When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ran in the 2024 GOP primary presidential race, he told Republicans that Florida is where woke-ism goes to die. Over the last couple of years, the governor has made ending Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs inside Florida colleges a top priority.
Now, those aligned with President-elect Donald Trump are encouraging him to follow suit by ending DEI programs on the federal level.
Most of the current DEI programs began in 2021, when President Biden signed Executive Order 14035, calling on every federal agency to make “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” a “priority” when recruiting and promoting staff.
One of Florida Daily’s media partners, Open The Books (OTB), recently compiled data showing that federal agencies spend millions of dollars promoting DEI initiatives.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) employs 294 DEI staffers at an annual cost of $38.7 MILLION.
Variations of the term “equity” appear 829 times in the HHS 2025 budget request to Congress.
Under the term “equity and “justice” in public health, millions were used for Black churches recruited to push vaccinations, universities for hiring diverse researchers, and to special outreach for anyone from criminals to the LGBTQ+ community to the indigenous.
In 2023, HHS dedicated 313 employees to DEI, who were spread across not one, not two, but eight separate DEI offices.
OTB identified 92 DEI employees working directly under HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, most of them at the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, Diversity & Inclusion.
This also includes 7 subagencies, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which have separate diversity offices with their own complex infrastructure of 202 employees, for a grand total of 294.
Most of the 247 workers made over $100,000 in base salary for FY 2023. Four of them made more than $200,000. Benefits typically represent an additional 30% of base salaries.
The Food and Drug Administration has three related DEI entities: an Office of EEO and Diversity Management, a DEI Working Group and a DEI Center of Excellence.
The FDA also has the department’s highest paid DEI staffer: EEO/Diversity Director Lakeisha McClendon made $221,000 in 2023.
Over at the NIH, the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is organized like a full corporation. It has separate departments for Guidance, Education & Marketing, Data Analytics & Customer Outreach…and an inexplicably redundant “Diversity & Inclusion Division.”
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is the only health agency whose EEO office does not also have the word “diversity” in its title, but its director, Anita Pinder, serves as its “chief diversity officer.”
Open noticed that out of the 207 employees, 182 were making over 6 figures.
The director of the NIH’s Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities was the highest-paid by far, with a salary of $385,000 last year.
One program pushed by the CDC program was for “vaccine equity” in Atlanta, Georgia, by distributing 5,500 monkeypox vaccine doses to Black “LGBTQ+ men who have sex with men” to help “celebrate diversity and the impact of distinctly Black gay and queer culture on the community.”
The CDC has even deployed to Black churches in the name of “vaccine equity.” The agency “trained” 4,300 faith leaders as “vaccine advocates and influencers” who could convince their congregations to get vaccinated and give out “incentives” for doing so. The program included 1200 church vaccination sites and distributed 650,000 doses while issuing public service announcements aimed at reducing “vaccine hesitancy” and “debunking myths.”
OTB identified more DEI programs that are spending millions of taxpayer dollars.
$608 million for agency-wide General Departmental Management lists its top three priorities as: “racial equity, environmental justice, climate change.”
$5 million for the agency-wide “Office of Climate Change and Health Equity” and “Office of Environmental Justice”
$98.6 million for the Medicaid Integrity Program, which helps fund an “Equity Dashboard.”
$5 million for the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to “diversify the doula workforce” and $24.3 million for “Nursing Workforce Diversity.”
HRSA also received almost $102 million this year for “Training for Diversity.” It includes $28.4 million for Centers of Excellence that “goes towards recruitment, training, and retaining underrepresented minority students and faculty at health professions schools” and is used to “enhance the academic performance” of minorities.
The NIH Common Fund plans to spend $241 million over nine years on its Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST). Like HRSA’s “Training for Diversity” program, FIRST awards grants to top universities to hire scientists from minority backgrounds.
FIRST grants are awarded to institutions considering a scientist’s “commitment to diversity” as equally important to their academic ability. According to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal, candidates are penalized for wanting to treat everyone the same regardless of their background.
Trump allies will most likely target the DEI programs at these federal agencies.
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