Incomplete Progress against DEI

As a result of President Donald Trump’s (R) Executive Order regarding Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in the Federal government and government contractors, nearly 400 bureaucrats have been “sidelined:” put on paid leave. Additionally, some $420 million in related contracts have been canceled.

There remains, though, a question that shouldn’t be a question.

It is not yet clear when or if they [those bureaucrats] will be terminated.

Charles Ezell, Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management, though, seems clear on the matter.

[A]gency heads were required to submit to OPM a written plan for executing a reduction-in-force action regarding DEI employees and a list of all contract descriptions or personnel position descriptions that were changed since November 5, 2024, to obscure their connection to DEI programs.

That plan was due by COB last Friday. It seems simple enough, and mostly clear: all of those employees should be RIFed. More to the point, since their positions have been eliminated, there’s not even any need to RIF them; they already have no jobs. Send them to the private sector where their vasty experience will stand them in good stead in their job search. The only reason for a formal RIF would be in the event that’s the mechanism to prevent them from being reassigned elsewhere on the Federal—which is to say our tax funded—payroll.

No They Haven’t

In a Wall Street Journal article centered on the press-alleged difficulty of putting into action President Donald Trump’s (R) Executive Order specifying that the number of human sexes are two—male and female—the authors wrote this opinion masqueraded as received fact:

As social norms around gender have grown more fluid in recent years….

No, they haven’t.

Their subheadline pushes matter:

Executive order requires changes to passports, prisons and other areas of American life

The implication is that enforcing the outcomes of only two sexes will be very difficult. Never mind the simple fact that difficult means doable.

It won’t be that hard to undo what the Biden administration inflicted over its short term. Passport changes can be reversed as easily as they were inflicted on us, prisons can easily undo the assaults on its female prisoners simply by no longer putting male prisoners in the same prisons as female prisoners and (re)transferring existing male prisoners (back) to male prisons, “other areas of American life” won’t require much change beyond the existing—and vastly incomplete—moves to eliminate DEI bigotry from our institutions.

Not much change will be required because it’s eminently legal for men and women to live their lives as though they were the opposite sex, except where mingling would be inappropriate: males in females’ bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, and the like.

The vast majority of Americans know biology better. We understand full well that in human (for instance) biology, beginning with genetics, there are only two sexes, and which one defines a particular individual is immutably specified at conception—that’s when the chromosomes come together as XX or XY.

It’s true enough that biological mistakes do, rarely, occur and a child gets an XXY or an XYY combination, but those are extremely rare. It’s also true that gender identity disorder (which the authors of the politically written DSM-5 were pleased to relabel gender dysphoria), which is generated primarily by hormonal developments that mistakenly contradict biology and by cultural aspects, occurs, but GID also is an extremely rare occurrence. It’s instructive that GID didn’t become a political matter until the last few years, when identity politics pushers, taking advantage of adolescent hormonal confusion, began pursuing their demand for ever more identities to push and for which to collect government monies and “protections.”

Social norms around gender have not at all grown more fluid except as the Leftist press pushes the narrative created by those activist identity politics pushers. We remain a nation that knows biology better than that.