Transcript of Diversity Fire

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I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public in private light. We will forge a society that is color-blind and merit-based.

One of the main things the new Trump administration is targeting, purging, slashing, to pick your verb, is diversity, equity, and inclusion, better known as DEI. President Trump continuing a record-setting flurry of executive actions with a new series of orders that aim to end all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion or DEI programs. The President has ordered all federal employees working in diversity, equity, and inclusion roles to be placed on paid leave starting today. This memo sent from the US Office of Personnel Management to the heads of all federal departments and agencies outlines the President's orders. A letter must be sent to employees in DEI roles, informing them that they will be placed on paid administrative leave immediately.

A memorandum dated January 31st, 2025 is to me from our Chief Human Capital Officer.

We spoke with an employee of the Department of Education who received this memo. He's a member of the American Federation of Government Employees Union, but he asked that we not use his name. For the At the peak of this interview, we'll call him Tim.

This email provides important information regarding your employment status. Effective January 31st, 2025, you will be placed on administrative leave with full pay and benefits pursuant to the President's executive order on DEIA and further guidance from OPM. This administrative leave is not being done for any disciplinary purpose. Please note the following.

The memo is less than a page, and it goes on to say that the employee does not need to come into the office, that his email will be suspended, and that updates will be coming as soon as they are available. Tim's access to email had actually been cut off several days before he even received the memo informing him it was going to be cut off.

I did not know immediately what was happening. Those who work specifically in DEI, they had lost their access. My daily job is not working in DEI, so I was wondering what was going on and could it be related to that?

Tim's job entails technical assistance and providing training to colleges and universities around the country. But in the end, Tim found out that he was still linked to DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

My supervisor dug deeper into it and found out that it was related to a two-day training course that related to DEI. This training took place during Trump's last administration, where basically they had asked those that were trying to add more to the repertoire toolkit in terms of leadership skills and being in the realm of trying to better serve the population or your colleagues around you to take this training. During that time, Bessey Valls was Secretary of Education, and they had actually sent an actual memo out encouraging employees to take this training and that they were in support of this training. So that was I would say roughly over five years ago or more. You're talking around the 2019 time frame. To my dismay, it's now 2025, and I'm receiving a letter many days after many others received this letter saying the access had been revoked or They'll cut off.

So you took a training that was run or sanctioned, supported by the Trump administration. And then because you took that training years ago, you're basically being targeted and your access has been shut off and you're on administrative leave at the Department of Education. Is that right?

Absolutely.

Probably over five years ago, I took a diversity training.

We spoke with another employee from the Department of Education and member of the American Federation of Government Employees Union, who has also been put on administrative leave after having received the same memo. Like Tim, we aren't going to use her real name. We'll call her Jill. She, too, took this DEI training during the first Trump administration, and she told us what she learned.

When I took the training that I was able to make it impactful for me, I do a lot of training in the department. So the accessibility piece, which is rarely mentioned, DEIA, actually. So as a trainer, this is actually I was also being complicit with the law. I just made sure that the trainings were FABLA-A compliant, meaning people with disabilities would be able to view the presentations without any issues. I provided transcripts, made sure captions were on, and things of that nature. Also making sure that there weren't any sudden flashing pictures for people who may be prone to epilepsy or seizures. That's what I was concerned about, accessibility.

Like Tim, her job is not related to DEIA.

That was the extent of my involvement with DEIA. Not that there's anything wrong with DEIA because there's a lot of value in having diverse teams and making sure that opportunities are equitable and that you include everyone worn.

What does it say to you that this administration is so intent and so focused on getting rid of anybody that had anything to do with DEIA, that they're willing to basically put on administrative lead believe people who were only glancingly involved in this stuff? What does it all mean to you?

Honestly, the word vindictive comes to mind. I'm like, I don't understand. It just seems like it's a retaliation for something. But I don't know what exactly. Who hurt you? Who hurt you? Why are you doing this? The policies should be clear and consistent. You can't encourage something one day and then punish it the next day, you're thinking you're doing a great thing, something to be very proud of. Then you're educating yourself. It's also professional growth, and I value professional growth. Prior to coming to the department, I was a high school English teacher for five years. I've always valued education. I've been in the education sector for over two decades. I'm not one to just sit by when the training is made available and being encouraged and say, Oh, I'm not going to take it. You have go getters. A lot of go getters took that training.

It's also so representative of just a real change in thinking about the importance of diversity and whether diversity even matters. And in fact, not only does this administration saying diversity doesn't matter, but that if you have been involved in it as a concept, that's bad. I wonder how you think about that.

When I hear Trump say he's getting rid of the woke crap, if he's equating DEIA with an automatic seat to minorities for opportunity, and that's not what it is. Deia is just making sure that people with disabilities have equal access to opportunities and basic functions. Making sure that a wheelchair can roll up on a sidewalk easily is a part of DIA initiatives, things of that nature. So what's the reason? What's the purpose behind this? I actually read that he wanted to remove radicals from the department. And I'm like, I'm not a radical. I'm a civil servant. I am a civil servant. And what I really want the American public to understand is that civil servants are your neighbors. Eighty % of civil servants live outside of the Washington, DC, area. They're everywhere, all across the nation. They're your neighbors, they're your friends, They're your friends of your friends, family members. They're in the libraries. They're in the post office. Civil servants are everywhere, and most civil servants have something intrinsic within them that just wants to give back.

Both of these employees have spent decades working for the government in some capacity. Before his job at the Department of Education, Tim served in the military. His wife is currently on active duty. Tim's job allows him to take care of the kids when she travels for work. Jill went to college through help from agencies under the Department of Education, and that's why she's devoted nearly 20 years to working for that Department after first working as a teacher. These are some of the people being singled out in Donald Trump's quest to rid the government of diversity and inclusion. And given the chaos and disregard with which this is all being carried out, it's not even clear whether people like Tim and Jill are the intended targets or simply just collateral damage. As with many things, Trump, it is possible that the turmoil and the confusion and the fear are all just part of the point. This is Trump land with Alex Wagner. This week, we dig into the Trump administration's full scale assault on DEI, the War on Woke. We speak with one of the people representing the employees caught in the DEI madness.

If you can be attacked as a federal employee for standing up for those values, then what is the message that they're trying to send?

And one of the architects of the conservative battle against diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion. That sounds great. Include a wide range of people, treat people equally, and make sure that people of a variety of backgrounds feel included.

But this is a lie.

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I do think it's worth being very clear-eyed, very realistic about what's going on here.

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The Union representing Education Department employees says that at least 74 employees in the union, plus another 25 non-union managers, were placed on leave for their supposed ties to DEIA. We reached out to numerous employees who were placed on leave, and most of them didn't want to speak with us on the record because as they were, understandably, concerned about potential retaliation. Many of them have sought legal counsel.

I represent several US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights employees who were placed on administrative leave on the night of January 31st.

Subo Chandra is a civil rights attorney. Last week, he sent a letter to the acting and Deputy General Counsel at the Department of Education, demanding they end the administrative leave while insisting it never should have occurred at all.

The common thread that seems to unite almost all of these individuals is that they either were participants on a committee focused on diversity and inclusion issues And in some instances, the individuals placed on leave had simply attended a training on diversity. So that's the common thread. And interestingly, we've heard now not just from Office for Civil Rights employees who are our law enforcement officials, but also from other US Department of Education employees outside of OCR who share the same theme.

It's very Orwellian, the idea that you would go to this training session that was supported and scheduled by Trump and his administration officials in the first term. And this is the committee.

Right. Yeah.

And then be targeted by the second Trump administration for doing what you were supposed to have done. I mean, it's just like a staggering about face. I guess I can't get over what a stunning example it is of that.

Well, and what is truly bizarre about the whole thing is that DEI or DEIA, as it says in the presidential executive order, is diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. And so if you can be attacked as a federal employee for standing up for those values, particularly at the invitation of the first Trump administration, Then what is the message that they're trying to send, that their preference instead, instead they venerate uniformity, inequity, exclusion, and inaccessibility? It doesn't make any sense. It's almost a perversion of language where they are trying to demonize something that at the end of the day is just anti-discrimination activity. That's what it is. It's people who are participating on a committee to ensure that the department doesn't doesn't discriminate in hiring, promotions, assignments, how people are treated. And there's just nothing inherently wrong with that unless you're a white supremacist or a Nazi. So it's bizarre. And my contention is that it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination in employment and bars retaliation against people for opposing discrimination in employment.

Yeah. I mean, that's where a lot of this There's the sociocultural aspect and the currency that DEI has in American culture and American politics. But then there's the law. The Civil Rights Law is pretty clear on this, and I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on that, because I know you sent a letter to the Department of Education's General Council.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is clear. It bars discrimination based on race, gender, national origin, color, sex, and other protected characteristics that we're all familiar with. At the same time, it protects employees from facing retaliation when they have opposed such discrimination. One of the things Alex, that I keep asking myself is, where are the lawyers? Who are these lawyers that are telling them this is okay? Did they talk to lawyers at all? And if they did, did those lawyers go get their law degrees at Trump University? What is going on here? That's what I'm left with, this utter bafflement as to how anybody could have thought this was a good idea legally, set aside morally.

I wonder if you have a theory about how they went about targeting these specific employees. On its face, it sounds like the Office of Civil Rights, if you're a random Doge employee parachuting in with the mandate to eradicate wokeness, the Office of Civil Rights, that sounds woke, so let's get rid of that. Do you think it might be as as simple as that?

It appears that somebody was doing some search terms or looking at a list maybe of committee members, looking at lists of people who attended training, or just doing some a word search, and then immediately started engaging in sniper fire against these employees. I'm not suggesting that it would be okay to take out these employees if their full-time jobs were related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. I'm not suggesting that at all. But the fact is that the employees that I've come into contact with and become aware of within the Office for Civil Rights and outside of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education who've been subjected to this are all individuals who do not have diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility as part of their full-time operations within the department. They're not the Chief Diversity Officer. They don't hold titles of that kind at all. One is involved in contracting in the Department of Ed. The OCR employees, you're talking about a regional director, you're talking about a chief attorney. You're talking about people whose full-time day-to-day jobs is enforcing the civil rights laws to benefit ordinary Americans. And I think that's an important part of the conversation.

Right. And not that you should and can be fired because you worked on DEI stuff, but these folks didn't even do that. That wasn't what they were working on.

No. And I'm going to add one other thing, Alex. The truth is, if you think about the thousands of Americans that are being affected by these key federal government law enforcement officials being sidelined. We're talking about thousands and thousands of people who are not going to properly have their complaints concerning disabilities access in K through 12 schools, Title IX complaints involving sexual assault on college campuses, the anti-Semitism complaints that the administration claims it wants to pursue. Those kinds of claims are not getting properly processed because so many key law enforcement officials have been sidelined that the backlog that OCR has already been experiencing for years due to chronic understaffing is going to be even more exacerbated. My understanding from one of my clients is that there are at least a thousand new complaints that are just going unreviewed right now.

It all seems so haphazard and potentially unlawful and also stupid. Do you feel like at some point someone over there is going to come to their senses and say, actually, we did this wrong?

That's what I'm really hoping, Alex. That's why I sent the letter I sent. One would hope that somewhere in the midst of all this crazy that the administration is engaged in, that responsible lawyers will stand up and look at what they're doing and say, We cannot do this. This violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We cannot retaliate against federal employees because they have engaged in anti-discrimination activities within the office.

Chandra explains that the Department of Education has 10 business days to place someone on administrative leave while an investigation is conducted. But in this case, the department never even explained why the leave was happening to begin with. The deadline to either extend or end that leave is tomorrow. Friday, the 14th. By the time we recorded this podcast, Chandra's clients hadn't heard anything. We'll be right back.

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The battle over DEI, the war on so-called wokeness, has been a long time in the making, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Florida.

One of the items that we discussed today with Governor DeSantis and legislators present is that diversity, equity, and inclusion, which sounds great, but in practice, divides people and offers separate judgments on the basis of race and identity.

That's the voice of Christopher Ruffo, a conservative activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, speaking in Florida in 2023. He's not an educator by training or profession, nor is he from Florida for that matter. But his influence on the state's education system, and now very possibly the countries, is hard to even measure. Following the summer of racial justice protests in 2020, Ruffo was successful in sparking conservative pushback to racial equity measures like DEI policies. He began using the term critical race theory, in reality, an advanced legal theory. He began using that term as a derisive catch-all term to describe teachings about slavery and racism and related topics that might make someone feel bad about their race. This war against so-called critical race theory and wokeness in general led to widespread school board protests and takeovers, as well as actual laws banning the supposed practice. Florida was ground zero.

Governor Ron DeSantis's message was clear.

He wants to stop woke activism.

That's the name of the new legislative proposal he announced on Wednesday.

The Stop the wrongs to our Kids and Employees Act. What would it do? Block critical race theory from schools and workplaces. In 2023, Ruffo also became involved in Governor DeSantis's hostile takeover of New College of Florida, a small liberal arts school in Sarasota that became the test case for the war on woke. I spent a good part of 2023 covering that takeover.

There's an intrusion into the classroom in a way that we haven't seen before.

People are taking books off their syllabus.

People are taking books off their syllabi. People are shutting down programs. People are not teaching certain classes.

We've been hearing words like woke critical race theory for years now.

I could not tell you what they mean. I literally could not tell you. When Woke, you mean practicing basic empathy, valuing people who are part of your Critical race theory, you mean American history.

It's so confusing. After making a name for himself in Florida, Ruffo seems to be setting his sights on Washington. Last week, Ruffo posted a photo on X of the Department of Education Building in Washington, DC See, with the caption, I'm going in. He went on to say, I will be launching a new campaign to expose ideological corruption at the Department of Education beginning next week. The permanent bureaucracy must and will be held to account. Tick Talk. Chris Ruffo joined me this week to talk about what exactly is happening at the Department of Education. Okay, so thanks for doing this.

My pleasure.

I know that you've been a big booster of cuts to the federal workforce, especially the Department of Education. It would be great and helpful just to get a sense of what your role is in the Trump administration at this point.

Sure. I'm just a friend and advisor to the administration and a number of cabinet teams, and particularly on education, I think that's going to be the next phase in not only the DOGE project, but in the president's executive orders, restructuring the government. The team there is already making progress. When the secretary takes office, I think the pace of progress will accelerate, and shortly enough, it will be all systems go.

I guess when you say you're a friend to the administration, I know you posted images on Twitter that I'm going in and that you're in the inner sanctum of the secretary's office. Can you help me understand what you were doing there? I guess it doesn't sound like in an official capacity.

Yeah. As a policy analyst and advisor, I took meetings with the department's leadership team to talk to them about some of the potential reforms that they might consider, both related to the Department of Education and also related to reforms to the higher education and university systems. A lot of these folks are people I've been working with for a number of years in other capacities. Now that they're in office, some of the ideas we've been thinking about, certainly since 2020, have the chance of actually becoming policy. To the extent that I can offer valuable advice, assistance, a feedback, I'm very excited and very happy to do so.

Yeah. I mean, it does sound like it's... Again, this is just going by the Twitter stuff, but the The idea is, it sounds a little bit more, for lack of a better term, aggressive than feedback and proposals. It sounds like you're very much involved in the fight to restructure the department. But let me know if that's a mischaracterization.

Sure. I mean, it's up to others to determine the language about it. But I've been working on higher education reform in Florida, around the country, and now there's an opportunity to get some of what I think are good ideas and good policies that we've been implementing at the state level, translating those to the national level. The department is in great hands, a lot of very talented, very smart people. But like any government, they'll need help on the outside, both in media, in policy, in offering analysis and support. That's what I'm doing. We'll see, I think in the coming weeks and months, which ideas come to the forefront and which ideas actually succeed.

I'd love to know what you think of the restructuring thus far. In particular, today, I spoke with a number of Department of Education employees who were put on administrative leave, and they were told, based on the memo that they received, that it was because of their affiliation with DEIA, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. They don't actually work on any of those issues, but a number of them attended a DEIA training session that was sponsored and in some cases mandated by the first Trump administration. That's when they attended these seminars in these training sessions. That appears to be the reason why they've been put on leave. Does that bother you? I mean, do you feel like that's the right reform that should be happening at the Department of Education?

I mean, I obviously don't have the particular names or job descriptions of the people that you're talking about, but the President His defense executive order was quite clear. He determined that DEI is a discriminatory type of policy that violates the principle of Colorblind equality and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He instructed his administration to immediately terminate all DEI policies and programs and to put on leave any employees that are responsible for administering those discriminatory policies and programs. If anything, I think that the department has not gone far enough. I think that there should be much more significant reforms. I think that the federal student loan portfolio should be spun out into a separate agency with more expertise on financial markets. I think that the K through 12 student funding should be block granted to states. I think the rest of the department should just be dissolved and the majority of the 4,000 employees encouraged to seek other opportunities elsewhere.

I know you have a breathtaking set of proposals that you'd like to see instituted at the federal level. I guess I'm trying to get at the idea that the standard for expulsion or being put on leave seems to be super porous and not particularly focused. I mean, this is from talking to people directly affected by this who literally just don't work on DEI issues at all, but who, for example, did it. But let me just get your thought on this because there were literally DEIA trainings that were supported by, that were discussed publicly by the Education Secretary, Betsey DeVoss, under President Trump in Trump One, for lack of a better term. Now in Trump Two, we're seeing a wholesale reversal of that. I wonder if you think that there's anything, shall we say, critical about that or problematic about a set of mandates that were instituted. People followed the rules, they followed the letter of the law, and now they're being punished for that, or even just the Trump administration's reversal on DEI policy writ large.

Yeah, I mean, First, I'd be very skeptical regarding the facts. I don't think that the Department of Education team has mistakenly placed on leave employees who are not affiliated with DEI. And so I'd be very curious to get the actual details of these because the stories that I've seen and the cases that I've seen across the public media were all individuals that were intimately and integrally involved in the DEI programs and DEI departments. In fact, I think that those departments had a massive footprint in the Department of Education. If anything, the opposite is probably true. Many of the people who were working on DEI may have not yet been identified and placed on leave.

You don't think there's any possibility that in this sweep a keeping set of memoranda that went out that people, and it sounds like it's mostly Doge employees that are doing this, that they maybe got it wrong?

I mean, look, it's hypothetically possible, but I haven't seen a single factually substantiated instance of that happening. If that happens, there's always the possibility of reversing it. Large restructurings, there are sometimes mistakes. But so far, I haven't seen that at all. Again, if anything, the number employees total who have been placed on leave is far less than the total number of DEI employees. I think there's still actually much more room to go. If anything, it's the other side of the coin that has to turn.

Well, a number of these employees have now retained legal counsel. They've written a letter to the acting counsel and the deputy counsel at the Department of Education, in part saying, the lawyer said that retaliating against employees who've participated in efforts that again, were set in place by Trump himself is prohibited by law. They're seeking legal recourse here. Their lawyer believes that this may be a violation of the Civil Rights Act. I know you have big feelings about the 1964 Civil Rights Rights Act. I know you think it's in part overly broad and has been weaponized by the left. Could you talk about your concern that some of this attempt to roll back the... Some people would say roll back the clock, but I guess roll back efforts that have been made towards a more diverse, inclusive, and accessible society, that that no longer should be protected under federal law? Do you want to talk a little bit about how you think the civil rights laws that we have right now factor into any of the work that's being done by this administration?

Sure. Yeah. I think that the President has made concrete steps to improve the equal protection under the law for every American. The basic premise of his executive orders, rescinding affirmative action, Lyndon Responses Affirmative Action executive order, rescinding the Biden-Harris Administration's DEI executive orders, is to simply say, in America, we should have a system of colorblind equality in which each individual is treated, is judged according to his or her accomplishments rather than his or her ancestry. I don't think that whether you call it affirmative action or DEI or as Ibram Kennedy has done, positive discrimination, I think it's time in the United States to say, we're just going to treat everyone equally an individual. We're going to adopt a policy of colorblind equality, which I think is what most people believe is the spirit of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We're going to turn that into law. Again, I don't think any individual should be judged according to his or her race for hiring, for promotions, for loan terms, for advancement. The public agrees by a 60 point margin, when you poll Americans, do you want a colorblind society or a race conscious society? They want a colorblind society by a massive 4: 1 margin.

I think that our interpretation of civil rights law is not only correct on the merits and the morals, but it's actually in line with the vast majority of the American public.

It would seem to me that that question probably context really matters on that. I mean, I think the idea of a society that doesn't punish people on the basis of race is probably a dream shared by a lot of people, regardless of partisan affiliation. But the practical publication of disassembling civil rights protections that have existed for the better part of half a century. I mean, maybe if you phrase it like that, however, I don't know which poll you're talking about. I feel like in lieu of getting into the weeds of what specifically should happen vis-a-vis the anti-woke agenda, I guess I'm trying to understand, do you believe that... You think the American public is with you on this? Are you confident that the courts are going to be with you on this? Because I think back to the Stop Woke Act in Florida, which sought to prevent private companies from holding mandatory diversity training, but the courts blocked that and found that that violated the first and 14th amendments of the Constitution. The law is not necessarily that fungible on this. I wonder, tell me a little bit about how you see this holding up legally?

Yeah, I think it's going to hold up beautifully legally. You've seen the prelude to this with, for example, the Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard case. The Supreme Court has clearly said, The best way to stop on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. I think we have a 5, 4, if not a 6, 3 majority on the courts as we're going to challenge some of these questions and we'll get rulings in favor of colorblind equality. I think that we're in a very strong position legally. In fact, DEI is in a very weak and vulnerable position. That's why we're seeing companies like Facebook and Google and Disney rapidly dropping their discrimination discriminatory DEI policies because they fear that they're going to be held liable for millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments for violating civil rights law. The basic politics is this. The left has dominated the interpretation of civil rights law for more than a half century. Now, those of us on the right have come up with a rival and superior interpretation, and now we're advancing it through the institutions. I'm happy to have this fight.

I think that as we make the case, for example, even in California or Washington State, where I live, when you ask voters, and they did this through initiatives, do you want to have affirmative action or DEI style discrimination? Even in California, they rejected It's not good. If you guys can't make the case in California, I have big warnings for you about the country as a whole.

When you talk about the work of dismantling, for example, the Department of Education, which is fits with another part of this, I'm going to call it woke agenda. The polling suggests that the vast majority of the American public doesn't support getting rid of the DOE. I mean, should that matter?

The polling is a little complicated. The Department of Education is the second least popular agency in the United States, behind only the IRS. The Department of Education is one point more popular than the IRS, the taxing agency. I think that the polling is pretty evenly split, but I think that we can successfully mount a public relations campaign and shift public opinion in our favor. I think that action sometimes creates possibilities on the other side. We saw this in Florida. The public Public Opinion polling at the time said that DeSantis should not pick a fight with Disney. He picked the fight, he polarized opinion, he won the fight, and then on the other side, he was rewarded with a massive re-election victory. I think that the fundamentals are on on our side. I think that with, and I'm preparing this right now with a successful persuasion campaign exposing the corruption of the Department of Education, I think we can win the fight decisively.

You're not Are you sorry that states that voted for Trump have a lot more to lose in terms of federal funding if the DOE is shut down?

Like I said, I'm an advocate of actually block-granting the K-12 funding directly to the states. I'd actually be open to slightly increase reducing the total dollar amount of funding that goes to states so that state education officials, local education officials, can actually have some of that budget to help their students. We can pay for that by getting rid of the federal bureaucracy. So the idea that we'd be somehow defunding education under at least my plan, it just doesn't hold water.

You feel good about Republicans in Congress spending more money on education?

Well, this would be a budget-neutral measure. You'd take savings from eliminating bureaucracy and forwarding those savings to the public. Look, we're going to have to tackle spending, but these are incremental changes. And so you have to take the win where you can. I think that that would be the most prudent way moving forward.

Well, Chris, I don't know anybody who would say anything about this moment feels incremental, but I guess everything's up for debate.

It's incremental because the long term vision is something more dramatic and radical than you might imagine now. If this feels more than incremental, you'll have to get ready.

There are a couple of things we want to follow up on here. Chris Ruffo said, Americans want a colorblind society versus a race conscious society by a 60 point margin. Well, it turns out it's more like a 47% margin, but that's not the most questionable part of his statement. I was in the interview skeptical about the wording of that poll, and it turns out with reason, because it appears the poll he was referring to from July of 2024 was conducted by the Manhattan Institute, the conservative group where Rufo works. And it asked people to choose between two options. Number one, a color-blind society where everyone is treated equally, regardless of the color of their skin. Number two, a race-conscious society to repair the harms of the past by developing policies that benefit marginalized groups. Is it a surprise that the majority of respondents chose option one? I'm not this qualifies as an unbiased poll. Secondly, Rufo said that the Department of Education is the second least popular agency in the country, and there is polling to support the notion that the Department is unpopular, though not quite as unpopular as Rufo maintains. But that doesn't mean Americans support closing the entire agency down, and that is a really important distinction.

A Wall Street Journal poll from last month found that by a nearly two to one margin, the public opposes closing the Education Department. 34% wanted the Department eliminated, 61% do not. Finally, Ruffo said that President Trump had determined that DEIA is a discriminatory type of policy that violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Here's the ACLU on that very issue. Programs labeled as DEIA encompass a broad range of lawful initiatives that create fairer workplaces and schools. The executive orders attempt to conflate these lawful efforts with discrimination. However, no court has declared DEIA efforts inherently illegal, and President Trump cannot override decades of legal precedent. The reality, of course, is that these actions to fire thousands of federal workers with little explanation to shutter cabinet agencies unilaterally, much of this is likely to end up in the courts. It already has. And Chris Ruffo is right when he says that Conservatives may have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court to uphold a right-wing reinterpretation of civil rights law and make a U-turn away from the last half century of legal precedent. If that does happen, the question is what the American public does about it, whether this polling is indicative of real sentiment and whether people express their dissatisfaction, maybe even their anger, in any meaningful way.

Trump and his allies, like Chris Ruffo, imagine that they have the will of the people behind them and that their efforts to reshape some of our most basic American values are sanctioned by the public itself. Whether they are right or wrong about that will be determined by the reaction to all of this, either the outcry or the silence. We'll be back next Thursday with a new episode of Trump Land with Alex Wagner. To get this show and other MSNBC podcasts ad-free, be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. As a subscriber, you'll also get exclusive bonus content. Trump Land with Alex Wagner is produced by Max Jacobs, along with Julia DiAngelo and Kay Guerrero. Our associate producer is Jamaris Perez. Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory, Katie Lau, and Mark Yoshizumi, and Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Matthew Alexander is the executive producer of Alex Wagner tonight, and Ayesha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC And I'm your host, Alex Wagner. We'll see you next week.

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