election cycles and continues its march through the institutions.
It’s critical that in the next few years that DEI and the left-wing ideology it’s associated with be further discredited in the eyes of the American people. DEI’s proponents are typically incompetent at governing as opposed to accruing raw political power. And they no longer fully control the media environment to foist narratives and untruths on the American people at will.
The Trump administration must do what any wise general does after a great victory. It must pursue a routed opponent and use this time to decisively eviscerate DEI’s hold over Western institutions.
