DEI Initiatives Under Scrutiny at USAID Amid Trump Administration Changes

Fox News Digital spoke to a former USAID employee about the amount of DEI engrained at the embattled agency.

The now-archived website for the virtually shut down United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has a page devoted to pushing DEI, which a former employee whistleblower told Fox News Digital was part of a larger Biden administration effort.

"Each of us has a responsibility to address bigotry, gender discrimination, and structural racism and uphold individual dignity... This isn't just one of our values; it's our mission -- one hand extended out to another to meet people where they are and treat others as equals," former USAID administrator Samantha Power, who previously served multiple roles in the Obama administration, is quoted as saying on the archived website's DEI page.

The website explains that USAID was "committed to a diverse, equitable, inclusive workplace where everyone has an opportunity to thrive" and that it has implemented a DEI strategy that "commits USAID to improving and enhancing diversity throughout the Agency, enhancing inclusion and equity for everyone in the workplace, and strengthening accountability for promoting and sustaining a diverse workforce and an inclusive Agency culture."

Mark Moyar, a USAID whistleblower who worked in the department from 2018 to 2019, spoke to Fox News Digital about how Power and others in the department made DEI a top priority.

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"Samantha Power's emphasis on DEI was part of a larger Biden administration effort to infuse DEI into every federal agency and we saw this with very negative effects all over the place. People were taking time off from their jobs to attend these indoctrination sessions, clearly pushing the message that people are divided into oppressor groups and victim groups, and that there's this white rage and white extremism running all over the place, which is basically non-existent," Moyar explained.

Moyar added that "far left theories" were given "legitimacy" in the wake of the George Floyd movement in 2020, and that when DEI became a "central" focus at USAID, it resulted in other countries taking the United States less seriously.

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"It's particularly disturbing that not only were they pushing within the organization, they were actually funding DEI events all over the world. You know, DEI comic books or DEI workshops, and I think this can only undermine our image abroad because most people outside of this country recognized DEI for the silliness that it is and the divisiveness that it causes," Moyar, author of the book "Masters of Corruption: How the Federal Bureaucracy Sabotaged the Trump Presidency," said.

"We also saw this with women's empowerment that everything for Samantha Power had to be viewed through a gendered lens. So you had all these gender consultants as well as DEI consultants taking huge amounts of taxpayer money to do this sort of analysis. I don't think they really have anything to show for it, and what we found in other places where this has been pushed is that DEI only makes things worse. It divides people and group tensions between groups are worse than they were before."

USAID found itself on the chopping block in recent weeks as part of President Trump's plan to rid the federal government of waste, along with his campaign pledges to rid DEI from the federal bureaucracy.

"For decades, USAID has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous -- and, in many cases, malicious -- pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight," the White House said Monday.

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Musk has meanwhile slammed the agency as a "viper's nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America," and reported in an audio-only message on X on Sunday that "we're in the process" of "shutting down USAID" and that Trump reportedly agreed to shutter the agency.

Democrats have criticized the Trump administration's efforts on USAID. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., accused Trump of starting a dictatorship while she protested outside USAID headquarters on Monday.

"It is a really, really sad day in America. We are witnessing a constitutional crisis," Omar said. "We talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on day one. And here we are. This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like when you gut the Constitution, and you install yourself as the sole power. That is how dictators are made."

Fox News Digital's Emma Colton contributed to this report.