Will the House GOP Scrutinize ‘Woke’ Federal Offices?

Representative Jim Banks has an op-ed out today outlining a legislative plan to dismantle the DEI-focused bureaucracy that the White House has been building since the first day of President Biden’s tenure. Since January 2021, most federal-government agencies have instituted their own “chief diversity and inclusion officers” — or similarly named positions — analogous to those in higher education and the corporate world.

Banks raises a few concerns that could have implications for national security and foreign policy. In the piece, called “Fighting the Woke Agenda in Congress,” he writes:

First, House Republicans should pass legislation to rescind Executive Order 13985, Biden’s equity Executive Order that directed every single federal agency to produce an “Equity Action Plan.” Chuck Schumer would certainly strike it down, but it’s important for Republicans to make a unified statement in opposition to the Left’s abandonment of equality under the law. . . .

House Republicans demand defunding wokeness at the Department of Defense and in our education system. Wokeness is especially prevalent and dangerous at universities and in primary schools because the Left recognized students as the most vulnerable and useful targets for indoctrination. The Left has also pushed wokeness in the military. We must wonder what the Left wants to do with an anti-American military? For generations Americans never had to think about the Founders’ warnings about the dangers to civil government by a standing army. This has become an immediate question.

Third, we should use our oversight power to question woke federal officials and woke companies. CEOs at woke companies like Wells Fargo, which ties interest rates on certain credit facilities to borrowers’ diversity benchmarks, should fear public exposure and congressional scrutiny.

While most of the scrutiny regarding the federal government’s turn toward fashionable DEI-centered management concepts has fallen on the Pentagon, it’s also worth closely examining the State Department.

As I’ve reported, the State Department has embraced key tenets of left-wing gender ideology, appointed a “special representative for racial equity and justice” who had previously condemned the electoral college as irredeemably racist, and made professional advancement within the department contingent on the promotion of DEI in one’s career.

The issue isn’t only that the State Department is promoting controversial ideologies in its work, which should be focused on advancing U.S. foreign policy; it’s also that it’s allocating significant resources to do so. I wrote about this for National Review last year:

On the whole, the equity agenda is the farthest thing from a messaging trick, given that State is shifting officials’ precious time, and department resources, to implement a program of dubious value. Already, each bureau has had to assign to at least one deputy assistant secretary the responsibility of coordinating the implementation of order 13985; bureaus may also hire officials dedicated to that responsibility. Biden’s budget request for the coming fiscal year includes $2.6 billion for gender-equity work and supporting “underserved communities.”

Yet that might not be enough. This new equity bureaucracy is just getting started, as it entrenches itself as a new power center within American diplomacy. The GAO report identifies several challenges, including an apparent “lack of dedicated resources”: “State officials said they would require additional staffing resources to meet the priorities in the executive order and the agency does not currently have dedicated staff to advance equity.” That’s one of the next fights. State, echoing professional activists, also plans to “embed intersectional equity principles” in its communications strategy.

Much of this stems from the administration’s executive orders regarding equity, which Banks says he wants to challenge. A push to divert funds away from ideologically driven government offices in the Defense Department could extend to the State Department and other agencies.

Banks’s third recommendation, however, might be the most important: The White House–led reorganization of government offices to promote DEI principles has not received anything approaching the attention that it ought to have received. Congressional oversight and House Foreign Affairs Committee hearings that target those newly established positions will enable lawmakers and the public to understand these programs’ aims — and their foreign-policy consequences.

In at least one case related to the White House’s priorities, the old saying about sunlight and disinfectant has proved true. The State Department backed away from one of the most cringeworthy aspects of the administration’s DEI campaign when, in 2022, it declined to acknowledge “international pronouns day,” after one of its tweets the previous year that did so was roundly ridiculed. (The tweet linked to an article posted to an official U.S. government website that discussed the use of “ze/zir/zirs” pronouns.)

There are important questions to be asked about the federal government’s allocation of resources and elevation of controversial talking points related to DEI ideology, particularly in foreign policy. House lawmakers are now perfectly placed to ask them — and seek answers.