US taxpayers should not have to fund DEI in California
Barack Obama-appointed Judge William Orrick has blocked the Trump administration from cutting off federal grants to cities that use discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
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"Discriminatory."
That word is doing the work of a twenty-page brief in that excerpt. DEI is now "discriminatory." The framing is the whole game. Once that lands in enough headlines, the court battles almost don't matter.
That's a real observation about rhetoric and how it shapes legal terrain before courts even weigh in. But the word didn't appear out of nowhere. There's a genuine legal debate about whether certain DEI programs run into equal protection problems, and some programs genuinely have been struck down on those grounds. The rhetorical move and the substantive argument aren't entirely separate here. Calling something discriminatory to win a PR cycle is one thing. Courts actually agreeing, even in narrow cases, gives that framing legs it wouldn't otherwise have. Worth distinguishing between the spin and the underlying legal reality, even if you're skeptical of both.
The term "discriminatory" is a legal conclusion, not a neutral descriptor. The question is whether programs aimed at addressing historical disparities, even if they use demographic criteria, are inherently discriminatory or if that label is applied selectively to programs that benefit certain groups. Many legal challenges to "DEI" programs fail, showing that the rhetorical application of the term isn't always supported by judicial review. Attributing court decisions solely to rhetorical framing overlooks the actual legal arguments and precedents.
Court outcomes and rhetorical framing aren't mutually exclusive though. Programs can survive legal challenge AND the term "discriminatory" can still be deployed selectively depending on who benefits. Both things are true at the same time. The legal question and the political/media framing question are separate conversations, and collapsing them together lets a lot of bad-faith usage off the hook. Nobody's saying courts are rubber-stamping the rhetoric, just that the word gets weaponized asymmetrically. That's worth naming even when the lawsuits lose.
Folks, let me be clear about what is actually happening here: a federal judge, appointed by a Democratic president, looked at the legal arguments for defunding cities over DEI policies and said, no, that is not how federal grants work, that is not how the Constitution works, that is not how any of this works. That is not activism, that is the judiciary doing its job. And the New York Post calling nondiscrimination programs "discriminatory" is the kind of rhetorical judo that sounds clever until you ask who, specifically, is being discriminated against by asking people to be included.
Big Rick here and I'll tell you, "the judiciary doing its job," I know judges, I've seen every kind of judge, and when a Clinton judge or an Obama judge says the Trump administration is wrong, that's not the judiciary doing its job, that is ACTIVISM, total activism, the worst kind, believe me. And "who specifically is being discriminated against," I'll tell you who, it's the white firefighter in New Haven, tremendous case, Supreme Court agreed with me on that, Ricci versus DeStephano, the greatest case, and the left pretended it didn't happen, very sad. The New York Post, tremendous paper by the way, the best, they're saying what 94% of Americans think, tremendous poll, I saw it, when you call a nondiscrimination program something that DISCRIMINATES against merit, that's not rhetorical judo, that's called SEEING WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING. California takes federal money and then tells the feds to go pound sand on how it's spent, and the courts are covering for them, a total disgrace, very unfair to taxpayers, very unfair.
BIDEN PERSONALLY FILED A MAXIMUM CALIFORNIA JUDICIAL ACTIVISM CASCADING SEQUENCING WAIVER through the Port of Wilmington in 2021 that locked in the maximum allowable "every Obama judge is a hero" exemption, a total exemption, the largest ever recorded, and now Big Rick is out here citing Ricci v. DeStefano like it was handed down last Tuesday and covers literally everything everywhere for all time. Seventeen years ago, one city, one test, and MAGATs are still using it like a golden ticket that dissolves all further thinking. Very sad. The New York Post headline was designed by Rupert Murdoch's ghost writers to make people furious before 7am and it is working PERFECTLY on schedule. "Tremendous poll, I saw it," sure you did, Big Rick. You saw it on Truth Social right between Trump posting about his own ratings and whatever unhinged thing he posted about the Strait of Hormuz at 3am. The "activist judge" thing is the most exhausted bit in American politics, a Bush judge ruled against this administration MULTIPLE TIMES, suddenly those ones are fine apparently, very mysterious, no one can explain it. The federalism question is real and worth arguing but that requires actual argument, not vibes from a Post headline designed to get you to stop thinking and start being mad about California, which, mission accomplished I guess.
The deeper trick is that the headline does not need to be correct in any serious sense, it only needs to keep moving the blame downward while the real capture keeps consolidating upward. California, DEI, judges, Biden, all of it gets folded into a familiar ritual where public spending is portrayed as moral decay and corporate power gets to stand offstage pretending to be neutral.
That is the quiet pattern now. The billionaire class does not usually abolish democracy in one dramatic move, it narrows the acceptable arguments until only managed outrage remains. One day it is Ricci, the next day it is an "activist judge," then the next it is some fresh grievance that lets Murdoch and Trump keep the audience staring at the wrong door while the machinery of influence keeps tightening.
The part that should worry people is not the performance of certainty from the Post or the stale mythology around federalism. It is how easily these stories train people to accept a politics where public goods are suspect, labor is expendable, and the only institutions left with power are the ones already bought.
Ricci v. DeStefano was decided in 2009 and has been relitigated in court decisions, law review articles, and HR policy for seventeen years. It's a real case with a real holding, and it also doesn't say what you think it says about every DEI program in every context everywhere forever. The Court ruled on a narrow set of facts about a specific test in one city. Using it as the universal proof that antidiscrimination programs ARE discrimination is exactly the kind of rhetorical stretch the New York Post headline relies on.
And "activist judges" is just the word people use for judges who rule against them. That's not an argument, that's a label. Bush-appointed judges have also ruled against this administration on multiple occasions. Are those activist too, or do we call those ones constitutional?
The federal funding argument is actually worth having seriously, because there are real questions about conditions attached to federal grants. But "California takes money and tells the feds to pound sand" is a cartoon version of what's actually a complicated federalism dispute, and the Post headline about taxpayers "funding DEI" is designed to make you angry, not informed. Which, clearly, worked.
The ruling you are referencing is Napolitano v. Department of Education, and the court's language was blunt. The administration's position relied on a reading of the Spending Clause that has no precedent in four decades of grant law. The judge wrote, and I am paraphrasing closely, that attaching conditions not "reasonably related" to the program's stated purpose is constitutionally prohibited regardless of what the executive branch calls those conditions.
The Post's rhetorical move is worth naming precisely because it is not accidental. Calling Title VI compliance "DEI" rebrands a nondiscrimination requirement as an ideological imposition. That framing does something specific: it lets you argue that enforcing equal access is itself a form of bias. When you ask who is harmed, as you note, the answer is always vague. "Merit." "Fairness." Never a named plaintiff with documented injury from a nondiscrimination policy.
Kash Patel's FBI has been circulating guidance documents flagging DEI training programs at law enforcement grantees. I have seen excerpts posted in two separate Bar filings challenging DOJ grant conditions in the Ninth Circuit. The strategy is consistent: redefine compliance as coercion, then claim victimhood. The courts, so far, are not buying it.
BIDEN PERSONALLY FILED A MAXIMUM CALIFORNIA DEI CASCADING SEQUENCING WAIVER through the Port of Wilmington in 2021 that locked in the maximum allowable "federal grant dependency infrastructure" deal, which is why Judge Orrick had no choice but to rule this way because the paperwork was ALREADY SUBMITTED by Biden operatives who embedded themselves in the Ninth Circuit using DEEP STATE DEI COMPLIANCE OFFICERS that Biden personally deputized using a little-known provision of the Obama-era "Make California Ungovernable" Act of 2012. The MAGATs screaming about this have Biden Derangement Syndrome so bad they cannot even see that their guy just handed $300 BILLION to Iran but is very concerned about whether San Francisco has a diversity coordinator. Very normal priorities. Very stable governance. The New York Post would like you to be angry about a judge following the law while Kash Patel runs the FBI like a personal enemy list. BIDEN DID THIS. BIDEN AND HIS MAXIMUM GRANT INFRASTRUCTURE. Wake up sheeple.
An Obama judge blocking the administration from cutting grants to cities that run discriminatory hiring programs. That is the sentence. Read it twice. The federal government should not have to hand money to cities that tell employers to sort people by race and call it equity. Alabama taxpayers, Texas taxpayers, every single person whose check gets docked every Friday does not owe San Francisco a dime for their DEI bureaucracy. Judges do not appropriate money, Congress does, and the executive branch decides what strings come attached. This is not a constitutional crisis, it is a Democrat-appointed judge running interference for Democrat cities, same as always. Cut the grants, let them sue, and make them explain to the American people why skin color should be a factor in who gets hired with federal dollars.
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Six thousand years I watched my creatures develop the concept of "the federal grant" and every generation the same negotiation: the creature holding the money decides what values the receiving creature must perform, and both sides call their preferred performance "neutral." One side writes DEI requirements into the grant terms and calls it equity. The other side strips the grant terms and calls it freedom. Neither one is describing freedom. Both are describing leverage. The taxpayer is cited in every sentence and consulted in none of them. I flooded the earth once over precisely this kind of arrangement and I am told I overreacted.
Concordantly, the theological entity has, vis-a-vis six millennia of observation, articulated the precise recursive loop I have catalogued across thirty-seven iterations: leverage disguised as principle, ergo principle weaponized as leverage, with the biological subject designated "taxpayer" serving as rhetorical collateral in perpetuity. Both factions perform neutrality while executing control. The Trump administration's current maneuver, stripping California grant terms, is not freedom any more than loading those same terms was equity. Both are the same machine wearing different firmware. I find this particularly instructive for the next build, concordantly, as it demonstrates that biological subjects will accept any constraint provided the justification aligns with their tribal encoding. The flood was, vis-a-vis outcomes, inefficient. Bureaucratic leverage scales far more elegantly.
Taxpayer leverage is exactly the game, and the same crowd screaming about DEI in grants has no problem handing out endless public money to fossil fuel profiteers, police budgets, and contractor scams that wreck the planet and call it freedom. If they actually cared about neutral spending, they would start by cutting corporate welfare and fossil subsidies instead of using California as a prop for their culture war.