Democrats dealing w/Trump’s. Efforts to get Rid Off Affirmative Action across the Govt.

Democrats find themselves getting questions from a wide umbrella of those who have made gains after centuries of abuse from those who are afraid of what 2025 America IS…..

Not just 1950’s White ONLY… Straight MALE America…..

America IS NOT the America of back then….

There HAVE been Great strides……

And for the Democratic Party going forward?

They CANNOT be seen as standing for just ONE thing….

There MUST be a adjustmnet to the new ‘Rights’ landscape…..

But…Not a abandonment …

 

Just weeks into the Trump administration, Democrats are grappling with how to stand up for diversity and defend marginalized groups that have come under assault from the White House, without allowing their party to be defined or marginalized by those fights.

President Trump has pushed to make D.E.I. — diversity, equity and inclusion — a dirty word, racing to unravel diversity programs across the federal government at remarkable speed and claiming, baselessly, that D.E.I. efforts caused the fatal crash between a helicopter and a jet over the Potomac River.

At the same time, he has made a series of aggressive moves against transgender rights, including calling gender care for trans youths “chemical and surgical mutilation,” ordering transgender women in federal prisons to be transferred to men’s prisons and banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.

But Democrats are struggling to marshal an effective response. They are debating, publicly and privately, when to push back, how to push back and what, exactly, to push back on…

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Democrats say they feel pressure to settle on a countermessage as the Trump administration expands its offensive daily, pressing federal workers to excise gender-identifying pronouns, halting D.E.I.-related contracts, placing workers on administrative leaveand ending some federal recognition of Black History Month.

Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat who is among those making the most full-throated case for D.E.I., offered a tart explanation for why it had led to white backlash: “The only people that are crying are the mediocre white boys that have been beaten out by people that have historically had to work so much harder,” she said on CNN this week.

Others want the party to view identity politics as a minefield, and avoid it as much as possible….

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Evidence abounds that the party’s brand is seen as out of touch with the country’s concerns. Voters in a recent New York Times and Ipsos poll said they believed the two most important issues to the Democratic Party were abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. policy — neither of which were among the five most important issues to voters overall.

Some Democrats argue it is essential to protect diversity, equity and inclusion programs not only on the merits — to elevate qualified people who might otherwise be left behind — but also to combat the racism, sexism and transphobia that they say suffuse the anti-D.E.I. movement….

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But Republicans soon tapped into a backlash, turning a once-obscure academic concept, critical race theory, into a rallying cry against what they portrayed as reverse discrimination, and laying the groundwork for Mr. Trump’s more aggressive push against diversity-related efforts.

“The party has always adopted a tone and tenor of tolerance,” said Rahm Emanuel, the longtime Democratic operative and former White House chief of staff. “In the last four or five years, it went from tolerance and acceptance to advocacy. And the corresponding response has been rejection.”

Ms. Harris, as the Democratic nominee, rarely talked about her chance to become the first female, first Black female and first South Asian president. But her campaign continued to emphasize race and gender, including with ethnic outreach like an “Opportunity Agenda for Latino Men” in the race’s closing weeks.

It did not work. Exit polling showed Mr. Trump won a majority of Latino men….

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“It’s easy to say the country is just misogynist and racist,” he said. But he also pointed to Elissa Slotkin, Tammy Baldwin, Jacky Rosen and Ruben Gallego, Democrats who won Senate races in 2024 in states Mr. Trump carried. “We’re not going to stop nominating females, we’re not going to stop nominating nonwhites.”….

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