The US president has signed two executive orders reversing protections for transgender rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs
The decades-long US promotion of the diversity and inclusion agenda should be investigated on an international level, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
Zakharova made the remarks on Tuesday, a day after newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump ended protections for transgender rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within the federal government.
“Can you imagine how many people’s lives have been ruined over the years of promoting this nonsense?” Zakharova wrote on Telegram.
“What should hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people do now, who have been forced to accept the ideology of amputating healthy genitals and replacing them with artificial ones?” she added.
Zakharova stated that officials in Washington have been forcing other countries “to show solidarity with what they called anti-scientific narratives,” which in essence was “the very propaganda that kills both the body and the soul.”
This “inhumane doctrine” was linked with aid, sanctions, and political and financial pressure, as well as the “humiliation of human dignity and bullying,” Zakharova claimed.
On his first day back in office, Trump repealed 78 executive orders signed by his predecessor, Joe Biden, including at least a dozen measures supporting racial equity and combating discrimination against gay and transgender people.
Federal US agencies and departments have 60 days from the order’s signing to end DEI-related practices.
The order followed a promise Trump made during his inaugural address earlier on Monday, when he vowed to end “the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life” in favor of a society that is “colorblind and merit-based.”
Trump also said it will be official US policy that “there are only two genders: male and female.”
The order is meant to create “equal treatment” and requests “a plan to dismantle the DEI bureaucracy,” a Trump aide told the New York Post. More actions on DEI are reportedly coming soon that would impact private business.
The rollback of DEI programs drew an immediate backlash from civil rights groups, who promised to “fight back against these harmful provisions.”
Some corporations, including the largest US private employer, Walmart, had already started reversing DEI initiatives in the weeks following Trump’s election in November. Meta recently dismantled its DEI department, citing a shifting legal and policy landscape. McDonald’s has scaled back diversity targets for senior leadership. Other companies such as Costco and Apple reportedly remain committed to diversity policies.
