A bill seeking to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and funding for federal agencies will be brought to the House floor for a full vote after passing out of the Oversight Committee on Wednesday afternoon. 

The Dismantle DEI Act, which was introduced at the start of the summer by Congressman Michael Cloud and Vice President-elect JD Vance, was presented by Mr. Cloud during the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability’s meeting. 

The Texas lawmaker described DEI policies as “divisive, wasteful programs” that “undermine merit and fairness.” He added that “to codify racial discrimination in an effort to remove discrimination is a woeful, woeful, initiative and would undo generations of progress we have made as a nation.” 

The measure, which has secured the backing of 15 House Republicans, aims to counter the efforts taken by the Biden administration to implement DEI policies across the federal government. 

It would, according to the bills authors, “unwind Biden’s DEI bureaucracy” by “rescinding relevant executive orders, terminating Chief Diversity Officers, closing DEI offices, ending DEI and critical race theory trainings, outlawing mandatory employee DEI pledges, and revoking all DEI funding at the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services, and other federal agencies.”

However, not all lawmakers were on board with the proposal. Congresswoman Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, bashed the bill as “just the final piece of a decades-long obsession with targeting and dismantling anything that might give marginalized people a fair shot.” She further accused “predominantly conservative white men” of believing “that the success of a Black person or the opportunity or access of a Black person is an existential threat to them.”  

The bill is the latest challenge to DEI programs which have faced increasing scrutiny in the wake of the June 2023 Supreme Court ruling that affirmative action in college admissions was unconstitutional. 

President-elect Trump, for his part, has pledged to combat “woke” DEI policies once in office. He has taken particular aim at the Department of Education, vowing to “cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”