The first weeks of the second Trump presidency have been marked by a flurry of often-illegal executive orders, frequently centered around the removal of diversity, equity, and inclusion language from anywhere the Presidency can touch. Now that mandate has made its way to NASA: The agency has been told to “drop everything” and focus on erasing wicked terms like “anything specifically targeting women” from its website.
The core concept, as laid out in various Trump administration documents, is fairness — jobs should only go to the most qualified people, regardless of any other factors. 404 media got a hold of NASA’s specific directive, to show what that looks like for the agency:
“Per NASA HQ direction, we are required to scrub mentions of the following terms from our public sites by 5pm ET today. This is a drop everything and reprioritize your day request. Note that the list below is the list that exists this morning, but it may grow as the day goes on.
- DEIA
- Diversity (in context of DEIA)
- Equity (“ “)
- Inclusion (“ “)
- Accessibility (“ “)
- MSI
- Minority Serving Institution
- Indigenous People
- EEJ
- EJ
- Environmental Justice
- Underrepresented groups/people
- Anything specifically targeting women (women in leadership, etc.)”
The problem with the Trump approach here, and with the general anti-DEI-in-hiring in general, is that people don’t actually hire fairly when left to their own devices. Orchestras employ more women when hiring is based only on sound and not on sight, and studies have shown that even something as simple as removing names from resumes to obfuscate race and gender levels out the playing field — white male executives unconsciously gravitate towards white male employees, who make the same mistake all the way down.
Trump, personally, is a big believer in intelligence, ability to handle pressure, and even criminality being inherited genetic factors — facets of a person that are built-in from birth and can never be changed. This is the set of provably untrue beliefs that forms the basis of eugenics (as well as the 1983 film “Trading Places”), as well as the racist great replacement theory.
To be clear, this is the attitude that forms the basis for anti-DEI animus in the United States in 2025. The belief that women or people of color are being hired over more-qualified applicants comes from the belief that white men are inherently, genetically superior — anyone being hired over them can’t have been hired on merit alone. With this approach now heading to NASA, down to erasing women from its website, we can only wait and see how it will affect our ability to go to space. It’s certainly gone great for the air travel industry.