End DEI, take control of museums, eliminate Census racial categories and defund public media.
That the electorate has rejected wokeness should be obvious by now. Donald Trump’s most effective campaign ad featured the tagline, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Even liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote after the election that “woke is broke.”
But celebrating the end of peak woke and burying it completely are two different things. What will it take to kill wokeness once and for all?
We first have to define it. Woke means believing America is riddled with inequities, where not only its people but the system itself is racist and in need of systemic overhaul; where society is divided between the “oppressors” and the “oppressed”; where history must be expunged and rewritten. This is a world of make-believe. But for the woke elite, it colors everything from climate policy to the Israel-Hamas war.
This elite has spent years infusing every institution with policies, procedures and mandates aimed at transforming society. Diversity, equity and inclusion measures, particularly in government and academia, have created an identity-based system in which people’s immutable characteristics, not their choices, determine whether they are worthy of awards or punishment.
To put a spike through the heart of woke, Mr. Trump and the new Congress must reverse these policies. Some of the following proposals will be easy to implement, others harder. But all will help restore sanity.
• Rescind and reverse all of Mr. Biden’s executive orders implementing DEI and gender theory, including Executive Order 13985, which advanced a “whole-of-government equity agenda.”
Mr. Biden also signed executive orders supporting “gender-affirming” medical interventions on minors, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries. These too must go.
Mr. Trump should then sign two executive orders. The first should reinstitute his 2020 ban on DEI training for federal workers and contractors. The second should define “male” and “female” in precise biological terms, which would clarify what the Biden Title IX rule has destructively muddled, and preserve the intent of Title IX.
By Mike Gonzalez and Armen Tooloee
