This executive order is not about restoring merit. It’s about enshrining exclusion—a calculated dismantling of efforts to level the playing field, repackaged in the sanitized language of “individual achievement” and “equal protection.” Let’s call it what it is: a war on diversity, equity, and inclusion, waged by a man who mistakes fairness for favouritism and justice for grievance.

Donald Trump wraps his attack in the flag of the Civil Rights Act, but it’s a cruel distortion. The Act was written to protect those who had been systematically excluded—not to uphold a false version of “colorblindness” that ignores the ongoing effects of structural racism and generational inequality. This order pretends that bias no longer exists, then uses that fiction to strip away every tool we’ve built to fight it.

Revoking executive orders that promoted diversity in hiring, contracting, and environmental justice isn't just bureaucratic cleanup. It’s ideological cleansing—a return to the pretense that equal opportunity magically exists without effort, that the market is meritocratic, and that historical disadvantage should be politely forgotten. But merit doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is cultivated—or crushed—by access, exposure, mentorship, education, and dignity. To ignore that is to rig the game while preaching about fairness.

And let’s be clear: “Restoring merit” is a dog whistle. It's the same recycled rhetoric used for decades to resist civil rights, integration, and affirmative action. It's the language of people who were never told “no” until someone else finally got a seat at the table. What this executive order really protects is the comfort of the historically dominant, shielding them from confronting the systems that have worked in their favour for generations.

Worse, this order encourages agencies to root out and punish organizations that promote DEI—as if equity were a crime. It reads like a blacklist of progress, directing federal agencies to track and target universities, nonprofits, corporations, and professional associations simply for trying to reflect the nation they serve. This is not about fairness. It’s about vengeance. It’s about silencing a generation that dared to question the status quo.

Trump’s vision of America is one where inclusion is subversive, where equality is rewritten to mean sameness, and where justice means ignoring difference. But equity is not discrimination. Diversity is not division. Inclusion is not weakness.

This executive order may gut language from government websites and federal contracts, but it cannot erase the truth: that fairness requires intentional effort, and progress is not a zero-sum game.

In the end, this isn’t a defence of civil rights. It’s an assault on their evolution. And history will judge it not as a restoration—but as a regression cloaked in the rhetoric of righteousness.