It is Donald Trump’s intensifying war on DEI
Disney’s Snow White remake is heading for a nine-figure loss and YouTube may be about to surpass the company as the world’s biggest media organisation.
So what? These are the least of Disney’s worries. Last week the US Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating the company over its diversity, equity and inclusion policies. FCC chairman Brendan Carr has since warned that the broadcast licence of ABC, which is owned by Disney, is at risk.
Welcome to Trump’s war on diversity. The president declared DEI illegal just hours after taking office, claiming it has unfairly disadvantaged and discriminated against white men. Now he is tightening the screws.
- In January, Trump passed executive orders banning DEI offices, positions and programmes in the federal government, repealing equal opportunity mandates from as far back as the 1960s, and demanding private companies “end illegal DEI practices”.
- In February, he fired the board of the Kennedy Center, the national cultural institution, and made himself chair after apparent concerns with the centre’s “drag shows”.
- In March, he instructed US museums to promote America’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” and effectively avoid teaching any racist historical events.
Anti-woke upgraded. While Trump groused about woke ideology in his first term, Trump 2.0 sees the anti-DEI agenda as his election winner (even though most polls say it was the economy). The reason? Stephen Miller.
Miller time. The 39-year-old is Trump’s deputy chief of staff and, according to the author William Cohan, the architect of initiatives to try to “make America better by purifying our national DNA”. Miller drafts most of Trump’s executive orders on DEI and has been an ethnonationalist since high school, Jason Islas told Tortoise. Once Miller’s closest pal, Islas says he was unfriended because of his Latino heritage when Miller was 13.
First the government then the mouse. Miller has been targeting Disney for the past two years. The magic kingdom is an old hand at fighting DEI battles, and has faced attacks from
- Miller’s America First Legal, a conservative group set up in 2021 to defend “true equality”, which claimed Disney discriminates against white people in its hiring policies;
- neo-Nazis, who picketed Disney World in 2023 over Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill; and
- activist investor Nelson Peltz, who tried to oust Disney management in 2024 after complaining its films were too ‘woke’. He failed but made $1 billion selling his shares.
The climbdown. Several lawsuits have been filed against Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders, but orders don’t need to be implemented in full to have an effect. Disney removed its diversity targets from its corporate filings in February and dumped its Reimagine Tomorrow initiative, which highlights stories and talent from under-represented communities.
The resistance. Disney still has plenty of fight left. In March, 99 per cent of shareholders rejected a proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research to leave the Human Rights Campaign’s annual Corporate Equality Index, which measures companies LGBTQ+ inclusivity. The Disney board concurred with the shareholders.
What’s more… The Nation journalist David Klion says of Stephen Miller that “it’s clear that beneath all the performative cruelty and amoral careerism, there’s an authentic core of seething, visceral, unquenchable hatred”. Even, it appears, for Mickey Mouse and friends.
This week’s Slow Newscast: Die Die DEI
Photo credit: Disney
