“You can now discriminate against people for being black … for being a woman … and for being gay when hiring them.”
That’s what one TikTok influencer with more than 1 million followers confidently informed his audience on Thursday morning. To the unsuspecting viewer, this warning made for compelling and alarming consumption. Not only has President Donald Trump rolled back identity-politics programs inside the federal government, also known as diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, but he is rolling back civil rights law to the 1960s!
Just ask the liberal YouTube star Brian Tyler Cohen, who posted an image of Trump juxtaposed with Martin Luther King Jr. and said the new president was “rolling back 60 years of progress on civil rights.”
There’s just one pesky thing about this narrative, promoted by too many left-wing social media influencers to count. It isn’t remotely true.
In fact, what they’re saying doesn’t even make sense, if you understand civics 101. A president cannot revoke a federal law passed by Congress with an executive order, and employment discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality is prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Trump couldn’t roll back those protections even if he tried to, which, to be clear, he didn’t.
So, where is this mix of propaganda and confusion coming from?
Well, as part of his executive order rolling back DEI initiatives, Trump rescinded an executive order issued by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. This old executive order required federal contractors, companies that do business with the federal government, to take “affirmative action” to ensure nondiscrimination in their employment practices.
Aha! So, as many of these influencers have insisted, federal contractors can discriminate now, right? Yeah, no.
Trump rescinded this executive order because of its language about “affirmative action” policies, which are discriminatory in their own right and unpopular with the public. His executive order still does explicitly require federal contractors to ensure that their employment, procurement, and contracting practices do “not consider race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin in ways that violate the nation’s civil rights laws.”
Regardless, even if he hadn’t reiterated this in his executive order, the Civil Rights Act would still apply to these companies.
This was plainly stated in the executive order, which was only a few pages and took just minutes to read. Yet for some reason, these liberal social media stars left this part out of their videos.
What we ultimately have here is, as Trump would put it, “fake news.” Millions of people across social media have spread alarm and panic about a rollback of antidiscrimination protections that, quite literally, does not exist.
That’s not good. For one, it’s just unfortunate that so many people felt emotional distress that was unwarranted and unnecessary. One viral TikTok video features a young woman crying on camera over this “news” and plainly stating that Trump voters are “disgusting” and “this country is disgusting.” This video was liked more than 600,000 times by unsuspecting viewers who presumably fell for this hoax.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Yet more importantly, this misinformed approach to politics just isn’t sustainable. Yes, it’s understandable that liberal-leaning people are unhappy with the early actions taken by the Trump administration. Their candidate lost, and elections have consequences.
But baseless outrage cycles and alternate, bifurcated partisan realities were sadly typical of Trump’s first presidency. It’s a discouraging sign that online culture is already reverting to those toxic old habits just days after his second inauguration.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.