As wildfires tore through the hills of Los Angeles this month, those on the right quickly boiled the crisis down to DEI, seemingly because Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is the first woman and second Black person to lead the city., and L.A. fire chief Kristin Crowley, a 22-year fire veteran, is the first woman and openly queer person to lead the department.

Trump’s billionaire supporter and partner Elon Musk claimed: "They prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes,” sharing screenshots of a four-year-old L.A. Fire Department racial equity plan He then put a finer point on it, writing that “DEI means people DIE” in response to a video of Crowley talking about using a DEI focus to attract the “best and brightest” to the force.
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When an extremist plowed his car into revelers and attempted to set off bombs during New Year’s Day celebrations in New Orleans, GOP Rep. Dan Meuser told Fox News: “The priority of the last four years has been DEI, not IEDs [improvised explosive devices] ...You talk to anyone who’s willing to speak within these agencies, that’s what their focus has been.”
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When a shipping vessel collided with Baltimore’s Key Bridge and brought it tumbling down in March, a Utah gubernatorial candidate blamed “governors who prioritize diversity," even though the ship at issue allegedly had a record of shoddy maintenance. Meanwhile, online commenters deluged Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott with racist attacks, accusing him of being a “DEI mayor.”
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In 2023 the Supreme Court, stacked with Trump-appointed justices, struck down affirmative action in higher education.

At the same time, Republicans pushed to ban books talking about identity and race, claiming schools at all levels were indoctrinating students with “critical race theory,” a niche academic concept that seemingly came to stand in on the right for anything mentioning the existence of non-white people or racism.

In the corporate world, right-wing activists used viral social media campaigns to push major U.S. companies to drop DEI programs, and name brands like McDonald’s, Walmart, and Harley all backed away from such programs.

The president’s 2016 campaign began with his claim in Trump Tower that Mexican immigrants were rapists and drug dealers, and the Republican has continued attacking minorities since, branding Black Lives Matter protesters as “thugs,” claiming during the 2024 debates that Haitian migrants are eating cats, and accusing border-crossers of “poisoning the blood” of America.