U.S. Agency Caught Red-Handed Using Sneaky Trick To Sidestep Trump’s Agenda
Cleaning out the closet of Biden’s former federal government was never going to be easy, but the second Trump administration is going the distance to ensure that left-leaning agency heads can’t hide their DEI directors and directives beneath the shuffling of coded words or programs.
One of the 47th president’s first executive orders effectively mandated the firing of all diversity, equity, and inclusion officers across the federal government, to then be followed by the shuttering of their departments. But even in corners of the bureaucracy where MAGA might not expect DEI to thrive, it has.
That’s the conclusion of a probe of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, whose legacy leadership tried to conceal the mission of its chief diversity officer by quietly changing the individual’s title and hoping no one would notice. Lisa T. Boykin, who had been on the job at least since March of 2023, suddenly saw her CDO title replaced with the bland designation of “Senior Executive.”
However, online sleuths uncovered a press release from March 31, 2023, in which Boykin is quoted as the ATF chief diversity officer stressing the importance of “strategic hiring initiatives” that critics say eliminate a fairer, merit-based system of government hiring.
“ATF’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion has been long standing in the law enforcement community,” Boykin said at the time. “In support of President Biden’s Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce, ATF has deepened its commitment to being a model employer in support of our strategic hiring initiatives around recruitment, retention and career development.”
Under the Biden administration, the ATF became more widely known for its gun-restriction policies. Former directorial nominee David Chipman later withdrew from consideration after House Republicans raised alarms about his plans to roll back 2nd Amendment protections.
Instead, the Democratic-led U.S. Senate confirmed Steve Dettelbach in 2022. Under him, the Biden administration implemented new restrictions on so-called “ghost guns” lacking serial numbers or manufactured illegally using 3D printers. Firearms retailers were also required to maintain records of sales longer than in the past.
The discovery of Boykin’s professional shuffle comes just days after Deputy U.S. Attorney General Emil Bove sent a list of stringent directives to agency heads across the government. Among the requirements, senior officers must place all DEI employees on paid leave immediately, shut down the DEI departments’ external presence, like websites and social media accounts, and cancel partnerships with all DEI-related contractors.
Employees must also “divulge” if they know of any effort to conceal the use of DEI resources or staff “by using coded or imprecise language,” the memo states, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily Mail.
“These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination,” it adds.
On Tuesday, President Trump also signed an executive order rolling back affirmative action in federal contracting, a standard that had been in place since Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law in 1965.
‘Today, roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, critical and influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ the memo read.
