The Trump administration claims that it wants to reduce federal intervention into the nation’s public and private institutions. But it intervenes forcefully in both public and private sectors to punish anyone with different views. It has threatened to withhold federal funding for research from universities unless the targeted universities allow the federal government to supervise its curriculum, its hiring policies, and its admissions policies. And he threatened to stop the funding of any K12 school that continues DEI programs.
The Trump regime has created a nanny state.
From Day 1, Trump made clear that he would ban practices and policies intended to diversity, equity, and inclusion. He threatened to withhold federal funding of schools that ignored his order to eliminate DEI. He has taken complete control of the Kennedy Center, so as to block DEI programming, and he has appointed a woman with no credentials to remove DEI from the Smithsonian museums.
Who knows how the African American Museum will survive Trump’s DEI purge.
ABC News reported that a federal district judge has halted the DEI ban, at least in schools associated with one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, the NEA.
The Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes, a federal judge said on Thursday.
In an 82-page order, U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.
“Ours is a nation deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned,” Judge McCafferty wrote, adding the “right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is…one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.”
“In this case, the court reviews action by the executive branch that threatens to erode these foundational principles,” she wrote.
The judge stopped short of issuing the nationwide injunction, instead limiting the relief to any entity that employs or contacts with the groups that filed the lawsuit, including the National Education Association and the Center for Black Educator Development.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Anti-DEI rhetoric is generally presented as an attempt to disregard merit. This is a false narrative. Diversity, equity and inclusion policies ask simply asks us to consider those that are often excluded or overlooked, not lower standards. It is ironic to see Gov. Abbott of Texas sitting in his wheelchair making speeches against DEI, when his wheelchair, an adaptive device that gives him the mobility to reach the people of Texas, is a prime example of inclusion.
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Friendly advice: access sources of information other than those that confirm your existing left-wing opinions. There is voluminous evidence that DEI has been used to lower standards in all manner of jobs and in colleges. Even medical schools have in many cases admitted students with qualifications far below those needed for white and Asian applicants.
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Kirk,
Colleges and universities have lowered their standards for years to admit “legacies,” the students who had a parent as an alum. They also lowered their standards to admit those whose parent gave a ton of money. The prime example is Jared Kushner, whose father (the felon) gave Harvard $2.5 million to get him admitted. I personally know students who attended the same high school as Jared, who told me that much better students did not get admitted to Harvard.
“Kushner met personally with Harvard University’s president and in 1998 donated $2.5 million to Harvard. His son, Jared, was then beginning his senior year of high school, where he was not a particularly good student with test scores below Ivy League standards. Jared was admitted to the Harvard freshman class of 1999.” Charles Kushner’s Wikipedia entry. This instance was documented in Daniel Golden’s book “The Price of Admission (Updated Edition): How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges–and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.”
Selective colleges also lower their standards for athletes to play on their teams. Or students to fill out majors where there are not enough students.
Do any of these examples of lowered standards offend you? Or is it only the admission of students of color that ruffles your feathers? How do you know they are not qualified? Racism?
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Thank you for your unsolicited advice. I would not have been able to navigate the shoals of this complex issue without it. One rarely gets to see your kind of intellect at work.
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Kirk: Add this to Diane’s insights:
Whatever ‘white people’ means (or whatever criteria you are going by), they (we) do not have a lock on high intelligence or ability. Intelligence is known NOT to be associated with one “race” of people.
Neither is the problem of all sorts of biases, BTW, where mixing different cultures and peoples in intelligent doings is also known to temper learned biases and also to bring creative ideas to the fore.
In either case, if true (and they are), then your note “There is voluminous evidence that DEI has been used to lower standards in all manner of jobs and in colleges” is dribble.
Even if some stupid person wanted to “lower standards” by introducing DEI principles, that introduction would fly in the face of those intentions and have its positive effects anyway. CBK
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This unchecked patronizing, stifling dialogue, and instilling fear in teachers and schools is harmful and exhausting. I supposed the “exhaustion” tactic is in the playbook, too. At least some Judges see through it (because Congress is MIA).
Every day now, we witness declarations patronizing and using “concern” for discrimination based on race and religion as the excuse to neutralize and ignore differences among people based on, yes, race and religion.
I’m surprised the feds are not declaring “unitary status” which was the benchmark to conclude federal desegregation cases.
To date, they’ve stomped on the Civil Rights Act and defunded OCR.
They use the McCarthy 1953 tactics and threats of losing funding by accusing and/or assuming everyone is engaging in “dei.” Why? To stifle any schools’ use of anything remotely connected to diversity awareness, understanding equity, and federal laws and what’s right about including all students.
And, then there a couple of today’s declarations…
Feds will no longer collect or allow compiling data on discipline by race (because Biden “forced consideration of equity and inclusion when imposing discipline.”)
Feds will “promote” HBCUs.
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Thought you might like this one… CAROL KOCIVAR https://substack.com/@carolkocivar APR 23, 2025
https://open.substack.com/pub/carolkocivar/p/can-the-president-pass-the-us-citizenship?r=1v8wim&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email Can the President pass the US citizenship test? open.substack.com
https://substack.com/home/post/p-162012428?source=queue
>
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Diane: A word about talking to MAGA: In their Town Halls in Republican territory, Rep. Maxwell Frost and Senator Chris Murphy are saying we should not SHAME MAGA, or say “I told you so” over and over again.
What we need to press to MAGA is that
THEIR LEADERS HAVE ABUSED THEIR TRUST.
That’s going to put the blame where it belongs. And it should fall on hearing ears much more than shaming them or “I told you so” or even WAKE UP.
In my view, everyone in a democracy needs to be politically aware and up to speed. However, not everyone can be political animals like allot of us–we all enjoy our peace when we have it and, LIKE MAGA, we all like to be able to trust the politicians that we voted for to work FOR US.
But the Republicans won’t even attend their own states’ Town Halls. No one is going to “convert” Stephen Miller; but the leaders starting with Trump have stopped being deserving of MAGA’s trust. CBK
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Thanks, CBK.
Schadenfreude is delectable. Except we are all going down with the ship. Trump makes Captain Ahab look like a wise man.
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there’s a good exercise. What is trumps great whale?
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Could it be the endless quest for more? And more?
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Hi Diane: I added the note about MAGA’s leaders abusing their trust to the “contact” page of Chris Murphy but I got a computer response that I wasn’t in the right zip code (not a constituent).
I have a sense of contempt for anyone who voted for Trump or now any of the R’s who still support him, even by their silence. But we also should recognize MAGA needs an “out” to assuage their defensiveness.
THEIR LEADERS HAVE ABUSED THEIR TRUST.
It seems to me, it is a good way to offer that “out” . . . and it’s true. I think Murphy’s and Frost’s message on the trail of town halls is good, but could be better as “don’t blame” is a message to US, and not to MAGA. They need to have a positive message to MAGA. If you agree, pass it on. CBK
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CBK,
I can’t think of a positive message about MAGA. “You’ve been hoaxed” is not positive.
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Hi Diane: The difference is important, I think, between saying “YOU’ve been hoaxed,” or allowed yourself to be “duped,” and “THEY have abused your trust.”
It puts the onus on Trump et al, and not on MAGA voters people. It doesn’t require anyone to turn into an automatic democrat, nor does it require someone to feel defensive or to see the person saying so that they are also saying “I’m better than you.” It MAY make those who have been so abused to get quite angry about it and so put the responsibility of the problem where it belongs. CBK
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In Florida the case of the $10 million dollars transferred into Casey DeSantis’ charity and then into political funds mysteriously disappeared. Nobody showed up to the inquiry, and the public was told the issue has been closed. It was all magically resolved behind closed doors, the way DeSantis does his dirty business. Are democrats going to sleep through this scandal as well?
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I see that national media have picked up the story of the DeSantis scandal. This story is not dying.
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The legislature is passing the torch to the DOJ which, we know will likely do nothing. https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2025/04/24/desantis-casey-hope-florida-charity-medicaid-investigation-ending/
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EXECUTIVE ORDERS ARE NOT IN THE CONSTITUTION
THE CONSTITUTION doesn’t give the President of the United States any authority to write “Executive Orders”.
THE CONSTITUTION specifically says in Article 1, Section 1, that ONLY CONGRESS can make laws: “ALL LEGISLATIVE POWERS herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.”
THE CONSTITUTION does not authorize Congress to delegate — to give — any authority to the President or to anyone any power to make law. This is known as “The Constitution’s Nondelegation Doctrine”.
THE CONSTITUTION says in Article 2, Section 1, that “The Executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
The word “executive” comes from the Latin word “exsequi,” which translates as “to carry out”. So, an “executive” is someone who carries out orders or follows through on a plan made by others, as in “the soldier executed his orders.”
AT THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION of 1797 in which the Constitution was written by delegates from the original states, Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman explained that the Constitution created the Presidency as “nothing more than an institution for carrying the will of the Legislature [Congress] into effect.”
THAT MEANS that the President as Chief EXECUTIVE Officer of the United States can only CARRY OUT the laws made by Congress, NOT MAKE OR CHANGE LAWS by so-called “executive order”.
THE CONSTITUTION says in Article 2, Section 3, that the President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed [carried out].”
BECAUSE SO-CALLED “EXECUTIVE ORDERS” ARE NOT AUTHORIZED BY THE CONSTITUTION, and because the Constitution limits law-making only to Congress, any so-called “Executive Order” that makes a new law or that changes existing law is unconstitutional.
And any so-called “Executive Order” that reverses or in any way limits a law passed by Congress is a violation of the Constitution’s requirement that the President “shall take care that the Laws be faithfully executed [carried out]” and is therefore AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE.
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What do bullies do? They attack the most vulnerable.
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