Grothman Opens Hearing on Combatting DEI

WASHINGTON—Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services Chairman Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) delivered opening remarks today at a hearing on “Sacrificing Excellence for Ideology: The Real Cost of DEI.” In his opening statement, Subcommittee Chairman Grothman highlighted the destructive and discriminatory effects of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in the workforce, government, and education. Subcommittee Chairman Grothman also noted the importance of upholding the Civil Rights Act and its impact on the establishment of true equality in the United States.

Below are Subcommittee Chairman Grothman’s prepared remarks:

Welcome to the Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services. 

Today’s hearing will focus on the destructive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or “DEI,” policies that radical Democrats have relentlessly tried to insert into American institutions.

And really going back a little bit more than that, all the way back to Affirmative Action in the executive order put into place by President Johnson in 1965. I think it’s important we all understand the effect and the scope of these policies have had on American life the last 60 years. 

On September 24, 1965, we got to celebrate that anniversary. Almost 60 years ago, Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order 11246 which mandated “affirmative action” programs and policies which facilitated discrimination.

In 1965, minority groups such as black Americans, had faced a generation of despicable and repugnant discrimination, though I know individual universities were already practicing Affirmative Action 10 years before that. I know Princeton was practicing in 1955.

At the time, these nascent DEI policies were nobly aimed at reversing the harm. 

Unfortunately, even well-intended bad policy, is still bad policy.

Discrimination should never be fought with more discrimination.

That is exactly what affirmative action and DEI policies did.

Over the last 60 years, the destructive DEI agenda has now evolved and infiltrated nearly every type of institution in America, including higher education, corporate workplaces, government, the military, and more. In my opinion, it hasn’t been gradual over the last 60 years. I think if you look back even in the 1970s, the 1960s, these policies were around.

These policies divide Americans by putting them all in groups and educating people that they should not view themselves as an individual, they should view themselves as a group, which is why I think people who want to destroy America are so in favor of them.

Categories—I might add—these arbitrary categories, are entirely self-reported. 

Rather than focusing on the whole of someone’s circumstances to determine whether they need a helping hand, DEI assumes anyone who checks a box for a certain race is disadvantaged. Of course we don’t want to be a society where we go back and try to give preferences based on other factors as well.

On President Biden’s first day in office, he signed an executive order to promote DEI in federal employment. 

This order went further than any before it by expanding racial divisions to include “immigrants.” 

Thankfully, President Trump rescinded this executive order and decades of executive orders that preceded it.

Let’s be clear about what DEI is.

It’s a deliberate and explicit choice to put ideology over excellence.

To deny admission of highly qualified students to accept students with lower scores who fit diversity quotas. To cause divisiveness. 

To award government contracts to minority-owned companies over companies with better bids.

This is spelled out plainly in the “E” of “DEI,” “equity.”

Equity means ensuring equal outcomes.

I think that is beyond Marxism. You’re trying to destroy American by doing to America what they do in other countries in trying to set one ethnic group against another ethnic group. I think of Canada, the French against the English. You think of Middle Eastern countries, the Shiites against the Sunnis. This is what they’re trying to do in this country.

Fortunately, despite the Democrats best efforts, the courts have been clear on this.

The Civil Rights Act protects everyone. 

Earlier this month the Supreme Court rejected a lower court’s requirement that members of majority groups must meet a heightened standard to win discrimination cases against their employers.

By the way, that case was unanimously decided, with Justice Jackson authoring the majority opinion.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ended race-based admissions programs at colleges and universities that discriminated against white and Asian students, finding that considering race as a factor in admissions violated the 14^th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Title Six of the Civil Rights Act.

The Trump Administration has launched a wide-reaching effort to eliminate DEI programs, including by revoking LBJ’s 1965 executive order.

These steps are critical, but there is still more work to be done. Above all, we have to educate the American public [on] what’s been going on in this country the last 60 years. 

Hopefully, the hearing will provide us with an opportunity to discuss this important topic and consider possible reforms to fortify American meritocracy and excellence, and above all reforms that do not continue this policy of what I believe is intentionally trying to set one group of Americans against another.