It’s no surprise that President Donald Trump has ramped up top-down efforts on DEI. Even before he was re-elected, Trump’s win did not bode well for DEI’s outlook in the corporate world. Earlier this year, Trump went as far as to say that the current administration “ended DEI” during the most recent State of the Union.

Acting as an extension of the White House and its anti-DEI agenda, several government agencies have been cracking down on DEI — in the private sector, in the public sector and on those caught in between, such as federal contractors.

For example, following Trump’s core anti-DEI executive orders issued on the first days of his second administration, the U.S. Department of Justice has been active in releasing anti-DEI workplace guidance: one document on unlawful DEI-related workplace discrimination, released jointly with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March 2025, and another memo outlining prohibited DEI actions for employers receiving federal funding, released in July 2025. An attorney told HR Dive earlier this year that these two moves from the Trump administration signaled an aggressive commitment to enforcing anti-DEI rhetoric.

This past February, EEOC issued an anti-DEI letter addressed to Fortune 500 executives, asking them to root out potentially discriminatory programming that may be hiding under the DEI label and other “euphemisms.” In a corresponding press release, Chair Andrea Lucas urged “Corporate America to reject identity politics as its solution to society’s ills.”

While the anti-DEI deluge at the federal level is fast and furious, the administration is meeting some challengers. Nike pushed back on EEOC’s anti-DEI probe — not without a counter from EEOC, of course — and on April 20 a coalition of educators filed a lawsuit against Trump claiming his most recent anti-DEI executive order is unconstitutional.

Read on to get caught up.