Cabinet members should take advantage of the inevitable frenzy that will surround the new administration’s various policies and personalities. Abolishing DEI, while important, will register as a secondary headline. If officials successfully abolish these diversity programs, they can move on and never have to address it again. The principle underlying this course of action is simple: America doesn’t need a permanent DEI bureaucracy. America needs an effective administration that treats its citizens in a fair manner without regard to race.

There is a great clanging and clamoring around the offices in Washington, D.C. and Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Political operatives, policy wonks, and opposition figures are all planning for the arrival of the second Donald Trump administration.

I’ve spoken with many of the people in the president-elect’s orbit who are planning how to staff Cabinet departments and set a new tone on the administration’s first day. Much of our discussion has focused on the approach to DEI, or “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

While the officials in Trump world are all committed to abolishing DEI in theory, they have yet to settle on a practical approach for doing so. With this in mind, I’m writing this open letter to Trump’s incoming Cabinet, outlining how to shut down DEI and win the fight for public opinion.

The first step is to understand how DEI bureaucracies became embedded in the federal government. That is the result of actions by two presidents: Barack Obama, who issued Executive Order 13583, which laid the groundwork for many national “diversity” initiatives; and Joseph Biden, who signed Executive Orders 13985 and 14035, which entrenched DEI principles into every federal department and routed billions of dollars toward advancing this ideology throughout American society.

Having understood this history, Cabinet officials must work with President Trump to rescind President Obama and President Biden’s executive orders. In their place, the 47th president should sign an order advancing the principle of colorblind equality, stating that the government shall treat all individuals equally according to their merit, rather than unequally according to their ancestry.

The second task is the work of administration. It’s one thing to issue an executive order, and another to make it a reality across the sprawling federal bureaucracy.

On this score, my primary guidance for Trump’s Cabinet is swiftly to shut down all DEI programs and to terminate the employment of all policy officials responsible for those programs, effective immediately. There is an enormous advantage to acting quickly and aggressively on the first day, when the public is most willing to grant the new administration discretion. E

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