The College Fix

Reporter says the administration is encouraging staff to ‘rat out’ DEI adherents

President Donald Trump’s swift executive actions on diversity, equity, and inclusion and other matters are causing a “culture of intimidation and fear,” a panel of prominent journalists asserted Saturday at Duke University.

Hosted by the university’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, the panel discussed the topic, “Trump takes charge (again): What his second presidency and a Republican majority mean for America,” the Duke Chronicle reports.

One of the panelists, NPR’s David Folkenflik, brought up the Trump administration’s actions purging DEI from government programs.

Late last week, Department of Education leaders cut DEI contracts and programs, and placed ideology-focused staff on administrative leave, The College Fix reported.

Folkenflik said the administration also asked that federal employees who refuse to comply with the actions be reported – which he characterized as “rat[ing] out” colleagues who continue “secret [diversity, equity and inclusion] programs.”

“This is all sending a message to people about not getting out of line,” The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, another panelist, added.

The Chronicle reports more:

Though President Donald Trump has only been in office for a week, the panelists stressed that the new administration has already created “a culture of intimidation and fear.”

Haberman noted that the aggressive campaign Trump’s allies waged “to force Republican senators to heel” during Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s Senate confirmation, as well as his decision to fire at least 12 inspectors general — who act as independent watchdogs for government corruption and fraud — were signs that the Trump administration was going to make it “painful” for people in other branches of government who oppose him.

… When asked by an audience member if the panelists expected politics to “return to more of a state of normalcy” in a post-Trump America, [TIME Magazine’s Charlotte] Alter confidently said “no.”

“One of the biggest takeaways from Trump’s existence and Trump’s political career for conservatives is moving away from a shame-based moral landscape,” she said. “On the left, you can’t get away with anything. On the right, you can get away with everything.”

When asked about public distrust of journalists, the panelists said the legacy media is partially to blame:

[They] acknowledged that media organizations may be devoting too much coverage to political issues that most voters care little about and not enough to the issues that matter most to everyday Americans. Alter described what she termed a “misalignment” between the priorities of media organizations and their audiences.

“I’ve come to think that the smarter we are about politics, the dumber we are about politics, because most Americans don’t follow every single tick of every single story in the way that we in the political media do,” she said.

Haberman said she believes journalists did “an extremely good job describing the stakes of the election.”

Folkenflik added that “it’s not the [media’s] job to prevent Trump from being elected.”

MORE: UToledo law professor: Trump ‘serves wealthy white American men’

IMAGE: WhiteHouse/X

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