Civil rights protections resulted in white people being "very badly treated," President Donald Trump said in a recent interview.
Trump told The New York Times that some civil rights-era policies intended to end racial bias also produced unfair outcomes for white Americans, particularly in higher education and employment.
"White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university to college," he said, an apparent reference to affirmative action in college admissions. "So I would say in that way, I think it was unfair in certain cases.
"I think it was also, at the same time, it accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people — people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination."
The interview underscores the administration's sweeping crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI), not as a rollback of civil rights, but as a return to equal treatment and a "merit-based" society.
That posture is increasingly being put into practice across the federal government.
In a press release last month, the Justice Department announced a final rule updating regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to eliminate "disparate impact" liability — a theory that can penalize institutions for statistically uneven outcomes even without proof of intentional discrimination.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the change restores the constitutional principle that Americans must be treated equally under the law, arguing prior rules pressured federally funded entities to make race-conscious decisions to avoid lawsuits.
"For decades, the Justice Department has used disparate-impact liability to undermine the constitutional principle that all Americans must be treated equally under the law," Bondi said in a statement.
"No longer. This Department of Justice is eliminating its regulations that for far too long required recipients of federal funding to make decisions based on race."
Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, said the department will require proof of actual discrimination rather than what critics describe as quota-like enforcement.
At the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Trump-appointed chair, Andrea Lucas, has signaled a similarly aggressive posture toward corporate DEI.
Lucas told Reuters that federal inquiries into diversity programs are already underway and warned companies that employment decisions motivated "in whole or in part" by race or sex could trigger enforcement under Title VII.
She described her mission as shifting civil rights enforcement toward a more conservative view — "attacking" race discrimination, including DEI-driven practices, while also emphasizing religious liberty concerns and sex-based protections for women.
The impact is already rippling through boardrooms.
Reuters reported that major corporations, including some Fortune 500 household names, have scrapped or rebranded DEI programs amid rising legal risks and changing federal priorities.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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