What’s in This Week’s Issue…

Good morning. For years, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) was more than a buzzword in corporate America. It was a movement backed by billions in budgets, entire departments, and public pledges from the country’s biggest institutions.

But today? DEI is being dismantled.

Conservative lawmakers, activist billionaires, and legal war rooms are attacking DEI with military precision, not just in universities or red states, but inside the most powerful companies in America.

So this week…

• 🏆 The Big Play: How Trump’s return triggered the DEI collapse, and who’s really in charge of corporate America

• 💪 The Power Move: If money is abandoning DEI, where is it heading next, and how do you take the lead

• 💵 Follow the Money: How China just caused a major national security concern for the U.S. through rare earths

-GEN

🏆 The Big Play

The biggest money power story of the week.

From Morality to Liability: The Great Fall of DEI

Let’s rewind a few years.

In 2020, after George Floyd’s murder, nearly every major corporation in America made a statement.

But more than that, they opened their wallets:

• $340 billion in estimated DEI-related commitments in less than 3 years

• 74% of S&P 500 companies appointed Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs)

• Thousands of corporate pledges to “dismantle systemic racism”

It was a rare moment in American capitalism: money, morality, and public pressure all moved in the same direction.

But it took just one election for everything to collapse. Here’s how:

1. The Pivot That Was Already in the Making

When Trump won the 2024 election, corporate America knew what was coming.

But here’s the twist: the first big blow to DEI didn’t come from Trump. It came from the courts.

In June 2023, the Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action in college admissions. And almost immediately:

• Companies like Fearless Fund and Hello Alice were sued for offering grants to Black entrepreneurs

• Conservative legal groups like Edward Blum’s American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) began targeting corporate diversity pledges

By the time Trump was back in the White House, DEI had already become a risk. Not just politically, but financially.

And what was once quietly assumed, now became official: DEI wasn’t a compliance must-have. It was a legal liability.

2. Meta’s Case and Why It’s Not Just Meta

Nowhere was this clearer than at Meta.

Inside Meta, DEI wasn’t just a value system. It was a major driving force:

• The number of Black and Hispanic employees doubled, and women held one-third of the global workforce by 2022

• Heads of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) for marginalized communities had direct access to Mark Zuckerberg 

• One of the first Silicon Valley companies to publicly commit to DEI hiring goals

Then, in 2023–24, the quiet pullback began:

• Meta cut all roles in its Sourcer Development Program, which was set up to help workers from diverse backgrounds

• Meta’s Supplier Diversity Program ended, and

• Employees in leadership roles at their respective Black ERGs were laid off, in addition to budget cuts

And Meta wasn’t alone:

• Goldman Sachs dropped the requirement to have diverse members on its board of directors

• Google eliminated DEI roles and scrapped DEI-specific hiring goals

• Disney, Amazon, and Walmart have all scaled back DEI language in public filings and reduced internal targets

All of it follows a pattern: Companies didn’t announce the death of DEI. They just stopped funding it and erased every trace of it.

3. The Systemic End: Beyond Corporate Policy

But here’s what most people miss: DEI isn’t just a corporate policy.

It’s a distribution network for power across hiring, capital allocation, and social signaling.

Killing DEI at the surface level is easy to spot. But the deeper dismantling is happening inside systems:

• ESG investing, once a pipeline for DEI-aligned capital, is being rebranded or shut down entirely (BlackRock is walking back from its "ESG" funds to avoid scrutiny)

• DEI performance metrics are being reabsorbed into broader "employee wellness" KPIs

• Corporate legal teams are now advising against race-specific programs, not because they’re unethical, but because they invite lawsuits that shareholders don’t want

In other words: DEI isn't being debated. It's being engineered out of existence.

And that reveals the ultimate truth…

💪 The Power Moves

Playbook for understanding the game of power.

Where Capital Flees During Culture Wars

The Great DEI Rollback shows us something most people don’t want to admit:

The game was never about “inclusion.” It was always about liability.

And the moment inclusion became a risk, it died.

That’s the uncomfortable truth behind the fall of DEI.

The structures of corporate America don’t protect ideas. They protect shareholder value. They protect legal defensibility. And they protect whoever is holding the power when the music stops.

The Takeaway:

So, if you’re building something - a career, a brand, a business - understand this: Sentiment scales fast. But systems last longer. 

Power isn’t just about having the right ideals. It’s about structuring yourself so that you still hold the leverage even when the ideals change.

Because ideals may feel righteous. But systems ultimately move money and power.

💵 Following the Money

Three of the wildest financial and corruption stories from around the world.

#1 - China’s export restrictions on rare earths raise US national security concerns. Here’s how.

#2 - Why the Trump administration wants to deport US citizens convicted of violent crime

#3 - Does the UK want to kill free speech with a new Crime and Policing bill?

✨ Poll time!

📰 Keep Reading…