The following guest post was written for Daily Kos by Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Pride Month kicked off with a spirit of defiance this year as major companies backed away from sponsorships and support of LGBTQ+ celebrations. This departure—which marks a stark change from how companies have championed Pride in recent years—signals how hard-right extremist groups have managed to push their once fringe beliefs into our daily lives.
Since President Donald Trump took office, we’ve seen a larger pattern of retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion in sectors from education to health care to the corporate world. The cultural headwinds facing DEI did not blow in overnight. As the Southern Poverty Law Center’s new “Year in Hate and Extremism” report details, this shift is part of a long and coordinated strategy by hard-right extremists to reshape American life and infiltrate politics and governance.
What began as a small and vocal minority of people mobilizing during the pandemic to censor classroom discussion, ban books, fight mask mandates, and impose a white, Christian supremacy in schools, quickly gained a foothold of influence in the political discourse. Local and state officials, especially in the South, took up the mantle—and messaging—of these groups and began trying to enact their dangerous ideology into law.
Florida was a leading incubator in which these policies took shape. Groups like Moms for Liberty, founded in Florida in 2021, and Citizens Defending Freedom led a campaign to destabilize, defund, and dismantle public school authority under the guise of “parental rights.” They aligned with state officials who pushed through new educational standards that whitewash and rewrite history. The standards, for example, require courses in African American history to include language that some enslaved people benefited from slavery. They also sought to shut down drag story hours, ban discussion of LGBTQ+ identities in the classroom, and deny gender-affirming medical care for young transgender people. Following Florida’s lead, copycat legislation was soon proposed by lawmakers in states across the country.
Related | Inside Trump’s devastating impact on LGBTQ+ youth
The hard right has since expanded its targets from K-12 schools and public libraries to DEI programs of any kind. As our report details, by 2024, proposed laws to dismantle DEI programs were sweeping the nation. These measures restricted discussions of race and gender in college classrooms and cut funding for diversity personnel and offices, impacting 212 college campuses in 32 states. Companies also increasingly faced legal challenges and pressure from lawmakers and political candidates to drop their DEI programs. Last year, Walmart, Boeing, John Deere, Lowe’s, Ford, and many more announced they would scale back their efforts.
Lawmakers have not only pulled their agenda of exclusion but also their tactics straight from the playbook of hate and antigovernment extremist groups. By spreading disinformation, peddling conspiracy theories, and preying on people’s fears and uncertainty, they seek to deepen divisions and rouse suspicion of any effort to make spaces more welcoming for all.
These tactics were particularly evident in the 2024 elections as the political right increasingly moved toward an authoritarian, Christian supremacist, and patriarchal social order. One of the main groups driving that shift is Turning Point USA, whose primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear over the false conspiracy that white Christians are under attack from immigrants, LGBTQ+ people and civil rights activists. The group’s founder, Charlie Kirk, often spoke at Trump campaign rallies, and has asserted, “You cannot have liberty if you don’t have a Christian population.”
Related | The origins of Trump’s war on diversity
With the election of Trump, this extremism now has an ally in the highest office in the nation. What was once considered a fringe agenda in the modern era is the blueprint from which the country’s president—and the MAGA movement—is operating. It comes as no surprise then that ending DEI has been one of the administration’s top priorities. Shortly after being sworn in, Trump shut down federal diversity programs and hiring initiatives. In March, he signed an executive order attempting to rewrite history and restore monuments and memorials to the Confederacy.
The president and his allies both inside and outside the administration have drummed up such a climate of fear and retribution around DEI that some leaders would rather abandon their efforts altogether than become the administration’s next target. That’s why now is the time to shore up our resources and build coalitions and networks of support like never before. While the backlash to DEI has been swift, more than six in 10 people in the U.S. believe these values are essential for a thriving democracy. All of us must link arms and hold our ground—knowing that our strength is our vibrant and multiracial society. We must not only celebrate but together preserve our nation’s most sacred principle: out of many, one.