HR Dive: 1 year into Trump 2.0, HR professionals are ‘caught in the middle’ of the DEI debate

January 21. 2026

Executive Director Noreen Farrell was interviewed by HR Dive about Trump Administration attacks on workplace DEI on the one-year anniversary of Trump’s second term.

“Trump’s anti-DEI orders not only gave a green light to discrimination across the economy,” Noreen Farrell, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates, told HR Dive via email: “They made this discrimination official government policy.” …

Many of the EEOC’s choices made under this administration — especially its failure to pursue claims transgender discrimination —  “completely perverted the EEOC’s mission,” Farrell said. “Instead of being a shield for workers facing discrimination, the EEOC has become a weapon against law-abiding employers trying to create inclusive workplaces.”

Moreover, Farrell said, “Chair [Andrea] Lucas is creating confusion and fear, causing employers to abandon their equity programs. The result? HR professionals are caught in the middle while the workers who actually face discrimination have been left with no recourse.”

The effects of Trump’s policies and related actions on private-sector DEI are easy to see, according to Farrell.

Take women in the workforce, for example: “With wages already falling and women exiting the workforce in record numbers, stripping away workplace protections threatens to roll back decades of progress for women in the workplace,” Farrell said.

Moves such as these push paid family leave and affordable childcare further out of reach, Farrell said, noting that Trump’s administration recently froze childcare funding in five states.

The impact of a sitting president directing abandonment of policy that furthers civil rights laws “has been immediate and devastating on both workplace culture and longstanding practices,” said Farrell.

“When the federal government treats diversity and inclusion as bad words,” she said, “it encourages employers to abandon programs that create equal opportunities for workers and that affirmatively address harassment and bias in the workplace.”

Read the article.