Expert reveals how companies are rebranding ‘toxic’ DEI policies to skirt Trump-era bans: ‘New wrapper’

EXCLUSIVE: As the Trump administration and Republicans across the country push to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies across the board, the executive director of a top consumer advocacy group spoke to Fox News Digital about what companies and institutions are doing to skirt those efforts.

“Over the last few months, we’ve sort of seen a phase shift in the ways that they’re trying to keep this DEI grift going,” Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild told Fox News Digital about companies, organizations, hospitals and other entities that are attempting to rebrand DEI and environmental, social and governance in the Trump era. 

“At first, they just pushed back on, tried to defend DEI itself, but when that became so obvious that what DEI really was was anti-White, anti-Asian, sometimes anti-Jewish discrimination in hiring and promotion, they abandoned that,” Hild said. “Now what they’re trying to do is simply change the terminology that has become so toxic to their brand. So we’re seeing a lot of companies move from having departments of DEI, for example, to ‘departments of belonging’ or ‘departments of inclusivity.’”

Several major companies have publicly distanced themselves from DEI in recent months as the new administration signs executive orders eliminating the practice while making the argument that meritocracy should be the focus. 

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Fox News Digital spoke to Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild about the state of DEI in the U.S. (Getty)

However, FOX Business exclusively reported in April on Consumers’ Research warning that some businesses appear to be rebranding the same efforts rather than eliminating them. 

“It is the exact same toxic nonsense under a new wrapper, and they’re just hoping to extend the grift because a lot of these people, I would say most of the people working in DEI are useless,” Hild told Fox News Digital. 

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DEI = Diversity, equity & inclusion. (Dzmitry Dzemidovich)

“They are mediocrities who have managed to get very high-level positions that they’re not qualified for by running this DEI grift, and they’re desperate,” he continued. “They can’t just move into running logistics for Amazon because that takes actual competence and intelligence and if you’re in a DEI department, you probably don’t have either of those things. So they are desperate to keep this grift going so they can justify their own existence. So they’re changing it into a new wrapper.”

Hild, who spoke to Fox News Digital at the State Financial Officers Foundation conference in Orlando, Florida, also explained some of the other issues Consumers’ Research is focused on going forward, including fighting “woke” hospitals in three different areas.

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Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, in Bethesda, Maryland, on Wednesday, May 31, 2023. (Getty Images)

“One is net zero pledges and activities that raise costs for consumers, patients having to pay more because these hospitals are investing millions, sometimes tens of millions of dollars, into green boondoggle projects that have nothing to do with the treatment of patients and the improvement of their health, but they do raise prices,” Hild said.

Secondly, Hild said that his group is concerned about DEI quotas at hospitals.

Hild explained that the third and “worst” issue is transgender surgeries and procedures being forced onto children.

“Pushing of radical left transgender ideology onto kids, and not just pushing it ideologically and rhetorically, but pushing it physically, and what I mean by that is the injection of damaging, lifelong damaging hormones into children to, quote, unquote, change their sex, which is impossible, and even worse, the actual surgical application, removal and mutilation of their genitals, which is a grotesque violation of the Hippocratic Oath,” Hild said.

Consumers’ Research has been actively involved in launching advertising campaigns against hospitals across the United States, including a recent campaign against Henry Ford Health in Michigan, calling out what it says are situations where hospitals are putting “politics over patients.”