Federal DEI hires had to know what was coming when President Donald Trump began his historic second term on Monday by rescinding the Executive Order that President Biden started his term in 2021 with—one that ordered the promotion of racial preferences throughout his administration.

But they probably had no idea that Trump was just getting started—and that they would be placed on leave as quickly as 5:00pm on Wednesday.

Trump’s EO rescinded one that Biden signed on his first day, January 20, 2021, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” and which became a harbinger of a four-year obsession with race and sex preferences.

Then, for the next 48 hours, Trump went about systematically dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices throughout the vast federal bureaucracy, federal contractors, and receivers of federal grants.

It was the policy equivalent of the Romans salting the Carthaginian fields after reducing their Mediterranean city-state enemy to ruins: promoting racial preferences was after all the hallmark of the defeated and dispatched Biden administration.

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Later on Monday, Trump signed a second anti-DEI EO, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” or EO 24. But he wasn’t done. The following day, Trump signed a third EO, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” Then his administration issued a killer memo.

The second EO, No. 24, laid out in detail what the departments and agencies needed to do to expel DEI. Mainly, they would have coordinate with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the attorney general and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) as they ceased all DEI activity.

The EO, for example, called on the bureaucracy to take the following actions:

“Terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions (including but not limited to ‘Chief Diversity Officer’ positions); all ‘equity action plans,’ ‘equity’ actions, initiatives, or programs, ‘equity-related’ grants or contracts; and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for employees, contractors, or grantees."

The Third EO, signed on his second day in office, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” repealed years of racial preferences. It even rescinded an EO signed by Lyndon Johnson in 1965, 11246, famous for being the first government action to require that federal contractors, in effect, agree to have racial quotas.

As my good friend and Heritage Foundation colleague GianCarlo Canaparo posted recently on X, “Over time, that order became the foundation on which government agencies—especially the Department of Labor—issued regs and practices that require or coerce contractors to discriminate among their employees and subcontractors.”

The LBJ order, added GianCarlo, required contractors to create affirmative action plans that soon became quotas, because LBJ and future administrations “forced contractors to report their race makeup.”

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No move by Trump or others to rid the country of the scourge of racial preferences would succeed so long as EO 11246 remained in place.

It is a testament to the new zeal of this second term that the Trump EO crafters knew that 11246 had to go.

But Trump still wasn’t done. The OPM memo, attached to the third EO, told the heads of agencies that by 5 pm Wednesday they had to “Send a notification to all employees of DEIA offices that they are being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately as the agency takes steps to close/end all DEIA initiatives, offices and programs.”

Federal workers did indeed start to get memos from their departments and agencies near closing time Wednesday alerting them that DEI activities would cease forthwith. A friend sent me one, and it was clear and to the point.

To be sure, some agencies will try to relabel DEI activities and DEI personnel, and we started seeing some of that late Wednesday. But the protracted battle has only just begun.

Ending DEI was a Trump campaign promise, and one the voters demanded. It was the sixth-highest priority in a recent Fox poll, following ending inflation, cutting taxes, strengthening national defense, deporting illegal immigrants, and cutting size of government. It was the first priority for a whopping 29 percent of the voters.

And DEI was an even more important item for President Biden. It had to go.