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Meta, the company owning Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, is immediately shuttering its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs across all its platforms, saying the “legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing.” This comes on the heels of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s trip to meet President Trump at Mar-a-Lago ((Bending the Knee: Now Mark Zuckerberg Makes the Pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago), a $1 million contribution to Trump’s inaugural fund (Oh, Please: Zuckerberg Kicks in $1 Million Peace Offering to Trump’s Inauguration Fund ), and his stunning announcement on Tuesday that he was abolishing Meta’s use of “fact checkers” (WHOA: Meta Ends Fact-Checking As Zuckerberg Vows to Restore Free Expression on Facebook).

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In a memo to employees, Meta vice president of human resources Janelle Gale announced five big retreats from DEI.

  • Cutting Meta’s DEI team: Meta will no longer have a team focused on DEI. Maxine Williams, the company’s chief diversity officer, is taking on a new role at Meta, focused on accessibility and engagement, Gale wrote.
  • Ending equity and inclusion programs: Meta will instead build programs “that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background,” Gale said.
  • Sunsetting supplier diversity efforts: Meta will end efforts to source business suppliers from diverse-owned businesses. Moving forward, the company will “focus our efforts on supporting small and medium-sized businesses that power much of our economy,” Gale wrote.
  • Ending the “Diverse Slate Approach” to hiring: While Meta will continue to source candidates from different backgrounds, it will no longer use the diverse-slate hiring approach, which ensures a diverse pool of candidates is considered for every open position. “We believe there are other ways to build an industry-leading workforce and leverage teams made up of world-class people from all types of backgrounds,” Gale wrote.
  • Ending representation goals: Having representation goals, “can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender,” Gale wrote. “While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it,” she said. She noted the company, “previously ended representation goals for women and ethnic minorities.”

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With this announcement, Meta becomes the third major corporation to bail out of the burning DEI airplane since Trump was reelected. Walmart terminated its DEI programs in late November, and McDonalds dropped its programs Tuesday. They join a growing list of companies deciding DEI is terrible for business since the US presidential election season got underway:

Conservative legend Andrew Breitbart once said that “politics is downstream of culture.” I think, at least with DEI and transgenderism, that culture can be influenced by politics as aggressive legal attacks and political pushback can stymie or reverse cultural trends that seemed irresistible only a few years ago.