By Jacob Bogage, Faiz Siddiqui · The Washington Post (c) 2025
President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is reviewing a conservative legal playbook to swiftly eliminate federal diversity programs, which argues that the initiatives are unconstitutional and distort spending.
“DOGE,” a nongovernmental group led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and charged with slashing the size of government, is considering a 19-page report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a right-wing civil rights nonprofit, that identified more than $120 billion annually in what it said was “diversity, equity and inclusion” spending, according to two people familiar with the conversations and a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Post.
Policymakers are unlikely to eliminate all of that spending, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share closely held details. But by removing federal designations that favor historically disadvantaged individuals or businesses, some DOGE backers believe they can find cost savings in federal contracts and grant programs.
The playbook, intended to contain policy recommendations for the incoming administration, has found an audience among members of the DOGE team. It is among various policy proposals – formalized in documents and memos – circulating in private chats and being reviewed by advisers to the efficiency group, according to another person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
“That’s been sent down from on high, that all this DEI stuff has to go,” said another person familiar with DOGE’s early plans. “Once all these guys get confirmed and he’s the president on Jan. 20, this is going to happen fast and furious.”
Among the report’s recommendations: stripping programs that would benefit Black farmers and businesses in disadvantaged neighborhoods and axing a Biden executive order that says 15 percent of federal contracts should be reserved for minority-owned businesses. The reportcategorized programs across 13 federal departments and offices in three buckets: terminate, settle and investigate.
The document contains ideas that one of the people familiar with the work said would find broad acceptance among Republicans – for example, cutting Agriculture Department grants and loans for minority farmers and ranchers.
“DEI is your classic example of expanding and expanding and expanding government at the expense of providing government services,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming), a member of the House’s DOGE Caucus and chair of the House Anti-Woke Caucus, told The Post.
Even eliminating all the spending the Wisconsin Institute identifies as DEI programs would make only a small impact on the overall federal budget of nearly $7 trillion.
But that funding has been crucial to help individuals of diverse backgrounds obtain certain opportunities because of years of discriminatory policies, Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico) said in an interview. Cuts to diversity programs could endanger historically Black colleges and universities, institutions that serve Hispanic individuals and Native American communities.
“Many of these programs and these communities have been included in these very targeted programs because they’ve been left out and targeted to be discriminated against,” Luján said. “By the elimination of these programs, all those communities are being targeted.”
If the cuts are as far-reaching as some Republican lawmakers have described – policies that echo much of the Wisconsin Institute report – “everything’s gone,” Luján said.
The idea of slashing diversity programs broadly aligns with Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s political views. Musk has long decried diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as antithetical to meritocracy, blaming – without offering evidence – the proliferation of such policies for myriad world problems, most recently the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles.
“DEI means people will DIE,” Musk posted on Jan. 11 to X, the social media site he owns. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
The report recently came to the attention of Steve Davis, president of the Boring Company, one of Musk’s most trusted deputies, who oversaw cost-cutting at Twitter, now called X, after Musk bought it for $44 billion in 2022. Many DOGE advisers are reporting to Davis now, too.
Davis requested the study from WILL through intermediaries in the conservative legal world, according to a person involved with the document’s development who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.
DOGE advisers believe Trump can eliminate certain initiatives through executive orders and can direct his Justice Department to settle outstanding lawsuits about other programs to wind down their activity.
Programs marked for investigation include federal funding for universities that the administration deems are skirting the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action or “discriminated against students during the pro-Hamas protests … and hospital systems that discriminate against patients based on race.”
Trump could direct agencies to conduct inquiries into those allegations and ultimately withhold funding, or could block appropriated funds from going to programs that the administration lawyers deem unconstitutional.
“I think that we need to see more of that. You all want to claim that you’re racist and you have all these DEI programs? Then maybe we shouldn’t be sending any federal funds to you, at all,” Hageman said. “I think maybe that’s the way that we ferret this stuff out. … If you’re that racist and that sexist, then maybe we need to just shut down the university.”
The recommendations fit a more recent emphasis for DOGE not just on what policy priorities to focus on, but how to achieve them. As Monday’s inauguration approaches, DOGE leaders have recognized the need for its work to shift from conceptual to practical. The group has been aggressively staffing up in D.C. More than 50 people are already working out of the SpaceX offices in downtown Washington, and the group aims to have around 100 people in place by the time Trump takes office, The Post previously reported.
DOGE is conducting many of its early deliberations over the encrypted messaging app Signal, where advisers who have taken on voluntary stints working for Musk and Ramaswamy are engaged in continuous discussion about how to shape the country’s future.
But the group has yet to formalize its specific goals and is operating on principles set out by Musk and Ramaswamy in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in November, which laid out “three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings.” One of its most concrete priorities is to shrink the federal workforce and align the size of government with its core functions.