Alex Nowrasteh
The Trump administration’s executive order of January 21, 2025, destroyed federal affirmative action in hiring and contracting and other race-based/DEI programs in institutions receiving federal funds and across the federal government. The administration also revoked several other executive orders that had mandated DEI policies throughout the federal government and inserted the government into contentious culture war issues. These changes are consistent with recommendations in the Cato Handbook on Executive Orders and Presidential Directives. They are also long overdue and consistent with libertarian principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.
Yet what is issued by executive order can be undone by executive order, and a future administration could reestablish many of these programs with the stroke of a pen. The costs of doing so will be high—to say nothing of the political opposition—but a future president could do it. However, there is a weak point in federal race-or-ethnicity-based policies that is so far largely unscathed by the Trump administration’s actions: data collection and classification.
The reestablishment of affirmative action or other race-based policies by a future administration would require data to be classified by relevant racial categories. If that future administration had to start from scratch in data collection, it would delay the implementation of such policies by years and significantly raise the costs of doing so. Further, government data on race and ethnicity provides evidence or even the impetus for different racial or ethnic groups to demand special benefits.
In the past, the creation of new racial classifications has incentivized the formation of new race-based groups that then lobby for special treatment. Changing federal data collection and classification for race and ethnicity would reduce the supply of future race-based policies by raising the costs and decreasing demand by undermining the lobbies that rely on data or preventing their creation in the first place.
Below are some additional actions that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Census Bureau, and the Trump administration could take to accomplish the long-term goal of undermining race and ethnicity-based policies by future administrations.
First, the OMB should revoke Revisions to OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity (SPD-15 2024), which was adopted on March 29, 2024. The most pernicious actions in SPD-15 2024 were the creation of two new races (“minimum reporting category”) for Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) and “Hispanic or Latino.” The latter was formerly an ethnicity that respondents checked in addition to race. These two new races will soon appear in all federal data collection, like the Decennial Census and other surveys. The federal government shouldn’t create new broad racial categories for the reasons I describe here.
Second, the OMB should issue a revised SPD-15 that forbids collecting data by race or ethnicity unless explicitly required by statute. All such collection must end no later than 180 days after the revised SPD-15 is issued, and each agency should advise OMB within 45 days of any race or ethnicity data that it is required by statute to collect. This would also result in the Census Bureau immediately starting the process of removing race from the 2030 Decennial Census. They should begin that as soon as possible because the Census Bureau must advise Congress three years in advance of any change planned in the Decennial Census, which would be by April 1, 2027.
The Census Bureau must also advise Congress two years in advance of all actual questions to be used, which would be due by April 1, 2028. This is more administratively complex than it seems, so the Trump administration should consider removing the current director of the Census Bureau and replacing him with somebody committed to pushing the process along rapidly. The current director has a five-year term expiring on January 5, 2027, but the president can fire him with a 60-day notice to Congress.
Third, the Census Bureau must withdraw its “Proposed Race/Ethnicity Code List for the American Community Survey and the 2030 Census.” This proposed classification scheme adds hundreds of detailed racial subgroups.
Fourth, the Trump administration should issue an executive order directing the OMB, General Services Administration (GSA), and other relevant government bodies to identify every federal statute that mandates or authorizes the collection of race and ethnicity data by any federal government agency or imposes such requirements on state or local governments or private organizations. The executive order should force OMB, GSA, and other relevant government bodies to collect this information and report it to the administration within 90 days (or another feasible minimum period).
Fifth, the administration should consider which of these racial and ethnicity data collection mandates and authorizations can be eliminated via additional executive orders, regulatory changes, revocations or rescissions of agency memos, guidance, and other directives, and other agency actions. The administration should then issue an executive order to eliminate those data collection requirements outright, order agencies to do so, and terminate the personnel specialized in collecting those data. The last point is essential for dispersing the specialized knowledge required for racial and ethnic data collection by the government.
Sixth, the administration and Congress should work together to remove all statutory requirements for the collection of race and ethnicity data that exist in federal law, to bar federal agencies from collecting such data, and halt federal agencies from creating any racial or ethnic categories. Suppose Congress is reluctant to remove all the statutory requirements for data collection on race and ethnicity. In that case, Congress should at least remove as many of the requirements as possible and statutorily forbid the creation of new groups by future OMBs and other government agencies.
The new administration has made historic strides toward separating race and state. Taking the steps outlined above will further protect these reforms against any actions by future administrations that want to recreate race-based policies. The Trump administration and Congress should move as far down the above action list as possible. However, taking all the actions above would substantially increase the costs of reinstituting race-based policies and delay implementation for many years or longer.
Future presidents will be able to restart many of the race-and-ethnicity-based programs ended by the Trump administration so far. On a long enough timeline, even courts could change their minds and sanction future race-based discrimination by the government. However, the government requires data collected and classified along racial and ethnic lines to recreate such schemes. Furthermore, the existence of such data often creates demand for federal programs that discriminate by race or ethnicity. Nothing is permanent in government.
Even if all the actions above were taken and Congress deleted all statutes that mandate and authorize the collection of racial and ethnic data, a future Congress could change it back. Still, the above actions are the best realistic chance for reducing that probability closest to zero.