Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

27. Financial Regulatory Agencies · Major

Abolish DEI offices at financial regulators

Attempted

830 27. Financial Regulatory Agencies

“Offices at financial regulators that promote racist policies (usually in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion”) should be abolished, and regulations that require appointments on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation should be eliminated.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    The SEC's implementation of the directive is now on the record, and it stops short of the ask. GAO's triennial personnel-management report finds that the Commission "updated certain personnel management policies and procedures to remove references to diversity, equity, and inclusion" — in April 2025 removing all references to diversity from its candidate-interview questions and a reference to hiring panels considering diverse perspectives, and in March 2025 removing its strategic-plan goal on diversity, equity and inclusion. Those are internal policies and procedures, not the appointment *regulations* the Quote's second half names (that half is #2128), and none of them abolishes an office. On the office itself the report is explicit and runs the other way: "As of December 2025, SEC's Office of Minority and Women Inclusion had one fully staffed employee, according to SEC officials" — reduced, not abolished. The Commission's own Division and Office Directors page, read on 2026-09-06, still names a Director of the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. So the government-wide directive has produced documented action at a financial regulator on the subject of the ask, and no financial regulator's DEI office has been abolished: the Fed's and the OCC's statutory Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion under Dodd-Frank section 342 are standing too. The rung does not move.

  2. Attempted

    Executive Order 14151 ordered every agency to terminate its diversity, equity and inclusion offices, positions, programs and "equity action plans" within sixty days. It is a government-wide directive that reaches financial regulators along with everyone else, but no financial regulator's DEI office has been shown on an allowlisted source to have been abolished, and the offices Congress created by statute are still standing: the Federal Reserve Board filed its Office of Minority and Women Inclusion report to Congress in May 2026 describing the office's outreach, recruitment and supplier programs as ongoing, and the OCC still lists an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion implementing section 342 of Dodd-Frank.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The Mandate asks two things: abolish DEI offices at financial regulators, and eliminate regulations requiring appointments on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex or sexual orientation. Neither has been shown done.

  • The statutory Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion, created by Dodd-Frank section 342, survive at the financial regulators. The Federal Reserve Board’s OMWI report to Congress for calendar year 2025 was published in May 2026 and describes the office as operating normally, with no mention of Executive Order 14151 or of any DEI program being wound down: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/May-2026-Report-to-the-Congress-on-the-Office-of-Minority-and-Women-Inclusion.htm (loaded 2026-08-27). The OCC’s OMWI page is likewise live and names a current executive director: https://www.occ.gov/about/who-we-are/organizations/office-of-minority-and-women-inclusion/index-office-of-minority-and-women-inclusion.html Both are leads about what has not happened, so they sit here rather than in evidence.
  • The SEC’s OMWI was verified, and sec.gov was never the obstacle (read-queue ticket 08, 2026-09-06). The earlier note said “sec.gov returns HTTP 403 to every automated fetch, so the state of the SEC’s own OMWI page could not be verified”. That measurement was of the wrong rung. sec.gov refuses a bare curl and a browser User-Agent, and answers 200 with full content to the full Chrome header set — scripts/fetch-page.mjs’s third rung. On that rung the question is answerable, and the answer is that the office exists:
    • Gone from the web, not from the agency. sec.gov/omwi and sec.gov/about/offices/omwi.htm both redirect to sec.gov/about/divisions-offices/office-minority-women-inclusion, which returns HTTP 404; the Divisions & Offices index at sec.gov/about/divisions-offices lists the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and no Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. But the Commission’s Division and Office Directors page (https://www.sec.gov/about/division-office-directors, last reviewed 2026-07-06) names “Nathaniel H. Benjamin, Director, Office of Minority and Women Inclusion”, and the SEC’s own organizational chart text version (https://www.sec.gov/about/divisions-offices/us-securities-exchange-commission-organizational-chart-text-version) still lists “Minority and Women Inclusion” among its offices. A page coming down is not an office being abolished — playbook §3b levels on functions, and an org chart or a web directory is evidence of function, not a substitute for it.
    • The headcount, from GAO. GAO-26-107813 footnote 8: “As of December 2025, SEC’s Office of Minority and Women Inclusion had one fully staffed employee, according to SEC officials.” Reduced to one, and statutory under Dodd-Frank section 342, which is why the Commission cannot simply close it.
    • What the Commission has said about it: nothing. All 581 press releases and speeches and statements the Commission published in 2025 and 2026 were enumerated from sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases?year=&page= and sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements?year=&page= (216 statements and 146 releases for 2025, 134 statements and 85 releases for 2026 — the 350 statements ticket 07 enumerated, plus the press releases). Not one concerns diversity, equity and inclusion, minority and women inclusion, or the closure of any office. The negative is bounded by that enumeration, not by a wall.
  • The FDIC’s 2025 press-release index carries nothing on DEI or minority and women inclusion.
  • Adjacent but not this ask: FHFA repealed its Fair Lending, Fair Housing, and Equitable Housing Finance Plans regulation (12 CFR part 1293) by final rule on 2026-02-06, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/02/06/2026-02325/fair-lending-fair-housing-and-equitable-housing-finance-plans — a race-conscious lending regulation, not an office and not an appointments rule. FHFA also withdrew its proposed Federal Home Loan Bank boards-of-directors rule on 2025-10-02. Neither is cited as Evidence here.
  • No Federal Register rule or notice from the SEC, FDIC, OCC, Federal Reserve, CFPB, CFTC or NCUA in the window mentions “diversity, equity, and inclusion” at all.
Action
abolish
Object
diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at financial regulators
ID
2127