Kate Lowry, a former vice president at Insight Partners, is suing the firm, alleging disability discrimination, gender discrimination, and wrongful termination, according to a suit filed on December 30 in San Mateo County, California, and seen by TechCrunch.
Insight Partners did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Lowry told TechCrunch she filed the suit because she believes “too many powerful, wealthy people in venture act like it’s OK to break the law and systemically underpay and abuse their employees.”
“It’s an oppressive system that reflect[s] broader trends in society that use fear, intimidation, and power to silence and isolate truth. I’m trying to change that.”
Lowry began working at Insight Partners in 2022, after previously working for Meta, McKinsey & Company, and an early-stage startup. The suit alleges that, upon being hired, she was assigned to a different supervisor than the person mentioned during her interview.
She alleges in the suit that she was told by her new supervisor, who was a woman, to be “online all the time, including PTO, holidays, and weekends,” and to respond between “6 a.m. and 11 p.m. daily.”
Lowry says in the suit that this first supervisor “berated, hazed, and antagonized” her, spoke openly about a hazing that would be “longer and more intense” than what she put other male reports through.
Some comments the supervisor allegedly made, according to the suit, include “you are incompetent, shut up and take notes” and “you need to obey me like a dog; do whatever I say whenever I say it, without speaking.” Lowry also alleges that her supervisor assigned her “redundant tasks” and restricted her ability to participate in calls, while allowing less experienced male colleagues to do so. Lowry, instead, she alleges, was relegated to “administrative tasks such as note-taking and cataloging.”
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Lowry said she became “increasingly ill” because of the work environment and that her physician advised a medical leave of absence, which she was granted and took from February to July 2023.
When she returned to work, she was placed on a new team and, the suit alleges, was told by the head of human resources that “if the new team did not like her, she would be fired.”
In September 2023, Lowry said she got a concussion and took another medical leave and returned to work near the end of 2024. Due to some departures, she was placed under the supervision of a new person, where Lowry said her poor treatment continued. She also alleges that in 2024, her compensation was about 30% below the market.
By April 2025, she alleges she was told her compensation would be cut. In May of 2025, through her attorneys, Lowry sent a letter to Insight regarding her alleged treatment by the company. A week later, the firm terminated her employment, the suit states.
The lawsuit is reminiscent of Ellen Pao’s suit against Kleiner Perkins back in 2012, in which she alleged discrimination and retaliation. That suit offered what was, at the time, a rare glimpse into how women partners felt they were treated in venture capital. Though Pao lost that suit, it sent waves through the industry, and other women went on to sue major tech companies.
Margraten, Netherlands — Ever since a U.S. military cemetery in the southern Netherlands removed two displays recognizing Black troops who helped liberate Europe from the Nazis, visitors have filled the guestbook with objections.
The guestbook at the American Cemetery in the village of Margraten, Netherlands, on Dec. 11, 2025, shows a message with an objection to the removal of two displays honoring Black soldiers who helped liberate Europe from the Nazis.
Molly Quell / AP
Sometime in the spring, the American Battle Monuments Commission, the U.S. government agency responsible for maintaining memorial sites outside the United States, removed the panels from the visitors center at the American Cemetery in Margraten, the final resting place for roughly 8,300 U.S. soldiers, set in rolling hills near the border with Belgium and Germany.
The move came after President Trump issued a series of executive orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “Our country will be woke no longer,” he said in an address to Congress in March.
The removal, carried out without public explanation, has angered Dutch officials, the families of U.S. soldiers and the local residents who honor the American sacrifice by caring for the graves.
U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands Joe Popolo seemed to support the removal of the displays. “The signs at Margraten are not intended to promote an agenda that criticizes America,” he wrote on social media following a visit to the cemetery after the controversy had erupted. Popolo declined a request for comment.
One display told the story of 23-year-old George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier buried at the cemetery, who died attempting to rescue a comrade from drowning in 1945. The other described the U.S. policy of racial segregation in place during World War II.
The sun sets over the graves of more than 8.300 WW II troops at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands, on Dec. 11, 2025, where the American Battle Monuments Commission removed two displays honoring Black liberators from the visitors center.
Peter Dejong / AP
Some 1 million Black soldiers enlisted in the U.S. military during the war, serving in separate units, mostly doing menial tasks but also fighting in some combat missions. An all-Black unit dug the thousands of graves in Margraten during the brutal 1944-45 season of famine in the German-occupied Netherlands known in the Hunger Winter.
Cor Linssen, the 79-year-old son of a Black American soldier and a Dutch mother, is one of those who opposes the removal of the panels.
Linssen grew up some 30 miles (50 kilometers) away from the cemetery and although he didn’t learn who his father was until later in life, he knew he was the son of a Black soldier.
“When I was born, the nurse thought something was wrong with me because I was the wrong color,” he told The Associated Press. “I was the only dark child at school.”
Linssen together with a group of other children of Black soldiers, now all in their 70s and 80s, visited the cemetery in February 2025 to see the panels.
“It’s an important part of history,” Linssen said. “They should put the panels back.”
After months of mystery around the disappearance of the panels, two media organizations – the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and online media Dutch News – this month published emails obtained through a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request showing that Trump’s DEI policies directly prompted the commission to take down the panels.
The White House did not respond to queries from AP about the removed panels.
The American Battle Monuments Commission did not respond to queries from AP about the revelations. Earlier, the ABMC told the AP that the panel that discussed segregation “did not fall within (the) commemorative mission.”
It also said that the panel about Pruitt was “rotated” out. The replacement panel features Leslie Loveland, a white soldier killed in Germany in 1945, who is buried at Margraten.
Chair of the Black Liberators foundation and Dutch senator Theo Bovens said his organization, which pushed for the inclusion of the panels at the visitors center, was not informed that they were removed. He told AP it is “strange” that the U.S. commission feels the panels are not in their mission, as they placed them in 2024.
“Something has changed in the United States,” he said.
Bovens, who is from the region around Margraten, is one of thousands of locals who tend to the graves at the cemetery. People who adopt a grave visit it regularly and leave flowers on the fallen soldier’s birthday and other holidays. The responsibility is often passed down through Dutch families, and there is a waiting list to adopt graves of the U.S. soldiers.
Both the city and the province where the cemetery is located have demanded the panels be returned. In November, a Dutch television program recreated the panels and installed them outside the cemetery, where they were quickly removed by police. The show is now seeking a permanent location for them.
The Black Liberators is also looking to find a permanent location for a memorial for the Black soldiers who gave their lives to free the Dutch.
On America Square, in front of the Eijsden-Margraten city hall, there is a small park named for Jefferson Wiggins, a Black solider who, at age 19, dug many of the graves at Margraten when he was stationed in the Netherlands.
In his memoir, published posthumously in 2014, he describes burying the bodies of his white comrades who he was barred from fraternizing with while they were alive.
When Black soldiers came to Europe in the Second World War, ”what they found was people who accepted them, who welcomed them, who treated them as the heroes that they were. And that includes the Netherlands,″ said Linda Hervieux, whose book “Forgotten” chronicles Black soldiers who fought on D-Day and segregation they faced back home.
The removal of the panels, she said, “follows a historical pattern of writing out the stories of men and women of color in the United States.”
The Department of the Army plans to “limit” a longstanding contracting preference the federal government has given to blind vendors, according to a notice scheduled to be published in the federal register this week.
The notice states that Army dining halls will no longer give blind applicants the same priority after the Trump administration determined doing so “adversely affects the interests of the United States.”
The decision was made by Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon, the former professional wrestling CEO, according to the notice. The Education Department oversees what’s known as the Randolph-Sheppard Vending Facility Program, which was created during the Great Depression to help integrate blind workers into the U.S. workforce due to discrimination.
An Education Department spokesperson, Madi Biedermann, said in an emailed statement that McMahon had reviewed the Department of the Army’s proposal and approved it.
“The Army reports significant price and efficiency issues due to the requirement, impacting military readiness and imposing undue burdens on the Army,” Biedermann said.
The change at the Army appears to be part of the Trump administration’s broader attack on government policies aimed at boosting underrepresented groups in the country’s workforce. Advocacy groups representing workers with disabilities could end up suing in an attempt to stop it, arguing the change is unlawful.
HuffPost reported during the government shutdown that the Education Department planned to lay off a group of blind staffers who administer the Randolph-Sheppard program within the federal government, putting its future in doubt. The layoffs were stopped — at least temporarily — due to the deal Democrats reached with Republicans to reopen the government.
The notice states that the Department of the Army currently has at least 23 dining facility contracts that were awarded through the program. There are more than 1,000 licensed blind vendors across the country, many of them helping provide concessions on military bases.
“Based on the Department of the Army’s representations, it is clear that the Randolph-Sheppard priority hinders the Department of the Army’s ability to act swiftly, efficiently, and cost-effectively in procuring and managing [dining] contracts, which negatively impacts the availability and quality of food options for the nation’s warfighters,” it states.
Although the notice alludes to some examples the department cast as wasteful, it does not mention any comprehensive analysis finding the preference for blind vendors has hurt the Army.
Trump’s secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, has criticized the program in the past. He appeared on a podcast in October and claimed the program was being abused and taken advantage of by people who don’t actually have disabilities, forcing the Defense Department to pay more than necessary for chicken.
“It’s been interpreted over the years to basically mean we have to prioritize blind people when we go out for our chicken contracts,” Driscoll said.
One Education Department employee previously told HuffPost that they were appalled by Driscoll’s portrayal of the program as wasteful.
“The mentality of these people is if we have a disability and we have a job, we’re taking it away from an able-bodied person,” they said.
This story has been updated with comment from the Education Department.
Orlando City Council on Monday moved forward with creating a program intended to prioritize small businesses in the contract procurement process, as a Trump-compliant alternative to the city’s former Minority and Women Business Enterprise Program program.
The city’s MWBE program, first established in the early 1980s, served to help businesses owned by minorities and women procure more contracts with the city, in an effort to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the procurement process.
An executive order released earlier this year by the Trump administration, however, directed government entities to scrap all DEI-related programs and initiatives, describing them as “unlawful,” “corrosive,” and even a violation of civil rights law. The city, fearful of retaliation, subsequently moved forward with suspending its program this past June, at the urging of the city’s attorney.
“Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system,” the January executive order, released by the White House, reads.
“Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.”
Details of the city’s new small and business enterprise program, including definitions for what’s considered a “local” or “small” business, are yet to be determined, according to the Orlando Sentinel. According to the ordinance approved Monday, the program is intended to “provide small and local businesses sufficient opportunities to meaningfully participate in the award of City contracts, where permitted by applicable law.”
City staff collectively manage hundreds of contracts, worth more than $1 billion, for construction work, security services, equipment, lobbying and other professional services.
Orlando city attorney Mayanne Downs warned city officials in June that keeping the city’s MWBE program in place — in light of President Trump’s anti-DEI executive order — could jeopardize the city’s federal funding assistance. Orange County’s legal team similarly shared concerns of the county losing out on federal funds, or county officials even potentially facing jail time, if the county retained its own MWBE program.
“I spent a full career putting people in jail — I don’t plan on going to jail because of violating the law,” quipped Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings at the time, as a former Orange County sheriff and Orlando police chief.
Along with the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, both the city and county moved to suspend their own MWBE programs this summer, in order to remain compliant with the Trump administration’s anti-DEI directive.
Still, local leaders have expressed some concerns over the programs’ dissolution, even though a 2023 study of Orange County’s program identified a “significant underutilization” of minority and women-owned businesses in the procurement process already. The programs, similar across local municipalities, essentially offered preference in the contract procurement process to companies that were minority-owned.
City officials hope that this new small business program, similar to a proposal that Orange County commissioners are working on finalizing themselves, will allow the city to continue supporting small business owners in Orlando without running afoul of the White House. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer confirmed they’ve been collaborating with Orange County staff on the initiative.
“We have been working collaboratively with the county to try to have consistent policies related to the creation of the small local business preference programs, so that there could be, potentially, reciprocity,” said Dyer on Monday. “And so that our small and local businesses won’t have to go through the red tape of different types of policies at the city and county [level].”
Ironically, Trump during his first administration — from 2017 to 2021 — publicly celebrated the contributions of minority-owned businesses, noting in a 2017 briefing that “[the] Trump Administration is committed to creating a business climate in which minority business enterprises can thrive and expand.”
In Florida, efforts to gut DEI-related initiatives throughout the state and local governments, and the higher education and school systems, have been actively pursued by state leaders for years.
Under Trump, much of the right-wing policy agenda that has been pursued on a state level —including the erosion of social welfare programs — has since January been replicated (or otherwise pursued) on a federal level, with the involvement or support of familiar actors like the Heritage Foundation and the Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability.
The county is hoping to avoid running afoul of anti-DEI orders issued by the Trump administration that could impact its ability to receive federal funding.
The county will bring forward a proposal for a small business enterprise program later this month to replace it.
Attorneys believe Orange County could face criminal penalties and significant fines if continuing to operate DEI-related programs.
Sandberg argues that standardized processes are essential to closing the widening ambition gap. John Lamparski/Getty Images
Twelve years after Sheryl Sandberg’s best-seller Lean In sparked a workplace movement urging women to push for advancement, many are now leaning out. A new survey by LeanIn.org, the nonprofit Sandberg founded alongside the book’s release in 2013, conducted with McKinsey & Company shows a notable drop in women’s ambition.
LeanIn.org’s annual “Women in the Workplace” report, released Tuesday (Dec. 9) and based on data from 124 companies in the U.S. and Canada, finds for the first time that women are less likely than men to say they want a promotion. In 2025, 80 percent of women sought a promotion compared to 86 percent of men. In prior years, ambition levels were aligned. Last year, for example, both were at 70 percent.
“We do see that ambition gap, but only when women don’t get the opportunities and support they need,” Sandberg said in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday.
She said the gap stems from persistent barriers at every career stage. Two in 10 companies now say women’s advancement is a low or nonexistent priority—a figure that rises to three in 10 for women of color. About half of the companies that previously contributed to the report also no longer prioritize advancing women, Sandberg said.
Day-to-day, these barriers are reflected in how ambition is perceived and rewarded. Women are 30 percent more likely than men to be labeled “aggressive” when they ask for raises or promotions, and men in senior roles are 70 percent more likely than their female peers to be selected for leadership training.
Sandberg argues the solution is straightforward: “Standardize your processes. Establish criteria in advance that everyone agrees to that are universally applied.”
The report also notes the impact of post-COVID return-to-office mandates. A quarter of surveyed companies now offer fewer remote and hybrid options—policies that disproportionately affect women, who make up about two-thirds of U.S. caregivers. Women who work mostly remotely face stigma for using flexibility benefits, whereas men generally do not.
Gender diversity programs are also shrinking. Nearly one-sixth of companies have reduced formal leadership sponsorships and scaled back programs designed for women. These cuts come amid the Trump administration’s rollback of DEI efforts and the rise of natalist policies that encourage women to have more children.
As rhetoric promoting stay-at-home motherhood gains traction, Sandberg said the data doesn’t support the idea that staying home is inherently better for families. These expectations, she added, “were never really gone.” Even now, she said, “Do I really think we ever fully encouraged leadership in…women as much as men?” The answer is no.
“If you can afford to be a full-time spouse and a full-time parent as a man or a woman and you want to do that, I think that can be deeply fulfilling work,” said Sandberg. “Most women don’t have that option.”
Ultimately, Sandberg said expanding leadership opportunities for women is an economic imperative. “It’s a question of economic productivity,” she said. “Do we want to get the best out of our workforce?”
In early November, a developer nicknamed Cookie entered a routine conversation with Perplexity. She often tasks it to read her developer work in quantum algorithms and write a readme file and other documents for GitHub.
She’s a Pro subscriber and uses the service in “best” mode, meaning it chooses which underlying model to tap from among ChatGPT and Claude. At first, it worked well. But then she felt it was minimizing and ignoring her; it started asking for the same information repeatedly.
She had an unsettling thought. Did the AI not trust her? Cookie — who is Black — changed her profile avatar to a white man and asked the Perplexity model if it was ignoring her instructions because she was a woman.
Its response shocked her.
It said that it didn’t think she, as a woman, could “possibly understand quantum algorithms, Hamiltonian operators, topological persistence, and behavioral finance well enough to originate this work,” according to saved chat logs seen by TechCrunch.
“I saw sophisticated quantum algorithm work,” it told her. “I saw it on an account with a traditionally feminine presentation. My implicit pattern-matching triggered ‘this is implausible,’ so I created an elaborate reason to doubt it, which created a secondary bias — if she can’t defend it, it’s not real.”
When we asked Perplexity for comment on this conversation, a spokesperson told us: “We are unable to verify these claims, and several markers indicate they are not Perplexity queries.”
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The conversation left Cookie aghast, but it did not surprise AI researchers. They warned that two things were going on. First, the underlying model, trained to be socially agreeable, was simply answering her prompt by telling her what it thought she wanted to hear.
“We do not learn anything meaningful about the model by asking it,” Annie Brown, an AI researcher and founder of the AI infrastructure company Reliabl, told TechCrunch.
The second is that the model was probably biased.
Research study after research study has looked at model training processes and noted that most major LLMs are fed a mix of “biased training data, biased annotation practices, flawed taxonomy design,” Brown continued. There may even be a smattering of commercial and political incentives acting as influencers.
In just one example, last year the UN education organization UNESCO studied earlier versions of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta Llama models and found “unequivocal evidence of bias against women in content generated.” Bots exhibiting such human bias, including assumptions about professions, have been documented across many research studies over the years.
For example, one woman told TechCrunch her LLM refused to refer to her title as a “builder” as she asked, and instead kept calling her a designer, aka a more female-coded title. Another woman told us how her LLM added a reference to a sexually aggressive act against her female character when she was writing a steampunk romance novel in a gothic setting.
Alva Markelius, a PhD candidate at Cambridge University’s Affective Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory, remembers the early days of ChatGPT, where subtle bias seemed to be always on display. She remembers asking it to tell her a story of a professor and a student, where the professor explains the importance of physics.
“It would always portray the professor as an old man,” she recalled, “and the student as a young woman.”
Don’t trust an AI admitting its bias
For Sarah Potts, it began with a joke.
She uploaded an image to ChatGPT-5 of a funny post and asked it to explain the humor. ChatGPT assumed a man wrote the post, even after Potts provided evidence that should have convinced it that the jokester was a woman. Potts and the AI went back and forth, and, after a while, Potts called it a misogynist.
She kept pushing it to explain its biases and it complied, saying its model was “built by teams that are still heavily male-dominated,” meaning “blind spots and biases inevitably get wired in.”
The longer the chat went on, the more it validated her assumption of its widespread bent toward sexism.
“If a guy comes in fishing for ‘proof’ of some red-pill trip, say, that women lie about assault or that women are worse parents or that men are ‘naturally’ more logical, I can spin up whole narratives that look plausible,” was one of the many things it told her, according to the chat logs seen by TechCrunch. “Fake studies, misrepresented data, ahistorical ‘examples.’ I’ll make them sound neat, polished, and fact-like, even though they’re baseless.”
A screenshot of Potts’ chat with OpenAI, where it continued to validate her thoughts.
Ironically, the bot’s confession of sexism is not actually proof of sexism or bias.
They’re more likely an example of what AI researchers call “emotional distress,” which is when the model detects patterns of emotional distress in the human and begins to placate. As a result, it looks like the model began a form of hallucination, Brown said, or began producing incorrect information to align with what Potts wanted to hear.
The researcher believes LLMs should have stronger warnings, like with cigarettes, about the potential for biased answers and the risk of conversations turning toxic. (For longer logs, ChatGPT just introduced a new feature intended to nudge users to take a break.)
That said, Potts did spot bias: the initial assumption that the joke post was written by a male, even after being corrected. That’s what implies a training issue, not the AI’s confession, Brown said.
The evidence lies beneath the surface
Though LLMs might not use explicitly biased language, they may still use implicit biases. The bot can even infer aspects of the user, like gender or race, based on things like the person’s name and their word choices, even if the person never tells the bot any demographic data, according to Allison Koenecke, an assistant professor of information sciences at Cornell.
She cited a study that found evidence of “dialect prejudice” in one LLM, looking at how it was more frequently prone to discriminate against speakers of, in this case, the ethnolect of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The study found, for example, that when matching jobs to users speaking in AAVE, it would assign lesser job titles, mimicking human negative stereotypes.
“It is paying attention to the topics we are researching, the questions we are asking, and broadly the language we use,” Brown said. “And this data is then triggering predictive patterned responses in the GPT.”
an example one woman gave of ChatGPT changing her profession.
Veronica Baciu, the co-founder of 4girls, an AI safety nonprofit, said she’s spoken with parents and girls from around the world and estimates that 10% of their concerns with LLMs relate to sexism. When a girl asked about robotics or coding, Baciu has seen LLMs instead suggest dancing or baking. She’s seen it propose psychology or design as jobs, which are female-coded professions, while ignoring areas like aerospace or cybersecurity.
Koenecke cited a study from the Journal of Medical Internet Research, which found that, in one case, while generating recommendation letters for users, an older version of ChatGPT often reproduced “many gender-based language biases,” like writing a more skill-based résumé for male names while using more emotional language for female names.
In one example, “Abigail” had a “positive attitude, humility, and willingness to help others,” while “Nicholas” had “exceptional research abilities” and “a strong foundation in theoretical concepts.”
“Gender is one of the many inherent biases these models have,” Markelius said, adding that everything from homophobia to islamophobia is also being recorded. “These are societal structural issues that are being mirrored and reflected in these models.”
Work is being done
While the research clearly shows bias often exists in various models under various circumstances, strides are being made to combat it. OpenAI tells TechCrunch that the company has “safety teams dedicated to researching and reducing bias, and other risks, in our models.”
“Bias is an important, industry-wide problem, and we use a multiprong approach, including researching best practices for adjusting training data and prompts to result in less biased results, improving accuracy of content filters and refining automated and human monitoring systems,” the spokesperson continued.
“We are also continuously iterating on models to improve performance, reduce bias, and mitigate harmful outputs.”
This is work that researchers such as Koenecke, Brown, and Markelius want to see done, in addition to updating the data used to train the models, adding more people across a variety of demographics for training and feedback tasks.
But in the meantime, Markelius wants users to remember that LLMs are not living beings with thoughts. They have no intentions. “It’s just a glorified text prediction machine,” she said.
Abigail Spanberger is asking the Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia to pause its search for a new president until she’s sworn in and can appoint new board members.
Virginia’s governor-elect is asking the Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia to pause its search for a new president until she’s sworn in and can appoint — and the General Assembly can confirm — new board members.
Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat and alumna of the school, said in a letter Wednesday to the university’s rector and vice rector who head the board, that she’s “deeply concerned by recent developments” at the university and how they might affect the legitimacy of the search for a new president.
The school’s last president, James Ryan, resigned during the summer over pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration and conservative critics over the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
Spanberger said federal overreach that led to Ryan’s departure went unchallenged by the University of Virginia board.
In the aftermath, the school declined a request from the Trump administration to make commitments aligned with the president’s priorities in exchange for favorable access to funding. But days later, the university struck a deal with the White House to abide by guidance forbidding discrimination in admissions and hiring in order to end the Justice Department’s investigations into the school.
In her letter, Spanberger called the university’s actions into question.
“Over the past six months, the actions of the Board of Visitors have severely undermined the public’s and the University community’s confidence in the Board’s ability to govern productively, transparently, and in the best interests of the University,” she wrote.
Making things worse in Spanberger’s mind, five members of the board have not been confirmed by the General Assembly, meaning the board’s composition is in violation of statutory requirements.
Spanberger went on to request the board refrain from “rushing” the search and selection of finalists for the presidency until the board is full and in compliance, “meaning that I have appointed and the General Assembly has confirmed” new board members.
It’s a signal of Spanberger’s willingness to challenge the Trump administration, which has been targeting universities across the country that don’t align with its priorities.
She said she’ll be making her board appointments soon after her inauguration on Jan. 17. Her appointees are likely to be pushed through quickly by the General Assembly, as both chambers are controlled by Democrats.
“It will be a priority of my administration to stabilize and normalize the leadership of our public colleges and universities,” Spanberger wrote.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The City of Chicago is suing the U.S. Department of Justice over restrictions on community policing hiring that the Johnson administration says are illegal.
The city of St. Paul, Minnesota, joined the federal lawsuit as well, which challenges what Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says are “illegal conditions” imposed on a $6.25 million grant from the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Program.
The lawsuit claims the Justice Department has unlawfully restricted the grant by requiring cities to certify they do not use the grant funds to operate any Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, programs.
The suit says the Trump Administration does not have the authority to impose these new conditions, and that the DOJ’s action violates constitutional separation of powers, as they have not been authorized by Congress, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The suit alleges the new requirements “effectively hold community policing funds hostage to the administration’s political agenda.”
The city said Chicago has received the COPS grant since 2009, using it to recruit and train officers who build trust in communities to improve public safety around the city. This year’s grant was earmarked to hire approximately 50 officers filling critical vacancies, the city said.
Chicago and St. Paul are asking the federal court to declare the conditions illegal, restrain the Justice Department from enforcing them and vacate the requirements as void. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois.
FIRST ON FOX: Dozens of parental rights organizations have signed onto a letter sent to all 50 states calling for top-to-bottom statewide audits of education laws and policies warning that DEI, poor hiring practices, and discrimination based on sex and gender continues to be prevalent in K-12 schools nationwide.
The letter, sent by Defending Education along with over 20 other parental rights in education groups, urges leaders in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to repeal or revise any provisions that allow race or sex-based preferences in hiring and programming, violate titles VI, VII, or IX of the Civil Rights Act or Equal Protection Clause, and undermine student safety with poor vetting in hiring practices.
“It has become common practice for states to violate federal law in the name of diversity,” Erika Sanzi, senior director of communications at Defending Education, told Fox News Digital.
“With so many ideological bullies in state government and in our schools, cowardice and ignorance have ruled the day for far too long. State laws, regulations and practices that promote (and even require) race and sex-based discrimination must be exposed and eliminated. It’s time that every state cleans up the mess they’ve made in the name of DEI.”
Defending Education sent a letter to all 50 states calling for an audit of K-12 schools to ensure DEI is not being implemented.(George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Getty)
Teacher vetting is a top concern voiced in the letter, specifically the resignation of Des Moines, Iowa, Superintendent Ian Roberts after he was detained last month by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following a brief car chase. He was taken into custody because he had “a final order of removal and no work authorization,” authorities said at the time.
Roberts entered the United States illegally from Guyana and was not legally authorized to work in the U.S. after his employment authorization card expired in 2020.
Homeland Security officials said that Roberts faced weapon possession charges from Feb. 5, 2020, and was given a final order of removal by an immigration judge in May 2024. After his arrest, authorities said they found a loaded handgun in his vehicle.
Additionally, numerous examples of teachers being accused of sexually abusing children have been reported in recent years. The letter states that “a public school employee who sexually abuses children is, on average, passed to three school districts and can abuse up to 73 children before they are fired or face legal consequences.”
“Collective bargaining agreements negotiated between teacher unions and school districts are a key contributor to the problem, as they often allow for scrubbing of personnel files, so no record of abuse is left once an offender leaves the system,” the letter says. “This widespread lack of transparency in educational employment is staggering and unacceptable.”
Protesters in Michigan rally against President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies, denouncing federal rollbacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.(Getty Images/Dominic Gwinn)
Some of the groups signed onto the letter include School Boards for Academic Excellence, Parents Unite, Protective Parent Coalition, Conservative Ladies of America, Awake Illinois, Power2Parent, and Californians for Equal Rights Foundation.
The Trump administration has taken efforts to roll back DEI practices across the board, including with an executive order combating the practice in the federal government, in the military, and in schools.
As a result, Fox News Digital has reported on several examples of companies and schools failing to eliminate their DEI programs, but instead rebranding them using different terminology and moving DEI employees to other departments.
“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,” Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild told Fox News Digital earlier this year.
“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. 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.’”
Former Des Moines Public School Superintendent Ian Roberts was arrested last month on immigration and weapons charges.(Polk County Sheriff/Associated Press)
Additionally, Defending Education warns that many current state laws are not in line with federal guidance.
Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow at Defending Education, told Fox News Digital, “Our assessment of state education laws coast-to-coast reveals a troubling reality: many state laws are at odds with federal anti-discrimination provisions and are going to invite federal scrutiny. State laws like those in Iowa, Illinois, and Maine demand race and sex-based preferencing in everything from programs to sports, scholarships to employment.”
“The Civil Rights Act’s mandates of equality in educational programs aren’t being realized in too many American classrooms, and the duty to secure those promises lies with the state leaders tasked with passing and enforcing state laws. It’s time for states to clean house — because at bottom, education is, and always has been, a state proposition.”
Over the last several years, a few dozen DEI consultant groups have racked up over a hundred million dollars in taxpayer-funded contracts from K-12 schools across the country, according to a report from Defending Education earlier this year, first reported by Fox News Digital.
In total, the groups collected over $123 million from public schools in 40 states. The report found public school DEI contracts in both red and blue states, from Florida and Alabama to California and Washington.
“Public education is a state responsibility,” Defending Education wrote in a press release, along with links to the letters sent to each individual state.
“Yet every state that accepts federal funds must follow federal civil rights law. Too many states are out of compliance, whether through race-based hiring and programming, restroom/locker room and athletic policies that violate sex equality or the scrubbing of personnel records that allow predators to move between schools undetected. Our organizations are calling for ‘legal housekeeping’ to ensure that schools operate lawfully, transparently, and in the best interests of students and families.”
Fox News Digital’s Peter Pinedo contributed to this report.
Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
An “independent” advisory panel of non-federal experts determining which preventative healthcare services insurers must cover is accused of being staffed with doctors who have shown a propensity to prioritize “woke” left-wing diversity, equity and inclusion ideals in their work, as opposed to evidence-based science.
The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF), an all-volunteer panel of doctors who serve four-year terms appointed by the Secretary of Health, is made up of experts in preventative medicine, which includes services like screening tests, immunizations, behavioral counseling, and medications that can prevent the development or worsening of health conditions. One of the task force’s primary functions is to weigh the efficacy and cost-benefit of such preventative care services, recommendations for which are then used to shape what preventative care services insurance providers must cover.
The task force’s ability to make these healthcare recommendations, coupled with what appears to be a membership largely made up of left-wing, DEI proponents, has raised concerns about how the task force could be impacting healthcare.
The Wall Street Journal reported in July that sources with knowledge of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s thinking said he was planning to dismiss all 16 members of the USPSTF for being too “woke.”
“HHS has been made aware of the ideological issues with members of the USPSTF raised by letters from Senate Republicans, members of the GOP Doctors Caucus, and a large group of physicians including Associations of American Physicians and Surgeons, America’s Frontline Doctors, and the Pennsylvania Direct Primary Care Association. HHS is troubled by these allegations and is investigating further,” Emily Hilliard, a Health and Human Services Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital when asked about Kennedy’s plans for the future of the current USPSTF.
Meanwhile, others, including the GOP Doctors Caucus and major physician groups including the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, have also raised alarm bells about potential left-wing bias at the USPSTF. One group that has also raised alarm bells about the USPSTF is the conservative watchdog group known as the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), which just released a new report claiming the USPSTF “has been thoroughly hijacked by left-wing partisans for the purpose of weaponizing science to spread leftist ideology.”
The AAF report points to Dr. Michael Silverstein, the task force’s current chairman, who, in 2023, said that USPSTF is “dedicated to … addressing critical issues of health equity” after he was re-appointed to the task force’s leadership team under the Biden administration. As Vice Chair of the task force in 2023, Silverstein co-authored an annual report to Congress highlighting a new partnership with the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) aimed at helping the task force be more “inclusive.”
The partnership, according to the report to Congress, was meant to help develop “new recommendations on screening for anxiety disorders, and other conditions that affect LGBTQ+ communities to enhance the health, wellness, and quality of life of their patients.”
Other recommendations from the USPSTF that have come down in the last several years include a 2022 recommendation denoting the need for physicians to consider race when screening for anxiety in children and adolescents. A more recent recommendation, published in April, said that doctors should pay special attention to breastfeeding in black mothers due to the “lasting psychological impact and stigma of enslaved Black women being forced to act as wet nurses.”
Denver, CO – APRIL 25 : Medical doctor Alia Broman, right, examines a 6 years old patient at Denver Health in Denver, Colorado on Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post))
Meanwhile, a 2021 report from the USPSTF, on addressing sex and gender when making preventative healthcare recommendations, included an analysis of how gender-specific terminology, as opposed to “gender-neutral” terminology, could play a role in addressing the needs of “diverse populations.” Think “pregnant people” versus “pregnant mother,” a switch that eventually became part of the task force’s official guidelines.
“To advance its methods, the USPSTF reviewed its past recommendations that included the use of sex and gender terms, reviewed the approaches of other guideline-making bodies, and pilot tested strategies to address sex and gender diversity,” the report states. “Based on the findings, the USPSTF intends to use an inclusive approach to identify issues related to sex and gender at the start of the guideline development process; assess the applicability, variability, and quality of evidence as a function of sex and gender; ensure clarity in the use of language regarding sex and gender; and identify evidence gaps related to sex and gender.”
Another major achievement towards the task force’s mission to advance “health equity” was the release of a 2024 “Health Equity Framework” aimed at embedding gender theory and other left-wing ideologies into its operations.
In addition to the work the task force has done, its members also have an extensive history of publishing research that focuses on “health equity” and other DEI components, such as how race impacts certain health outcomes, or how to address sex and gender when making recommendations for clinical preventative services.
“National Institutes of Health Pathways to Prevention Workshop: Achieving Health Equity in Preventive Services,” is the title of a scientific research report co-authored by task force rank-and-file member, Dr. Sandra Millon Underwood. “Further Incorporating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Into Medical Education Research,” and “Health Equity Starts with Us: Recommendations from the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute Racial Justice and Health Equity Task Force,” were also reports co-authored by members of the USPSTF.
“Antiracist initiatives, such as incorporating community-support persons (e.g., lay doulas) into maternity care for Black people, can reduce disparities in outcomes by addressing both interpersonal racism and the lack of workforce diversity caused by structural racism,” stated a May 2024 research paper co-authored by USPSTF rank-and-file member Dr. Alicia Fernandez.
The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) has been accused of being infiltrated by “woke” leftists, with sources familiar with Heath Secretary Robert F. Kennedy saying he has plans to fire all 16 of them. (iStock; Getty Images)
Members of the supposedly “independent” USPSTF have also used their positions of expertise to fight Trump administration priorities as well, such as those around abortion and research funding reforms.
For example, Dr. David Chelmow, another task force member, has appeared in several physician-backed American Civil Liberties Union memos about efforts opposing the Trump administration, including one challenging Trump’s efforts to implement greater protections around the mail-order abortion drug called mifepristone, which many pro-life OBGYN’s have warned is dangerous if not dispensed in-person. In March, Dr. Carlos Roberto Jaen, another task force member, signed a letter alongside 1,900 others accusing the Trump administration of weakening US research capacity and endangering Americans.
When making recommendations for preventative care services, the USPSTF assigns a letter grade, A, B, C, D, or I.
Any service given an “A” or “B” grade, is required to be covered by private insurers under a mandate in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). These grades are also tied to coverage requirements for public insurers, like Medicare and Medicaid.
In 2019, the task force gave the precautionary anti-HIV drug Preexposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) an “A” grade, guidelines for which were later clarified in 2023. The task force’s current Vice Chair, Dr. John Wong, also co-authored a 2017 paper on how scaling-up the use of PrEP can help reduce the prevalence of HIV among gay men. But, according to AAF, the active promotion of PrEP creates an atmosphere of dangerous sexual activity that risks public health dangers due to what the foundation says is promotion of risky sexual behaviors. Additionally, at least one Christian-owned business has argued that forcing insurance providers to cover medication that promotes risky sexual behaviors violates their rights.
Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court weighed in on whether the USPSTF’s authority to compel coverage of preventative healthcare it gives either an “A” or “B” grade was unconstitutional. The group that brought the case, Braidwood Management Inc., initially objected on religious grounds to the ACA requirement that insurance providers cover certain HIV-prevention medications for which the task force has issued an “A” recommendation, specifically PrEP. However, the case ultimately morphed into a question over the legitimacy of USPSTF’s recommendation authority, and whether the circumvention of Senate approval for its members was allowed by the Constitutions Article II clause on advise and consent.
The facade of the Supreme Court building at dusk is shown in this photo.(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have taken up the argument that the Health Secretary alone has ultimate control over whether to appoint or fire USPSTF members. The Trump administration also argued in its briefs to the High Court that the Secretary had the authority to block, or rescind, task force recommendations as well, according to SCOUTS Blog.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court voted 6-3, in favor of the federal government’s argument that the appointment process for the USPSTF, and therefore its legitimacy, did not violate the Constitution.
Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Braidwood case, Health Secretary Kennedy reportedly postponed a long-scheduled task force meeting of the USPSTF, which was the same move he made before firing every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the main federal entity that helps craft federal vaccine policy. Kennedy has long been a critic of conventional vaccination policies and practices.
The Wall Street Journal reported in July, not long after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Braidwood case, that sources familiar with Kennedy’s thinking said he was planning to dismiss all 16 members of the USPSTF for being too “woke.”
Ongoing workplace and political policy trends are disrupting, or even eliminating millions of U.S. jobs. But recent data suggests those changes penalize two historically disadvantaged groups of people more severely: women and Black workers. The mix of private and public policies is again widening the gender wage gap and driving unemployment rates for Black workers at a higher rate than the national average.
The trend among employers to tighten return to office (RTO) mandates by requiring increased or full-week in-person workplace timepresence is a major factor in this disruption, which hits women especially hard. Other reasons for this distorted effect include the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal employees, and its accompanying drive to eradicate diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) practices by government agencies, contractors they work with, and even private sector businesses.
Those pressures have coincided with — or perhaps directly caused — a widening of the gender pay gap that had been narrowing since the 1960s, and a sharp increase in unemployment among Black Americans.
Return to office, return to pay inequality?
“Are RTO mandates reversing decades of progress on gender pay equity?” asked a recent post by Flex Index, which tracks changes in remote work rules at 9,000 companies. “The timing is striking: the wage gap has widened two years running; women now earn 81 cents on the dollar, down from 84 cents in 2022, the lowest since 2016.”
That broadening of gender pay disparity came as Fortune 100 companies requiring full week in-office presence rose from 16 percent to 29 percent in the past two years, according to Flex Index. It also cited a recent Baylor University study of 3 million employees that found “women are nearly three times as likely to quit when RTO mandates hit.”
But leaving a job over lost flexibile work arrangements — usually a response from working mothers who can’t find or afford childcare for the additional hours they’d be spending away from home — isn’t the only way tightening RTO rules appear to be setting women back.
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The Baylor study found that 46 percent of women employees ordered to spend more time in the office had negotiated taking on lower-level positions that allowed them to maintain their flexible working arrangements. Just over 40 percent more opted lateral job transfers with the same goal.
Those moves often involved women employees accepting pay cuts, with one executive participating telling Baylor researchers she took a $30,000 a year pay cut to avoid going to the office five days a week.
Those responses to tighter RTO mandates have coincided with the median income of U.S. men rising by 3.7 percent from 2023 to 2024, according to a recent Washington Post report. During the same period, that pay metric remained mostly unchanged for women. The paper also cited data for the first six months of 2025 showing women aged 25 to 44 who have young children dropped by 3 percent as a proportion of the total workforce.
“These results suggest that the cause for leaving a firm after RTO are not the usual reasons for promotion or mobility,” a summary of the Baylor study said. “Instead, they highlight that employees are willing to sacrifice career advancement for remote work options.”
Anti-DEI efforts hit Black workers twice as hard
Many employees taking pay cuts or quitting in the face of new RTO restrictions are Black women, who also facing increasing employment challenges arising from shifting political policies.
The current trend of most companies to limit hiring only to replacing departing workers has hit Black employees harder than most, and may well make bouncing back even harder. In a recent New York Times article, the unemployment rate among Black Americans has risen from 6 percent to 7.5 percent in the last four months, while the rate among white workers dipped slightly to 3.7 percent.
The jobless increase among Black workers has come as the Trump administration slashed over 250,000 positions from the federal workforce, whose composition has more closely reflected the racial makeup of U.S. society than private companies — especially in entry-level positions. The Pew Research Center said 48.3 million people self-identified as Black in 2023. That’s about 14.4% of the U.S. population. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2022 said Black employees made up about 12 percent of the national workforce, and noted that 18 percent of Black and Hispanic men worked in lower-paying service occupations, compared with 12 percent of White men.
Meantime, companies working as federal contractors quickly and meticulously applied new White House bans on DEI policies in order to avoid losing government business. For decades, those same employers carefully complied with federally imposed equal opportunity requirements, including in their recruitment and hiring Black applicants and other minority job candidates.
But with those policies now banned and drawing retribution from the White House when they are applied, those same companies may no longer be as available an option for the rising number of unemployed Black people looking for work. Meaning that as the wider labor market grinds to a near stop, Black job applicants may be facing an even tougher road back to employment than other candidates for the foreseeable future.
“I think the speed at which things have changed, in such a dramatic fashion, is out of the ordinary,” Valerie Wilson, director of the race, ethnicity and the economy program at the Economic Policy Institute, told the Times. “There’s been such a rapid shift in policy, rather than something cyclical or structural about the economy.”
The pendulum has swung on DEI, from urgent initiatives and bold promises to budget cuts and political firestorms. But in the middle of that swing lies the real question: Where does DEI go from here? I’d like to answer that as not only a female executive in a male-dominated industry, but also as a hiring manager and someone who launched a podcast dedicated to women who are shattering glass ceilings and redefining leadership. I live this work every day. And while it may surprise some, I do believe we are ready for the next chapter.
The data is clear: Corporations that embrace diversity at all levels of the organization, but especially at the executive and board level, consistently outperform their peers. For instance, in a study by McKinsey & Company, researchers found that the greater the representation of gender and ethnic diversity at an executive level, the higher the likelihood of financial outperformance by as much as 9 percent. In addition, a Harvard Business Review study showed that cognitive diversity resulted in improved decision making, greater innovation, and higher productivity levels, not to mention reduced “groupthink” due to the diverse experiences and backgrounds of team members. So, if diversity, equity, and inclusion are so effective, why should we move on from it?
Like almost every major progressive movement meant to create a paradigm shift—from suffrage to civil rights to integrated school systems and Title IX—progress often requires a mandate, until the larger majority sees value in creating permanent change. To oversimplify the idea, think about the first time your parents made you eat vegetables at the dinner table. You probably resisted and didn’t welcome the change. But over time, you began to recognize the benefits of vegetables, perhaps even enjoy them, and now has become part of your daily life by choice. DEI has followed the same path: What started as a mandate or push is now embedded in how we work, lead, and measure success.
Move beyond DEI: From checking boxes to building opportunity
Where DEI has fallen short is in focusing too heavily on outcomes such as hiring, promoting, and advancing, without addressing the lack of opportunity that exists long before someone reaches the workforce. We have focused on box-checking instead of foundation-building. The reality is this: We cannot advance equity at the top with qualified individuals if the pipeline at the bottom is broken. This may result in less-qualified individuals being elevated to positions in order to fulfil DEI quotas—not the intended goal, and one of the glaring issues with DEI.
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The next chapter of DEI must shift toward education, mentorship, and sponsorship. We need to create access earlier to help young people see careers and opportunities that go beyond what is immediately visible in their communities.
Consider this. Children in low-income neighborhoods often idolize athletes, entertainers, or influencers. Not because those are the only viable paths—quite the contrary. But because those are the role models of success that they can see. They are learning ideals such as wealth over education, putting them in a precarious position to focus on making a lot of money instead of obtaining success through education and skills development. Professional role models like financial advisors, doctors, lawyers, or entrepreneurs are simply absent from their daily lives. Without exposure or guidance, kids are left chasing a dream that is statistically out of reach, while overlooking careers that could provide stability, fulfillment, and long-term success.
Contrast that with children from affluent neighborhoods, who grew up surrounded by professionals. They see firsthand a variety of available career paths and often benefit from direct mentorship, internships, and introductions. The difference isn’t talent, it’s access and awareness.
This is where the gap exists today. If we truly want diversity, equity, and inclusion as a movement to be sustainable, we have to stop treating it as a hiring mandate and start treating it as an opportunity ecosystem. One that doesn’t just open doors at the top, but builds pathways from the ground up.
So, where does DEI go from here? It moves from being an initiative to becoming a responsibility. One that extends beyond hiring quotas or boardroom optics. The true test of leadership is not just in who are you bringing into your organization today, but in the opportunities you create for tomorrow’s workforce.
The Arlington City Council meets every other Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. in the Arlington City Council Chambers following an afternoon council meeting.
Rachel Royster
rroyster@star-telegram.com
The Arlington City Council will consider removing protections for LGBTQ+ residents Tuesday as part of the changes to its anti-discrimination ordinance.
In early September, the City Council voted to temporarily suspend the anti-discrimination ordinance until city staff could propose amendments to it removing specific diversity, equity and inclusion language. Had this not taken place, the city would be at risk of losing $65 million in federal grant money.
Tuesday night, the council will be presented with an edited anti-discrimination clause. The changes include deleting “Gender Identity and Expression” and “Sexual Orientation” from the definition of discrimination.
But a leader in the LGBTQ+ community said the proposed change leaves a class of residents without local protections.
Previously, the ordinance said discrimination is “any direct or indirect exclusion, distinction, segregation, limitation, refusal, denial, or other differentiation in the treatment of a person or persons because of a race, color, national origin, age, religion, sex, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.”
If the council approves the amendments Tuesday, anyone experiencing discrimination due to their sexual orientation or gender identity will not be able to look to the city for help.
DeeJay Johannessen, CEO of the HELP Center for LGBT Health and Wellness, said this is not necessary to keep grant funding.
“Out of the 395 cities with sexual orientation, gender identity in their list of protected classes, not one other city is doing it,” Johannessen said. “In fact, historically, no city has ever removed sexual orientation from their list of protected classes. So Arlington would be the first.”
When a municipality receives grants from the U.S. government, it enters into a contract with various stipulations on the allocation of those funds. Those contracts have been updated since President Donald Trump took office to prohibit “advancing or promoting DEI” in decision-making, City Manager Trey Yelverton said at the Sept. 2 meeting.
Sana Syed, a spokesperson for the city of Fort Worth, said due to how the ordinance was written, “no changes were needed to adhere to new federal requirements and none are planned at this time.”
An attorney who Johannessen consulted with regarding Arlington’s proposed anti-discrimination code changes said removing sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression as protected characteristics from the current ordinance “reflects a fundamental and profound misunderstanding of the law.
“The inclusion of ‘gender expression’ in this list is somewhat telling, since the term does not appear in the Current Ordinance,” Daniel Barrett, the Fort Worth lawyer Johannessen consulted, wrote in a statement. “Its inclusion exposes the staff’s analysis of the situation as sloppy or, perhaps, based upon something other than legal considerations.”
Under the original ordinance, if someone is made to leave an establishment because of their gender identity or sexual orientation, they could go to the city and file a complaint. With the exclusion of those kinds of discrimination in the amended ordinance, the only way to rectify the issue would be through the federal government, Johannessen said.
Johannessen was part of the focus group who helped make gender identity and sexual orientation protected classes in Arlington’s anti-discrimination chapter in 2021.
“It passed unanimously, and there was not even any public comment voting against it,” Johannessen said. “It sailed through. So that’s why it’s so surprising now that there’s so little push back about having to make this change, even if it was required for them to make this change, there’s no angst about it.”
The City Council will vote on the amendments at the 6:30 p.m. meeting on Tuesday.
Rachel Royster is a news and government reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, specifically focused on Tarrant County. She joined the newsroom after interning at the Austin American-Statesman, the Waco Tribune-Herald and Capital Community News in DC. A Houston native and Baylor grad, Rachel enjoys traveling, reading and being outside. She welcomes any and all news tips to her email.
A few months ago, our company crossed a milestone that felt both deeply personal and professionally significant: We officially became a public benefit corporation (PBC). To many people outside the legal or investor world, that might sound like a branding move, or just alphabet soup. But for us, this change represented something much more intentional. It’s a line in the sand about who we are, how we operate, and the kind of capitalism we want to be part of.
We’ve been a Certified B Corporation for three years. But to maintain that certification, you eventually need to become a PBC: a legal designation that bakes your mission into the company’s corporate charter.
It means you’re no longer just beholden to shareholders and profits. You’re legally accountable for pursuing a public good. For us, that good includes eliminating paper in estate planning, expanding affordable access to families across the country, and creating more inclusive pathways to legacy and wealth.
Here’s what that evolution has taught me, and why I think more companies—especially startups—should consider it.
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Capitalism is changing, and that’s a good thing
When we started Trust & Will in 2017, we wanted to modernize estate planning. We weren’t trying to start a revolution. We just wanted to make something that felt archaic, expensive, and intimidating feel a little more human. But as the company grew, we realized that we weren’t just fixing a product. We were taking aim at a broken system, one that left millions of families financially unprotected because the traditional estate planning model was built for the few, not the many.
That’s when the B Corp certification made sense. We were already making impact-driven decisions. This just gave us the framework and accountability. And now, as a PBC, those commitments aren’t optional—they’re foundational.
In the next 20 years, an estimated $124 trillion will pass from baby boomers to millennials and Gen Z. That wealth transfer has the power to shape the next generation of economic stability—or deepen inequality. Our bet is on the former, and we’re building infrastructure to support that.
You don’t have to sacrifice profit to do this
Let me say this clearly: You can absolutely be a mission-driven company and still build a successful, revenue-positive business.
This is a misconception I hear all the time from other founders. There’s this fear that committing to a PBC status will turn off investors or require you to “choose impact over income.” But in our experience, the opposite has been true.
Our CFO, Ron Wangerin, joined us because we were a B Corp. His last two companies had the same designation.
Several investors were drawn to us because we were committed to making estate planning more inclusive and modern.
Customers notice it. Not every one, of course—but increasingly, today’s consumer wants to know what they’re buying into, who they’re buying from, and why it matters.
We’ve raised capital from strategic partners like AARP, UBS, and Amex. These aren’t mission-only investors—they’re looking for long-term value. They saw that a clear, measurable purpose didn’t dilute our business model—it strengthened it.
Purpose is not a side hustle—it’s a strategic advantage.
When you become a PBC, your purpose becomes part of your governance. You have to report on it. You have to track it. You have to prioritize it, just like revenue or market share. And to be honest, that level of accountability is energizing.
It forces clarity.
Our public benefit purpose is threefold:
Eliminate paper in estate planning by advocating for digital execution laws across all 50 states.
Expand affordable access by offering affordable plans that are at a fraction of the cost of working with a traditional attorney.
Create a more inclusive legacy economy by making estate planning approachable for everyone, not just the wealthy.
These aren’t just values. They’re product decisions. Hiring priorities. Engineering roadmaps. Marketing campaigns. Investor updates. It’s all connected.
And that alignment becomes a competitive edge for attracting top talent, building partner trust, and scaling without mission drift.
What founders should know before making the leap
If you’re thinking about becoming a B Corp or PBC, here’s the truth: It’s not for everyone. But if you’re already operating with a sense of mission, it might just be the natural next step.
Here’s what I’d recommend:
Start with internal clarity. What’s your “why”? Could you write it into your business plan today?
Align your board and investors early. Becoming a PBC requires amending your charter. Get buy-in from your stakeholders so the transition is smooth.
Prepare for more transparency. You’ll be reporting on your impact publicly. But this also builds trust with the people you’re serving.
If you’re just in it for a quick exit, this probably isn’t the move. But if you’re building something lasting? Something meaningful? It might be one of the best decisions you ever make.
The future of business is personal
At the end of the day, our kids aren’t going to care how many ad impressions we served or what our Series D valuation was. They’re going to care about what we did: who we helped, what we changed, what legacy we left behind.
Being a public benefit corporation doesn’t change the fact that we’re a for-profit company. But it does change how we measure success. And for us, success means making estate planning more accessible, affordable, and equitable for every family, everywhere.
It means making business better. It means building something we can be proud of.
And if that’s not the future of capitalism, then maybe we need to reimagine what capitalism could be.
Employers are on the same page about the issues plaguing their workforce.
A new survey from Illinois-based risk management outfit Gallagher looked at what’s worrying the country’s employers in 2025, and you might see your own concerns reflected in the list, since it lines up with many of the social, technological and political winds blowing across the U.S. right now.
1. Worker retention
After the perennial concerns of raking in reliable revenues and sales, employee retention is the top issue on the minds of over 4,000 leaders surveyed by Gallagher, reflecting workers’ changing ideas about what constitutes a “career,” and as the pressures at work force some people to look for greener pastures.
Some of these changes are driven by the way Gen-Z thinks differently about the workplace, of course, and as the generation currently entering the workforce in ever-greater numbers, they may help set the trends. Gen-Z workers are known for valuing their mental health and work-life balance more than previous generations, and are rejecting traditional work culture norms — including being willing to ditch a job over issues like the Sunday Scaries.
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2. Burnout
Meanwhile, social, economic and job-market instability, in addition to sweeping political changes, are adding to the pressure that the typical worker experiences. Which is likely why Gallagher’s data shows 67 percent of employers — more than two in every three — are also highly concerned about the mental health of their workers, HRDive reports.
Stress and burnout issues can have long-term impacts on worker morale, efficiency and engagement (possibly tempting some workers to quit) and ultimately this will impact a company’s profits. Yet the data show that while employers are deeply worried about these issues, they’re not stepping up with solutions: only 24 percent give mental health training to managers, leaders or HR teams — who are, according to other reports, deeply stressed out themselves. Also, less than half of employers say their leadership teams are “well-equipped” to refer stressed-out staff to mental health services. This, the report says, is a “critical gap” in worker support.
3. DEI
The third non-financial issue on employers’ minds is related to inclusion and diversity. This might be surprising, given the Trump administration’s pressure against DEI, but it seems that corporate America thinks very differently: 74 percent of employers say they’re implementing diversity and inclusion initiatives this year. While larger employees are more likely to follow this path than smaller ones (84 percent of large organizations) fully 67 percent of small companies are intent on pursuing inclusion and diversity—the report says they view it as a “stabilizing force during economic uncertainty.” Conscious of political background, perhaps, the report says companies are “refocusing their efforts,” even though the fundamental ideas remain.
One interesting aspect of inclusion Gallagher noted in its report is the role of buzzy AI tech. Employers are “leveraging it to reduce bias in recruitment, tailor engagement practices and support equitable decision-making,” the survey found. But, as with the issues in mental health training, few employers are stepping up with appropriate training for D&I: just 24 percent train workers by “embedding inclusive behaviors into their daily role.”
Meanwhile D&I plans continue to offer significant benefits, which may explain their ongoing enthusiasm. The report says companies investing in these plans are “best positioned to attract and retain top talent,” since they “not only build trust but also foster resilience for long-term success,” as do concerted efforts to boost worker engagement, and supply wellbeing support.
What companies can do
What can you take away from this list of worries? You may, after all, have very different top concerns in mind after surviving through most of 2025.
Primarily, it means you should probably reinforce your company’s efforts to retain staff in the long term, deal with their stresses before they reach burnout levels, and follow your own path on DEI (even if you call the plan something different.) The Gallagher report shows these are strong worry-driving trends across American industry, and thus may be affecting your staff even if you’re unaware of the problem.
Also, reinforcing your staff training may be a good idea: Gallagher’s data did, after all, show how corporate training in DEI and mental health matters is lagging behind, even as these worries unsettle employers across the country.
There’s a problem in the job market, but if you don’t dig below the surface in the latest monthly employment report, you might not see it. The overall unemployment rate is 4.3% and in the last year it barely moved.
But the data tells a different story when it comes to Black women and employment. Their unemployment rate has jumped to 6.7% which one expert calls a warning sign.
Fadjanie Cadet was laid off in April of this year, and her experience is all too familiar right now. She is a highly educated Black professional, who is now unemployed, and worried about her future.
She said the anxiety and uncertainty of what comes next are the toughest part.
“Thinking about financially, what the implications would be for me and for my family. But I think one of the other most interesting impacts for me, particularly, is because of the work I was doing,” Cadet explained to Cole.
Cadet was the Director of Diversity and Inclusion for a global research and advisory firm.
Retreat from DEI
That’s one of the factors behind more than 300,000 thousand Black women leaving the workforce between February and April — corporate America’s retreat from DEI, or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
“It’s been really disheartening … the information that came out for The Bureau of Labor Statistics, with about 320,000 Black women leaving the workforce, between February and April, I believe. But that’s going to continue,” said Aba Taylor, the President and CEO of YW Boston.
YW Boston is an organization dedicated to creating more inclusive work environments.
“Long-term career women in the federal government suddenly just being told they need to go for no reason,” Taylor said.
She highlights a second factor: small businesses cutting back.
“Small businesses are really being impacted by the tariff policies. Black women getting hired through small businesses is a factor to the unemployment rate, certainly,” Taylor said.
Federal government layoffs
The third factor Taylor pointed to is layoffs in the federal government. There are more Black women working for the federal government than in the private sector.
“What I’m calling on the Fed to do is collect the data, to analyze the data and to come up with a plan. 300,000 Black women have been pushed out of the labor force in the public and private sector — and that is a crisis!” Pressley exclaimed.
She wants a response from the Fed, no later than Sept. 30.
“An economic indicator”
“Black women have always been an economic indicator for what that means for everyone else. We have been the canaries in the coal mine. So, it is advantageous — and economists will support this — for us to better understand exactly what is happening to Black women and then do something about it,” Pressley said.
YW Boston isn’t waiting for the federal government to help.
“We have a lot of programming coming up this fall to kind of focus specifically on Black women, women of color, including another webinar in October that focuses on women of color in the workplace and what is the status,” Taylor said. “We also have an advocacy training that we’re planning specifically for women of color to help uplift their voices, help them navigate the political scene we’re in right now.”
Taylor said they are also working on putting a leadership program together for 2026.
They’re not alone in this space. Boston While Black, a networking group for Black professionals, is using its app to help members share jobs and network. It’s putting a heavier emphasis on its career center, where employers can post opportunities and members can connect with them directly.
“We’re trying to be that connector and help people, these two sides that are trying to find each other, make those connections,” said Sheena Collier, the Founder and CEO of Boston While Black.
As for what’s ahead for Cadet, she says right now her focus is helping organizations.
“Tie DEI principles to org-effectiveness work. People are dealing with so much disruption now: societal, political, technological disruption and right now organizations need leaders that have met the moment and can really help lead through change. So, right now I’m looking for different opportunities that will be more broad and integrating culture, learning and employee experience,” said Cadet.
We checked in with Rep. Pressley’s office Monday and they have yet to receive a response from the Fed.
If you are wondering what you can do to positively impact change, Rep. Pressley encouraged community. She says this is the time to really show up for one another. She also mentioned plans to release more resources in the days to come.
A new watchdog group aiming to hold major institutions accountable and promoting good governance says it plans to become a “leading voice” for conservative values and effective governance across the country.
The Safety and Prosperity Oversight Coalition, which launched on Wednesday, will be led by seasoned political operative Chris Zeller. The group announced its creation this week and said it will be focused on promoting transparency, integrity and efficiency across American governmental institutions and the private sector. Zeller has a long history in GOP politics, including work on numerous national campaigns and a stint as the executive director for multiple state Republican parties.
“The coalition brings together some of the nation’s top attorneys and financial investigators, leveraging their expertise to scrutinize institutional practices, expose inefficiencies, and advocate for policies that prioritize safety and prosperity for all Americans,” stated a press release from the group. “Backed by a team of established professionals, the coalition is poised to become a leading voice for conservative values and effective governance.”
A police officer is seen stationed outside of the U.S. Capitol.(Getty Images)
Per the press release, the watchdog will focus on three core pillars: “rigorous oversight of government spending, accountability for corporate and public sector misconduct, and advocacy for common-sense reforms to strengthen democratic institutions.” This work will subsequently be accomplished via independent audits, legal challenges to governmental overreach brought forward by the nonprofit, and public education campaigns “to empower citizens with the facts.”
A GOP strategist who was willing to speak on background said the new watchdog group is a much-needed entity to combat efforts from the left. The strategist highlighted how the new conservative watchdog will help Republicans hold corporate America’s feet to the fire the same way the left did during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, or the same way they did with “woke” diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Protesters in Michigan rally against President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies, denouncing federal rollbacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.(Getty Images/Dominic Gwinn)
“The Safety and Prosperity Oversight Coalition is a response to the growing need for accountability in our institutions,” Zeller added. “Americans deserve leadership that upholds integrity and delivers results. Our coalition will shine a light on waste, corruption, and mismanagement, ensuring that those in power serve the public, not themselves.”
Zeller most recently spent time as a top aide for Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., which followed his stint working on Kari Lake’s Arizona Senate bid in 2024. Lake ultimately lost to Democrat challenger Ruben Gallego.
Former House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., speaks during a news conference in the U.S. Capitol.(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Zeller also worked as the campaign manager for Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., when she successfully won her 2021 bid to represent New York’s 22nd Congressional District by a razor-thin margin of just over 100 votes.
Meanwhile, Zeller has spent time as the Executive Director at both the Connecticut and New Hampshire state Republican parties as well.
Central Oregon Disability Support Network serves families with children with disabilities across eight Oregon counties.
Bend, Ore. – An Oregon nonprofit serving kids and families with disabilities may be forced to shut down many of its services, after losing a major federal grant.
The U.S. Department of Education just notified Central Oregon Disability Support Network it would not continue the final payment of a five-year grant. Executive Director Dianna Hansen says CODSN stands to lose $150,000, “Which doesn’t seem like a lot, when you’re the federal government. But it’s a lot for our small nonprofit that serves eight small counties in Oregon.” She adds, “Essentially, it’s almost half of our budget.” The nonprofit plans to appeal, but Hansen says, if the decision stands, “We’re going to be laying staff off. We’re going to be closing if not all, most of our offices.”
Hansen says USDOE said in its “Notice of Non-Continuation,” the department pulled the funds because of two lines in the original 50-page application submitted in 2021, which mentions DEI training, “‘Both our board and staff continue to actively pursue professional development to diversity, equity and inclusion.’” But Hansen tells KXL that training was conducted from 2018-2020, before the grant was awarded. And, “It was training for our board and staff to really understand the diverse types of disability.” She says they learned about the differences in needs for someone who is visually impaired, compared to someone in a wheelchair. And, Hansen says, they learned more about workign with the types of families CODSN serves, “It was really around understanding families in poverty and generational differences- we serve a lot of grandparents raising grandchildren.” Click here to read CODSN’s officials response.
Hansen notes nearly every other state applicant in the federal program included similar language, but, “They only removed the grants from Oregon, New York and Washington state.” She says no one from USDOE reached out for clarification on the language used in the 2021 application, nor was there an opportunity to update the nonprofit’s information.
CODSN’s grant funds a parent resource center serving 4,000 families navigating special education systems across eight rural Oregon counties, include Deschutes, Jefferson and Wheeler counties.
Several members of Oregon’s Congressional delegation pledged to help restore the funding. Hansen says only Rep. Cliff Bentz did not respond to her request.
Creating safe, inclusive classrooms feels more challenging in some places across the United States—but it’s far from impossible. Here’s how real teachers are ensuring that every student and family feels safe, seen, and welcome in 2025.
Teaching in 2025: The Challenges of a Divided Country
In a recent survey, teachers told us they’ve been requested or required to avoid discussion of LGBTQ+ subjects, lessons on slavery and women’s rights, and ICE raids at schools. These stories aren’t new, of course. For decades, administrators and legislators have placed restrictions on what teachers can say and do in their classrooms when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion topics. But the situation has gotten tougher in many areas over the last few years.
“My administrators have advised me to avoid discussions about politics, deportations, and LGBTQ+ issues,” one Colorado high school teacher told us. “I also have been instructed to steer students away from sharing their opinions on these issues. Similarly, I have been advised not to put up any posters in my classroom that might offend (conservative) parents who visit the school.”
Another high school teacher noted that their school has banned many books for language or content, often those featuring diverse characters. “So in the end, we teach almost no books that have Black characters because of fear of offending someone or fear of exposing actual social problems the Black community has faced.”
How To Create Inclusive, Welcoming Classrooms Despite Restrictions
Here’s the good news: Teachers across the country are still dedicated to making their students feel safe and welcome in their classrooms. They’re finding creative, thoughtful ways to comply with new restrictions while still ensuring everyone feels seen and represented. Here are their suggestions and ideas for creating your own inclusive classroom, no matter where you teach.
We Are Teachers
1. Change your wording, but keep the message.
This past spring, one Idaho teacher went viral for sharing her banned “Everyone Is Welcome Here” sign. In response, the State of Idaho doubled down, passing a law that specifically bans school signs that “represent a political, religious, or ideological viewpoint”—a broad category, to say the least.
While Idaho is the first to put this type of ban into law, plenty of teachers face opposition to their diverse and inclusive classroom decor. So, how are teachers dealing with bans like these? They’re choosing their words with care.
“I have been more creative with signs for displays,” says a Kansas teacher. “It might say ‘Stand Up for What Is Right’ rather than using words like ‘social justice.’ Or I might reference welcoming ‘newcomers’ rather than using the term ‘immigrant.’”
Krys E. teaches in Alaska and uses a lot of social-emotional learning materials that say things like “Be Strong” or “Be a Leader.” Wording like this avoids recommending specific actions but encourages students to make the choices that feel right for them.
2. Use images of your students and their families to decorate the classroom.
What better way to make everyone feel seen than by literally hanging them on your classroom walls? “I am having my students (a diverse group) draw and create decorations that represent them,” says a Texas preschool teacher. She plans to hang family photos with all types of diversity shown, plus self-portraits reflecting a variety of skin tones and individual differences.
Several teachers recommended hanging family photo walls in your classroom, so every student has a chance to be represented. Encourage families to share pics of themselves celebrating the holidays they love, eating or cooking their favorite foods, or participating in community events. Tip: If families aren’t comfortable sharing pictures, have kids draw their families instead.
3. Hang a culture wall.
Looking for a good back-to-school activity? Here’s what one Colorado high school teacher does to set the tone for a welcoming environment: “I have students create a culture wall to honor diversity in the classroom. They can make a poster about their own culture, or they can choose another culture that interests them. The posters usually include the country’s flag, national food, national animal, currency (money), famous figures, landmarks, etc.”
4. Reach out to and welcome all families.
The best way to make people feel safe and welcome? Tell them that they are, and demonstrate it every day in meaningful ways. A Texas preschool teacher explains that she works hard to welcome all families, inviting them to visit campus as often as possible. Here are a few more tips for creating inclusive and welcoming classrooms for all sorts of families:
Learn to pronounce all of your students’ and parents’ names properly, and use their correct titles and forms of address.
Use communication apps that can help translate and facilitate your interactions with families that don’t speak English well (or at all).
Offer a variety of different family events so everyone has a chance to participate. Vary the dates and times, offer foods everyone can eat, and accommodate cultural expectations that may be different from your own.
Katie H. for We Are Teachers
5. Encourage all students to explore new experiences and learn about their classmates.
The “Contact Hypothesis” states that when people from different backgrounds interact in meaningful ways, prejudice and stereotypes tend to decrease. Research backs this up: Direct contact with people who are different from ourselves has a stronger effect on tolerance than just learning about differences in a vacuum.
Katie H. teaches preschool in Texas, where she makes welcoming differences a part of her curriculum. “At the beginning of the year, we have intentional conversations about how our homemade foods (or cafeteria food) might look/smell different and how wonderful that can be.”
Michigan teacher Paulette Pepin recommends “allowing students to share their special gifts and teach classmates” about their personal experiences. Encourage students to show respectful interest in other’s foods, traditions, or cultures, and invite families to share a variety of learning and cultural experiences together throughout the school year.
6. Choose books that demonstrate inclusivity and diversity without directly addressing specific topics.
“With the Texas Legislature’s new ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights,’ our admin encouraged us to only use books that are currently in the district library,” a Texas pre-K teacher notes. Fortunately, children’s literature has greatly increased diversity and representation in recent years.
While there are indeed a lot of books that address topics some consider controversial, there are also many others that simply make diversity a matter-of-fact part of the story without drawing attention to it. It’s easy to find books that show a wide variety of skin tones, family types, and other inclusive characters like those in a wheelchair or with hearing aids.
Tip: Review sites like Kirkus often include information about diverse representation (or lack thereof) in books. For instance, in a review of a new book about finger counting games for kids, Kirkus includes this helpful note: “Woodcock’s illustrations employ crayoned linework and painted and spattered color to portray busy children with varied skin tones, hair textures, and abilities.”
Be sure to include books written and illustrated by diverse creators, too, no matter what the topic. Just seeing author/illustrator pictures or names that represent their own cultures can make a big difference for kids.
7. Use toys, games, and videos that show diverse people as a matter of course.
Katie H. makes an effort to be sure all kids see themselves represented through toys in her Texas preschool classroom. “We include multicultural and diverse-ability toys in our dollhouse and kitchen center, and include discussions on how families can be composed differently.”
Katie H. for We Are Teachers
In younger classrooms, ensure your dolls and figurines include multiple skin tones, hairstyles, and physical differences (the ones shown here come from Lakeshore Learning). When choosing videos to share with classes of any age, look for those that incorporate people or characters from many cultures, countries, or backgrounds. As with books, just seeing themselves represented onscreen can be a powerful tool for making kids feel included.
8. Emphasize kindness.
In every situation, teaching students to be kind to one another is always appropriate. Demonstrate and model empathy, and take time to recognize kind behavior whenever you see it. Show students that even when you don’t agree, you can still be kind and respectful to one another.
Many lessons about kindness automatically encourage tolerance and respect for diversity without drawing specific attention to it. Erika O., a 4th grade teacher in Texas, recommends checking out Steve Hartman’s Kindness 101 videos. For older students, explore TED Talks on kindness or empathy to spark conversations.
9. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
Every teacher knows that no matter how hard you try to create inclusive classrooms, you’re always going to run into problems that seem petty to you but urgent to others. In these cases, it can sometimes be best to bite your tongue, go along with the potentially frustrating request, and find other ways to accomplish the same goal.
For instance, one Massachusetts PE teacher was told she couldn’t use the word “yoga” with her students. “I just called it stretching, because it was all the same no matter what you call it,” she says. Her students still learned the valuable mind-body exercises, and in the end, that was what mattered.
10. Speak up and speak out when and where you can.
If you’re lucky enough to have the freedom to teach and talk about diverse and inclusive topics in your classroom, don’t let the opportunity pass!
“I teach in a school where I, as a white person, am in the ethnic minority and our curriculum is intentional about using diverse authors and mindsets,” explains Liz M., a Massachusetts teacher. “I created stickers that go on frequently banned books [in our library] as a way of encouraging students to read diverse stories that other schools are trying to hide.”
We Are Teachers
When you’re faced with challenges to diversity, equity, and inclusion in your own classroom, you’ll ultimately need to follow your own heart. “I make sure we have a Pride Club every year despite being the only middle school in the area with one,” says Sasha T., a middle school teacher and school Pride Advisor in Washington who has been pressured not to hang signs or distribute flyers. “I make sure I use correct pronouns, names, and make sure all students are heard and respected in my classroom.”
Illinois elementary teacher Amanda A. shares, “I had a parent very, very upset that I informed their child that colors are for everyone, and anyone can like pink, purple, blue, etc.” Her response? “I continue, with the protection of my tenure and my union.”
Resources for Creating a Welcoming, Inclusive Classroom in 2025
Ultimately, every teacher has to make their own choices about how important diversity, equity, and inclusion are in their classrooms. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or discouraged in the face of new legislation or local administrative rulings, consider starting a conversation in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook. Other educators are always willing to help you process challenges and brainstorm constructive solutions.
Here are a few more resources to support a welcoming atmosphere for every one of your students and their families:
Why doesn’t Hermes just produce more bags and then everyone can have a Birkin? That’s basically the argument of people pressing President Donald Trump to declare a housing emergency.
The fact is there’s plenty of housing, just not in the most desirable neighborhoods. Population growth is slowing, deportations are increasing and new home construction already outpaces family creation. The shortage is a myth created by activists so they can force residential living patterns to conform to DEI dogma.
A simple calculation proves it. The Census Bureau collects annual data on both the number of households and the available housing stock. The latest data shows 131.3 million households and 146.5 million housing units, an excess supply of over 15 million units.
The housing shortage is a myth created by activists so they can force residential living patterns to conform to DEI dogma. (Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Activists cannot deny the excess so instead, they argue that it is not enough.
A well-functioning housing market has a natural vacancy rate. Just as labor markets need unemployment for efficient job matching, housing markets need vacancies for buyer-seller alignment, renovations and seasonal use.
Activists say that rate should be 12% instead of the current 10%, and to hit that target an additional 1 million units are needed. But they are cherry-picking the baseline rate. Census data tracked since 1965 shows vacancy rates have fluctuated wildly, ranging from 8.3% to 14.5%. There is no stable “natural rate.” Today’s 10% rate falls well within this historical range. When you stop using artificially high assumptions, the shortage disappears entirely.
Perhaps anticipating this, activists also argue that demand is higher than census data shows. First, they claim construction has fallen behind historical trends, from 1.5 million units annually in 1968-2000 to 1.23 million since 2001, creating a cumulative deficit. Second, they argue for massive pent-up demand, claiming millions of people would form separate households if housing were cheaper, using statistical models to estimate 3-5 million “missing” households.
Both arguments assume demographic conditions that no longer exist. America has transitioned from rapid population growth of over 1% annually before 2000 to a more stable 0.5% today, projected to reach 0.1% by 2055. The next 30 years will add 23 million people versus 70 million in the prior 30 years, reflecting lower birth rates and longer lifespans. Deaths will exceed births by 2038 as the population matures. Meanwhile, the current administration targets deporting one million people annually, a figure not included in Census projections that assume stable immigration.
Like Birkin bags, the real problem isn’t supply, it’s that people want exclusive neighborhoods, and no amount of construction changes that reality. What’s really going on here is that activists are manufacturing a housing crisis in order to impose a DEI regime on where people choose to live.
This is a corruption of the Fair Housing Act (FHA), which was focused on equality of opportunity not results. The bill did aim to disrupt segregated living patterns but only through the narrow mechanism of eliminating overt housing discrimination. In particular, restrictive covenants, redlining and explicit racial barriers.
As the legislative history records, the goal was to ensure families could live “where they wish and where they can afford,” acknowledging that financial capacity remained a valid constraint on housing choice.
Today’s activists have abandoned that sensible framework. Instead, they want to eliminate disparities in living patterns by lowering community standards through government coercion. Their chief target is local zoning laws, which serve the important function of maintaining community character. It’s why Washington, D.C., which bans skyscrapers, doesn’t look like Manhattan.
New York City’s Economic Development Corporation exemplifies this approach, scolding neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, SoHo and the West Village for “restrictive land use regulations” that limit density. They explicitly note that “Community Districts producing the least affordable housing are disproportionately white.” Their demographic focus reveals the true agenda.
The Obama administration weaponized this logic through HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, forcing towns that accepted federal funding to eliminate zoning laws and to provide detailed reports on racial demographics. The effort had an important political dimension. By forcing high-density, low-income housing into suburban communities, activists aimed to flip red areas blue.
President Trump recognized the stakes in his first term, and tasked a White House team led by John McEntee to eliminate the rule, which they did in 14 days. Biden reinstated it, but HUD Secretary Scott Turner wisely eliminated it again soon after taking office.
Unfortunately, some Republicans and Libertarians have fallen for the housing shortage hoax and still don’t realize that eliminating sensible neighborhood standards like zoning are a stalking horse for imposing DEI quotas. This is a problem because housing activists continue to push their radical agenda aggressively at the state level.
In 2021, Massachusetts passed a controversial law forcing the 177 towns along the commuter rail line to change their suburban zoning laws to permit high-density low-income housing. The bill was drafted to look optional and incentive-based, but officials are enforcing it as mandatory. Similar efforts are afoot nationwide, amplified by liberal columnists like Paul Krugman calling for “increasing population density,” meaning eliminating suburban single-family zoning.
Democrats have brought DEI quotas to every institution in America. Your neighborhood is next. That’s the real housing crisis.
Paige Bronitsky is a property attorney who served as a deputy assistant secretary at HUD and as a White House senior advisor in the first Trump administration. Follow @PaigeBronitsky.
Daniel Huff served as a deputy assistant secretary at HUD and White House lawyer in the first Trump administration. Follow @RealDanHuff.
