Biden Picked His Cabinet Based on DEI. How Did That Work Out for Him?

Four years ago, when then–President-elect Joe Biden was selecting members of his Cabinet, one concern dominated: diversity.

The pressure to choose candidates for top offices who were either women or from minority races was immense. Politico reported in November 2020 that Democrats “expect[ed] him to nominate the most diverse Cabinet in history.” Luckily for DEI-obsessed Democrats, Biden was happy to comply. After all, the president had promised to create a government that “looks like America.” In the end, the president’s administration was judged by numerous media outlets to be “the most diverse ever.” CNN totaled in January 2021 that 50 percent of Biden’s nominees for Cabinet positions and Cabinet-level positions were “people of color.” Biden had also named the most-ever women as Cabinet secretaries.

In rolling out his picks, Biden repeatedly framed the selections through the lens of diversity. For instance, when Biden announced his senior communications staff, he led with the fact that they were all female. “I am proud to announce today,” he said, “the first senior White House communications team comprised entirely of women.”

DEI Rejection

Ultimately, the selection of the most racially diverse Cabinet ever did not lead to a desirable outcome for Biden. A major shift to the right among minority groups, a growing recognition that DEI is toxic and unfair, and electoral defeat soon followed.

President-elect Donald Trump has strongly rejected Biden’s strategy of picking Cabinet appointees based on race, even though his proposed Cabinet is diverse in gender and race. As Alex Stroman, a former South Carolina GOP state party executive director, explained last week: “I think that’s where the country is at: we want a Cabinet that is diverse based on many different experiences and backgrounds, be it sexual or racial, economic, or cultural…. But the American people don’t want diversity for the sake of diversity.” Indeed, Americans are done with officials being chosen for what they represent over what they can provide to the country.

With that in mind, it’s worth looking back on just how utterly race dominated Biden’s Cabinet selection process, and how this reaped a whole-of-government obsession with race. Repeatedly, Cabinet members who were selected for diversity, equity, and inclusion reasons went on to obsess over DEI in their own leadership — to the extent that the administration became a giant conglomerate of DEI.

Lloyd Austin

Virtually everyone in the liberal media sphere was convinced that Michèle A. Flournoy, who had been the highest-ranking woman at the Pentagon under Barack Obama, would be nominated by Biden as the next defense secretary. NBC News even referred to her as “Biden’s probable pick to run the Pentagon.” But then the Congressional Black Caucus decided to wage a campaign to get Biden to select a black defense secretary. It was reported that the Biden transition was indeed “concerned about the optics of the top four Cabinet officials — State, Defense, Treasury and Justice — being white,” and thus the search for a black defense secretary began. Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was seen as the frontrunner among the black choices, but ultimately Lloyd Austin, a retired four-star general who had previously been the commander of U.S. Central Command, won the role.

Austin went on to implement DEI into all levels of the military. In fact, for fiscal year 2024, the Pentagon asked for $114.7 million in DEI funding. All the while, Austin presided over a time when most branches of the military repeatedly failed to reach their recruiting targets.

Marcia Fudge

Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge pushed publicly to be named secretary of agriculture because of her race and loyalty to Joe Biden. “As this country becomes more and more diverse, we’re going to have to stop looking at only certain agencies as those that people like me fit in,” she said. “You know, it’s always ‘we want to put the Black person in labor or HUD.’” Fudge further asserted that the Biden administration should elevate her because of the role black women played in the election: “When you look at what African American women did in particular in this election, you will see that a major part of the reason that this Biden-Harris team won was because of African American women.”

Despite her dismissal of the position, Fudge was ultimately nominated to be secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In her role, Fudge elevated racial equity in housing policy. For example, she revived an Obama-era rule that required local governments to “proactively take meaningful actions to overcome patterns of segregation, promote fair housing choice, eliminate disparities in opportunities, and foster inclusive communities free from discrimination.” Nevertheless, homelessness increased markedly under her tenure.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield

When Linda Thomas-Greenfield was picked to be ambassador to the United Nations, her appointment was widely seen as a statement for diversity, as some on the the Left had viewed her firing during the Trump administration as racially motivated. (For her part, Thomas-Greenfield said upon her firing, “I don’t feel targeted as an African-American. I feel targeted as a professional.”) Upon her elevation to the ambassador role, a senior diplomat told CNN that Thomas-Greenfield’s selection was a “statement”: “Just having a Black woman heading the transition and likely heading the US mission in New York is a big deal…. And to have it be a Black woman who was fired by Trump, that’s even more of a statement.”

During her tenure, Thomas-Greenfield has repeatedly injected claims about systemic racism into her foreign policy and diminished the U.S. on the world stage in the name of atoning for past injustices. At a speech in March 2021 at the UN General Assembly, for instance, she said, “Because Black Lives Matter, we need to dismantle white supremacy at every turn.” She further said in that speech that America has “deep, serious flaws,” and that Biden would seek to address them through such policies as “ending private prisons that warehouse young black and brown men” and “combatting xenophobia and discrimination against Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders.”

At another time, Thomas-Greenfield claimed, “[S]lavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.” The Washington Examiner noted that China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have “used the U.N. to propagandize against the U.S. on human rights,” and that Thomas-Greenfield’s comments would be used to delegitimize the U.S.’s role on human rights.

Deb Haaland

Freshman Rep. Deb Haaland was picked to be interior secretary because of her Native American heritage. Her selection generated an explosion of puff pieces that lauded how poetic it was that a Native American would be heading a department that has “mistreated and neglected Indigenous Americans.” Retiring New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, a white man who had been seen as a frontrunner for the position, praised Halaand’s selection as a “watershed moment for Native communities, and for our nation.”

Haaland went on to make woke posturing her top priority. She went on a “healing tour” to apologize for Native American boarding schools. She focused on “Indigenous Led, Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change.” She authorized a “Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force” that sought to change the names of 660 geographic features that had the word “squaw” in their names. And she launched a “Strategic Plan to Advance Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility” that worked to “root the agency’s work in equity and justice.”

Miguel Cardona

Miguel Cardona, who had been commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education, was selected as the third Latino candidate for the Biden Cabinet. After he was selected for the role, Cardona spoke about how his experience arriving in kindergarten only speaking Spanish inspired him to focus on “making schools more equitable” and “closing achievement gaps between students of color and their white peers.”

During Cardona’s tenure, student test scores have slipped markedly as social agendas have taken on a greater role. Cardona has prioritized “educational equity,” and schools have focused on topics such as gender ideology and DEI.

In his capacity as education secretary, Cardona contributed significantly to keeping children out of the classroom following the COVID pandemic. He aligned with teachers unions, who developed ideological opposition to returning to the classroom, at the expense of students. This included his issuance of a school reopening guidance that was allegedly heavily influenced by teachers unions.

Michael Regan

Michael Regan, a black man, was Biden’s pick for EPA administrator. The pick followed another pressure campaign that called on Biden to choose someone who would prioritize “environmental justice” for minorities. The pressure campaign forced Biden to go with Regan over Mary D. Nichols, his first choice for the role, who is a white woman.

In his first speech as EPA administrator, Regan emphasized an agenda built on “environmental justice,” saying, “We will move with a sense of urgency on climate change, protecting our drinking water, and enact an environmental justice framework that empowers people in all communities.” The EPA under Regan sought to claim that it was discriminatory for neighborhoods with greater minority populations to have more pollution, even if there was no discriminatory intent. After the agency began a civil rights investigation of Louisiana’s permitting process on this basis, Louisiana’s attorney general sued, and won. Regan went on to aggressively regulate power plants to such an extent that Republicans warned it would lead to an electric grid reliability crisis.

Xavier Becerra

Biden selected Xavier Becerra as his HHS secretary despite the fact that Becerra, then the attorney general of California, had virtually no experience in health. A major reason for the unconventional pick — Becarra’s race — can be found in a Washington Post article explaining Becarra’s selection:

The job running the sprawling department often has gone to governors, and public health officials have been urging the Biden transition team to select someone with expertise in medicine, given that the raging pandemic will remain front and center for many months.

But Biden had also been under pressure to select more Latinos in his Cabinet.

Becerra’s background in liberal ideological advocacy, rather than public health, resulted in a pandemic response that prioritized imposing maximum restrictions. Beyond this, he advanced a range of other ideologically driven policies. For example, HHS published a report recommending that federal funding be rescinded from hospitals that do not perform so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries. The agency also asserted that “Gender affirmation, including social transition, and gender-affirming medical care are appropriate and beneficial for many gender minority youth.” Becerra additionally put forward a guidance document warning pharmacies in states where abortion in illegal that they could be violating federal civil rights law if they refused to fill prescriptions for abortion pills.

Becerra has also placed a major emphasis on wokeness. This year, on “Transgender Day of Remembrance,” Becerra put out a statement thanking “transgender, nonbinary, and two-spirit leaders and trailblazers who epitomize resilience, progress, and joy.” Becerra has also said that DEI is “one of our Department’s highest strategic priorities.”

***** 

Biden’s decision to prioritize race in selecting his Cabinet resulted in an administration fixated on identity politics. As Cabinet members were chosen largely for their alignment with woke ideology and their status within its hierarchy of favored identities, they sought to advance these ideological goals above practical governance — to the detriment of voters’ actual priorities.

In rejecting Kamala Harris — yet another Biden pick who was chosen for her race — voters have rejected this whole racial project.

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