Michelle Obama Says America Did Not Show Her Family ‘Grace’ Because They Were Black (VIDEO) – What a crock of shit. She drank (a lot of) top shelf liquor, soaked the taxpayers for mega-millions for vacations, got on the cover of magazines for no reason other than being black. It sure wasn’t because she deserved it or looked good. The press protected and promoted her and now she has 3 mansions so that she doesn’t have to live with Barry. What an entitled person. Give us all a break.
The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) movement emerged in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests, initially as a well-intentioned effort to address systemic inequalities. However, it quickly transformed into a bureaucratic initiative aimed at embedding social justice programs into the fabric of universities and corporations.
Fueled by psychological manipulation, ideological extremism and the threat of violence, DEI programs spread across institutions. This led to the creation of a bloated bureaucracy that enforced ideological conformity and promoted divisive rhetoric, often pitting individuals against each other based on identity markers.
By 2024, the flaws in DEI became evident, with major corporations like Ford, Walmart and John Deere rolling back their DEI commitments due to legal and political pressures. A growing number of employees and students criticized DEI for fostering division and mediocrity, leading to a widespread backlash against the movement.
As DEI retreats, proponents are rebranding their ideology with terms like “inclusive excellence” and “belonging.” However, critics argue that the underlying ideology remains unchanged, and the movement’s advocates are likely to adapt and continue promoting their agenda under new labels.
The collapse of DEI has prompted a shift towards merit-driven frameworks that emphasize objective criteria and measurable outcomes. This includes structured hiring practices, transparent promotion policies and collaborative decision-making processes, which are seen as more effective and less divisive than the top-down mandates of DEI.
(Natural News)—The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) movement, once heralded as a moral and business imperative, has been exposed as one of the most elaborate cons of the 21st century. What began as a well-intentioned effort to address systemic inequalities quickly devolved into a bureaucratic hustle, enriching thousands of ideological hustlers while sowing division and mediocrity across academia and corporate America. Now, as DEI collapses under the weight of its own contradictions, it’s time to reflect on how this con took root—and why its demise is a victory for common sense and meritocracy.
The rise of the DEI con
The DEI movement gained traction in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests, which sparked a national conversation about race and inequality. But as Stanley K. Ridgley, author of DEI Exposed: How the Biggest Con of the Century Almost Toppled Higher Education, explains, DEI was never about genuine diversity or inclusion. Instead, it was a “bureaucratic initiative designed to anchor a new raft of social justice programs as an inescapable presence on the campus.”
Ridgley recounts how DEI metastasized across universities and corporations, fueled by a combination of psychological manipulation, ideological extremism and the threat of violence. “It was violence and the threat of violence that opened the door for this effervescence of DEI,” he writes. College administrations, fearing the chaos of 2020’s summer riots, capitulated to the demands of activists, allowing DEI to embed itself deeply into institutional structures.
The result? A bloated bureaucracy of “apparatchiks and supernumeraries” who peddled racialist pseudoscience and enforced ideological conformity. DEI training sessions became notorious for their divisive rhetoric, pitting employees and students against one another based on race, gender and other identity markers. As Ridgley bluntly puts it, “It was weird and alien and hateful at its core.”
The backlash begins
By 2024, the cracks in the DEI façade were impossible to ignore. Major corporations like Ford, Walmart and John Deere began rolling back their DEI commitments, citing mounting legal and political pressures. A Fox News poll conducted in early 2025 found that 45% of voters believed it was “extremely” or “very” important for President Donald Trump to focus on ending DEI programs.
The backlash wasn’t just political—it was personal. Employees and students who had long endured the mediocrity and divisiveness of DEI initiatives finally began speaking out. Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, who has seen the harmful effects of DEI in his practice, told Fox Business, “The trend over the last few years has been to make DEI programs into political commissars, to go after people who have different viewpoints, and they end up, in many ways, sowing more division in the institution that they’re supposed to help.”
Even DEI advocates like Naomi Wheeless acknowledged the role of political pressure in the movement’s decline. “It is that [Trump] is a president with a well-documented history of vindictiveness,” she said. “He creates a sense of fear and the feeling that whether we want to or not, we better fall in line.”
The con story lives on
As DEI retreats, its proponents are already scrambling to rebrand. Terms like “inclusive excellence” and “belonging” are emerging as replacements for the now-toxic DEI acronym. But as Ridgley warns, the underlying ideology remains the same. “The Con Story will morph and adapt,” he writes. “Buzzwords will change, new slogans will be coined, but the underlying ideology will remain the same as it always has.”
This isn’t the first time America has fallen for a con story. From the pseudoscience of Karl Marx to the utopian promises of radical activists, history is littered with examples of ideologies that duped the credulous. Ridgley draws a chilling parallel between the DEI movement and the case of Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old who murdered a man in New York City in 2024, driven by extremist ideology. “Persons who cheer the killer Luigi Mangione for his assassination of Brian Thompson also fully support DEI’s personnel, programs, policies and enforcement mechanisms on the college campuses,” Ridgley asserts.
A return to meritocracy
The collapse of DEI is a reminder that meritocracy and fairness are not just ideals—they are essential to a functioning society. As corporations and universities abandon DEI, many are turning to evidence-based, merit-driven frameworks that emphasize objective criteria and measurable outcomes. Structured hiring practices, transparent promotion policies and collaborative decision-making processes are proving to be more effective—and less divisive—than the top-down mandates of DEI.
The death of DEI is a victory for common sense, but the fight is far from over. As Ridgley warns, the con artists behind DEI will not go quietly. They will rebrand, relabel and repackage their ideology in an attempt to deceive a new generation of marks. But for now, America can breathe a sigh of relief that one of the biggest cons of the century has finally been exposed.
The lesson is clear: Ideological extremism and bureaucratic bloat have no place in our institutions. It’s time to return to the principles that made America great—individual merit, equal opportunity and the pursuit of excellence. DEI may be over, but the work of rebuilding trust and integrity in our institutions has only just begun.
As The Daily Signal previously reported, under President Barack Obama’s administration, the FAA scrapped a skills-based test and a certification program, and replaced it with a biographical questionnaire to attract more diverse applicants to become air traffic controllers. The FAA previously drew most candidates from the military and a group of 36 colleges that offer air traffic control programs.
“The Obama administration implemented a biographical questionnaire at the FAA to shift the hiring focus away from objective aptitude. During my first term, my administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence,” the Trump memorandum says. “But the Biden administration egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all executive departments and agencies to implement dangerous ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.”
The memorandum continues: “On my second day in office, I ordered an immediate return to merit-based recruitment, hiring, and promotion, elevating safety and ability as the paramount standard. [Wednesday’s] devastating accident tragically underscores the need to elevate safety and competence as the priority of the FAA.”
Critics have said the policy that originated under Obama and was revived by former President Joe Biden gives more points to applicants who have not been employed for the past three years than to an applicant who has been a pilot or a veteran with an air traffic control-related military background. During his first term, Trump discarded the policy in 2018, but Biden reinstated it.
“When you are flying on an airplane with your loved ones—which everyone of us in this room has—do you pray that your plane lands safely and gets you to your destination?” Leavitt asked reporters rhetorically on Friday. “Or do you pray that the pilot has a certain skin color? I think we all know the answer to that question. As President Trump said yesterday, it’s common sense.”
The spokeswoman said the Trump administration still believes it is safe to fly in the United States. Still, she said, the memorandum is intended to “deliver accountability.”
“In 2023, based on internal statistics at [the Federal Aviation Administration], there were 503 lapses of in-air traffic controller decisions, which was up to 65% over the previous year,” Kobach said. “And The New York Times reported also in 2023 that there were 300 near collisions in the preceding 12 months, which was double what it had been a decade earlier. So, these decisions about whom you hire have consequences.”
The attorney general then praised President Donald Trump’s immediate action against DEI initiatives.
“I think President Trump got it right when he immediately ended the DEI hiring in the FAA and in the air traffic controller world. But we want the best people. Whether it’s my pilot, my air traffic controller, or my surgeon, I don’t care what skin color they have,” Kobach said. “All I want is the most competent, skilled person because their decision could end my life in a second. I think most Americans would agree with that.”
In 2024 alone, FAA data reported that the Reagan Washington National Airport experienced at least eight near-midair collisions, according to The New York Times. The FAA has consistently said that due to a lack of air traffic controllers on the Eastern Seaboard, it has had to limit the number of flights allowed through the region.
The plane involved in the collision carried 60 passengers and four crew members. Three soldiers were on the helicopter, and it was reported that no one survived the incident. Newly confirmed U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that both aircraft were following their designated flight paths during the incident.
Losing Sheryl Sandberg was the best thing that happened to Meta. That and Zuckerberg growing a pair when he learned Ju-Jitsu.
In an opinion piece, former Facebook diversity executive Bärí A. Williams criticizes Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to disband the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, signaling a shift in priorities as he aligns with the incoming Trump administration.
Williams, author of Seen Yet Unseen: A Black Woman Crashes the Tech Fraternity and the founder of Facebook’s Supplier Diversity Program, recently published an opinion piece via MSNBC on the shutdown of Meta’s DEI initiatives. In the piece, Williams stated her concerns about Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to disband the company’s DEI programs, signaling a change in priorities as he seeks to align with the incoming Trump administration.
Williams expressed her disappointment in the abandonment of Meta’s Supplier Diversity Program, an initiative she spent countless hours developing. She writes, “From October 2014 to October 2016, I spent nights, weekends and even part of my maternity leave, creating the supplier diversity program. And now it’s defunct.” The decision to dismantle the Supplier Diversity Program comes as a surprise, especially considering Meta’s previous pledges to support diversity and inclusion. As Williams notes, “In June 2020, Facebook pledged a $1.1 billion ‘investment in Black and diverse suppliers and communities in the U.S.’”
However, Williams believes that with the departure of Sheryl Sandberg, who served as Facebook’s chief operating officer between 2008 and 2022 and was a champion of content moderation, sustainability, diversity, equity, and inclusion, “the buffer was removed.” She adds, “Zuckerberg, who’s now evangelizing on the virtues of ‘masculine energy’ in companies, has reportedly blamed Sandberg for the existence of the company’s diversity initiatives and said she was the reason why he couldn’t disband them.” Breitbart News previously reported on Zuckerberg passing the buck to Sandberg by blaming her for the company’s DEI lunacy. Williams believes “this is Zuckerberg showing us who he really is.”
President Donald Trump ‘s administration moved Tuesday to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off.
The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs that could touch on everything from anti-bias training to funding for minority farmers and homeowners. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and insisted on restoring strictly “merit-based” hiring.
There have been 15,000 acres, 1,000 structures destroyed. Nobody knows how many people are killed or missing. And how do we characterize this? Everybody’s talking about the Santa Ana winds, climate change—I mean everybody, the people in power.
But it was preventable. And once it started, this fire, it could have been assuaged. You could have had it lessened, that the severity didn’t have to be as catastrophic. So, I would characterize it as a DEI–Green New Deal hydrogen bomb. It’s something out of “Dante’s Inferno.”
And what I mean by that is, it’s a systems breakdown, a civilizational collapse. When you look at the people in charge, [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom flew in, to sort of do these performance-art stunts, but he has systematically ensured that water out of the Sacramento River and the watershed of Northern California would go out to the sea, rather than into the aqueduct, so Los Angeles didn’t have sufficient amounts of water.
He bragged not very long ago that he blew up four dams on the Klamath River. They provided 80,000 homes with clean hydroelectric power. They offered recreation, flood control, irrigation. He blew them up.
California’s fire management, whether we look at the Paradise Fire or the Aspen Fire near where I’m speaking, it destroyed 60 million trees. We have no timber industry in California. [Newsom’s] dismantled it.
We don’t clean the forest. We don’t let loggers come in and have a viable livelihood by harvesting trees. It’s sort of considered natural to let these things burn or to at least create the conditions in which they will inevitably be burned.
It’s almost as if we don’t like humans. We worry about grubs and worms and birds and the ecosystem.
The second breakdown was the mayor, Karen Bass, was in Africa. You tell me why the mayor of the third-largest city in the United States at fire season, when she had been warned and warned for days on end that the Santa Ana winds were up to 100 miles an hour in the evening, and there was a danger of fire, and she goes off to Africa for the inauguration of the president of Ghana.
With all due respect, Mayor, but who cares? You have an obligation to the 6 million people of greater Los Angeles. And then we have the fire chief. I don’t really care that she’s LGBTQ, I don’t care [about] any of that. All I do care is her emphases. She’s been bragging for the last two years that her goal was to make sure [the Fire Department] was diverse and inclusive.
That can be good if it’s competent. But when you announce that 70% of your hiring will not be meritocratic, but will be based on diversity, equity, inclusion, then you’re not putting the interest of your constituents first.
There were not even enough, there wasn’t enough water pressure in Pacific Palisades. Pacific Palisades is not where I live. It’s one of the wealthiest, most exclusive neighborhoods in the United States. If they don’t have water, then no one’s going to get water, believe me.
There’s not enough insurance. There were famous actors that didn’t have insurance. Why? Because industry is overregulated, it’s fraught with people who make fraudulent claims, and the insurance industry knows that California is hostile to it, but more importantly that it will never clean up its forest or take preventive, time-tried, ancient protocols to lessen the dangers of fire.
And so put it all together, whether it’s a deliberate policy to not store water, not preserve water. Last year was one of the wettest years that we’ve had. We’ve had three out of the last four years have been very wet. We had a huge snowpack. We had rivers that were running in 19th-century fashion, but out to the sea to save the delta smelt.
So, it was a total systems collapse from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention, force management, a viable insurance industry, a DEI hierarchy. You put it all together and it’s something like a DEI-Green New Deal hydrogen bomb.
Gavin Newsom was fiddling, as he’s almost Nero Newsom. And this has been something that is just unimaginable, this system’s breakdown.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass are seen here Nov. 16, 2023, at a joint press conference. (Sarah Reingewirtz/ Media News Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)
And to finish, what we’re seeing in California is a state with 40 million people. And yet the people who run it feel that it should return to a 19th-century pastoral condition. They are decivilizing the state, and deindustrializing the state, and defarming the state, but they’re not telling the 40 million people that their lifestyles will have to revert back to the 19th century when you had no protection from fire, you didn’t have enough water in California, you didn’t have enough power, you didn’t pump oil.
So, we are deliberately making these decisions not to develop energy, not to develop a timber industry, not to protect the insurance industry, not to protect houses and property.
And we’re doing it in almost a purely nihilistic fashion. And Karen Bass should resign. She came to the airport, back from Africa. She had nothing to say. She was confronted at the airport: “Why were you in Africa? Why did you cut the fire department?”
They cut the fire department by almost $18 million. They gave fire protective equipment to Ukraine’s first responders, and she had nothing to say. She had nothing to say because she couldn’t say anything.
I don’t want to be too pessimistic or bleak tonight, but this is one of the most alarming symptoms of a society gone mad, and if this continues, and if this were to spread to other states, we would become a Third World country if we’re not in parts already.
I don’t want to fly anymore because I don’t trust that they are hiring the best at Boeing, The FAA, Air Traffic Controllers, the Airline Pilots or any aspect of travel.
I want the best pilot and an airplane that stays in the air with all of it’s parts. I don’t want some ATC to ram 2 jets together because they can’t read a radar screen.
American just lost and has to get rid of DEI, but the remnants are there. Hire on talent and ability, not on quota and skin color
American Airlines (AA) will no longer be recruiting and hiring based on the dictates of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. The company admitted that the policy is a violation of federal laws that protect equal access to employment, America First Legal announced Tuesday.
So then why did they do it in the first place? Did they think leftist priorities were immune to federal laws?
The US Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) informed America First Legal about the decision. “American companies must return to using merit—not the desire to check a DEI box—to select the most skilled and qualified employees. American Airlines’ agreement with the OFCCP is AFL’s latest victory in our fight to put illegal discrimination on the no-fly list,” said Will Scolinos, America First Legal Counsel.
Wow. Who would have guessed that hiring based on merit rather than skin color is the moral way to go?
Question: Are they stopping this racist hiring practice because they suddenly realized how evil it was? Or are they just doing it because they got caught?
The decision came as a result of a complaint filed by AFL against AA with the OFCCP, which accused the company of not complying with federal law even though the airline does a massive amount of business with the federal government and has been the beneficiary of $140 million in federal contracts since 2008. In order to qualify for those contracts, AA had to promise to adhere to the Executive Order 11246 that prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotion, or employee training based of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It has failed to do so and has embraced discrimination based on race and sex in its hiring practices, Cadet Academy program and promotional activity.
Additionally, given that air travel is a huge deal, how could they have thought box-checking was the best way to hire people? Sounds like someone who was hired by checking a box made this policy the status quo.
It’s unclear how leftist corporations can get away with breaking such laws; if the roles were reversed and a certain skin color they do not prioritize was uplifted, they would never let it go. And while both are equally immoral, only one barely gets a slap on the wrist when the act is committed. And to say these people have double standards would be an understatement.
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A United Airlines flight that departed from San Francisco International Airport Friday morning lost a panel, which was discovered after landing in Oregon, the Rogue Valley International Medford Airport confirmed to KRON4.
Flight 433 landed safely at Medford Airport around 11:30 a.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The missing panel has not been found. At this time, it is unknown how the panel fell off the plane. No damage to the plane was reported, and normal airport operations resumed, Medford airport officials said.
United did not declare an emergency landing as there was no indication of damage to the aircraft during the flight. According to the airline, there were 139 passengers and six crew members on board. The plane involved was a Boeing 737-800.
This afternoon, United flight 433 landed safely at its scheduled destination at Rogue Valley International/Medford Airport. After the aircraft was parked at the gate, it was discovered to be missing an external panel. We’ll conduct a thorough examination of the plane and perform all the needed repairs before it returns to service. We’ll also conduct an investigation to better understand how this damage occurred.United Airlines Spokesperson
I can tell Boeing how it happened. It’s just like the others that just happened. When you hire based on diversity, you get crappy quality. Hire on meritocracy and the planes won’t fall apart in mid air. Don’t let it be lost that it was United, who leads the industry in this farce
I wish the rest of Air Travel and the military were also
🧵There is one tiny corner of the military that, so far, remains 100% DEI-free. No race or gender preferences allowed. No quotas. Website, shockingly, free of DEI buzzwords like diversity, equity, gender. I can't believe it still exists!
The obvious is that they are run by liberals. It’s the same group of people who were protesting in the 60’s that never left school and took it down the drain.
Now DIE, CRT, victimhood, affirmative action and other nonsense policies have made the sheepskin and education you were supposed to get worth little to not much.
Gone are the days when the best tried their hardest to get in and then get ahead. Besides being woke, the Ivy’s discriminate against Asians and Whites, forcing them to have higher entry standards so that the schools can manipulate their quota’s.
It’s not fair to the students who don’t get in, nor to the students who did get in but can’t keep up. At this point, I could get into the failure of the education system feeding the colleges, but that’s not the point.
While Harvard is the poster boy for the issue, it by no means has a stranglehold on this problem. The California schools are just as woke and have been since hippies.
Since I’m taking university classes right now (Hillsdale College), I’d advise students and parents to evaluate carefully how they spend their money, not waste it.
More on Meritocracy:
We need to return to meritocracy and not diversity for the sake of appearances. It’s not fair to anyone and is only a position of bending over to the woke. Stop it.
Harvard President Claudine Gay claims that she is being forced to resign because of racism. As Greg Gutfeld aptly observed on Fox, Gay is not a victim of racism — she was appointed because she is the beneficiary of racist policy. Ms. Gay is a sterling example of how DEI is the antithesis of meritocracy.
While it may seem that Gay is on the chopping block because of plagiarism or her defense of calls for anti-Jewish genocide, the real reason for her downfall is her lack of qualifications for the job. She was appointed not because she was the best or the brightest, but because she fit the diversity profile that Harvard wanted. Gay is the perfect symbol for a university that has become a bastion of left-wing ideology and the enemy of meritocracy.
Does Harvard really want diversity? If you are a conservative professor, try to get hired at Harvard. People who demand diversity, such as the people who run Harvard, are against viewpoint diversity — also known as free speech. Diversity means “it is great to look different as long as you think the way I do.” Conservatives need not apply.
I recently had some surgery. The first doctor I went to gave me the talk about it being no problem and easy. I wanted a second opinion and it turned out that the actual diagnosis and surgery were completely different than what doctor one diagnosed. Doctor two was the head surgeon at the State University, teaches and has many published papers.
I and everyone else I imagine want competency, in fact excellence in care. I want meritocracy in selection, not equality. It’s like the pilot on my plane. I want the best, not the most diverse. I want my ass to get there safely.
If you are going to put your life in someone else’s hands while you are under anesthesia, it damn well better be the best trained one there is.
Now this:
DEI is a hyperaggressive and politicized quota system, a radicalized version of affirmative action for certain so-called “marginalized” people. It divides society into “groups” based on race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, and so on. It gives preference to certain favored groups, which include, in descending order: Muslims, transgenders, gays, blacks, Hispanics, and women. It discriminates against other groups currently out of favor, chiefly whites, males, heterosexuals, and Christians. Alas, of late, another group has joined the list of the despised, and is now, perhaps, the chief target of DEI hatred: The Jews.
Rejecting the individual, DEI reduces American society into a collection of groups or tribes, hence the “tribalization“ of society. This tribalization (racialization) is based on certain immutable, physical traits such as skin color and sex. This, by the way, has been the norm for all of human history and throughout the world. America was unique in that it rejected tribalization, group characteristics, and superficial appearance, and elevated the individual, which accounted for its historic success, and the reason so many sought to live here.
DEI, furthermore, has no place in any institution that values standards and color-blind meritocracy. If diversity becomes the driving force behind hiring and promotion, or even a small part of it, rather than skill, accomplishment, and merit, then it necessarily compromises standards.
If the goal is diversity, and to have proportional representation in Memorial Hospital’s work force, based on race, sex, sexual orientation, and other such trivialities, even in part, and the hospital does not contemplate the individual and his unique abilities and contributions over all else, then the system collapses and becomes simply one of groups or tribes competing with one another. Meritocracy necessarily dies in such a system. You can have DEI or meritocracy, but not both.
Delusions of Adequacy 