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

17. Department of Justice · Major

Have DOJ spearhead a government-wide nondiscrimination initiative

Partially done

562 17. Department of Justice

“Ensure that the DOJ spearheads an initiative demonstrating the federal government’s commitment to nondiscrimination. The department should also lead a whole-of-government recommitment to nondiscrimination and should be working with all other federal agencies, boards, and commissions to ensure that they are both complying with constitutional and legal requirements and using their authorities and funding to prevent discrimination not only internally, but also at the state, local, and private-sector levels.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    Attorney General Bondi issued government-wide guidance to all federal agencies on unlawful discrimination by recipients of federal funding, the first DOJ instrument in the window addressed to every agency's grant programs. No allowlisted source describes a formal whole-of-government initiative under DOJ leadership covering internal, state, local and private-sector nondiscrimination as the Mandate frames it.

  2. Partially done

    Deputy Attorney General Blanche launched the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, using the False Claims Act against federal contractors and grantees that violate civil-rights laws — a cross-cutting enforcement mechanism run by DOJ.

  3. Partially done

    Attorney General Bondi's memorandum 'Ending Illegal DEI and DEIA Discrimination and Preferences' directed the Civil Rights Division to investigate, eliminate and penalize illegal DEI preferences in the private sector and federally funded schools — DOJ taking the lead the Mandate asks for, though within DOJ rather than across agencies.

  4. Attempted

    Executive Order 14173 told every agency to end DEI-based preferences and directed the Attorney General to report within 120 days with a government-wide civil-rights enforcement plan and to issue joint guidance with the Secretary of Education.

Research log

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

Research notes

  • The 2025-07-29 memorandum’s PDF (https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1409486/dl) downloaded but its text would not extract here; the justice.gov landing page (title and date) is the Evidence URL. The Mandate’s ask is broad (“whole-of-government recommitment to nondiscrimination”); the events recorded are DOJ instruments that reach other agencies’ programs. No allowlisted source names a single umbrella initiative, so partial rather than done.
  • Related, tracked elsewhere: #108 (disparate impact, Chapter 3) shares EO 14173/14281 sources; EO 14151 (2025-01-20, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs”) covers the internal federal side and is not repeated here.
  • Law-firm summaries (Mayer Brown, Hogan Lovells, Steptoe) that dated the memoranda are leads, not Evidence.
Action
create
Object
whole-of-government nondiscrimination initiative
ID
1562