9. Agency for International Development · Notable

Remove DEI requirements from USAID contract and grant tenders and awards

Done

Printed page 258 9. Agency for International Development

“The next conservative Administration should dismantle USAID’s DEI apparatus by eliminating the Chief Diversity Officer position along with the DEI advisers and committees; cancel the DEI scorecard and dashboard; remove DEI requirements from contract and grant tenders and awards; issue a directive to cease promotion of the DEI agenda, including the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda; and provide staff a confidential medium through which to adjudicate cases of political retaliation that agency or implementing staff suffered during the Biden Administration.”

What has happened

Jan 27, 2026 Done
State replaced the DEI clause regime in foreign assistance with its inverse: the Combating Discriminatory Equity Ideology in Foreign Assistance rule adds 2 CFR award terms, effective 2026-02-26, that must generally be included in all foreign-assistance solicitations and resulting awards to foreign and United States NGOs, international organizations, foreign governments and parastatals, must be flowed down to sub-recipients, and are enforced by termination, suspension of payments and suspension or debarment.
- State Department final rule: Combating Discriminatory Equity Ideology in Foreign Assistance Rules
  Primary Executive branch Jan 27, 2026
Jan 21, 2025 Attempted
Executive Order 14173 directed OMB to excise references to DEI and DEIA principles "under whatever name they may appear" from Federal acquisition, contracting, grants and financial assistance procedures, and required every agency to put into every contract and grant award a term certifying that the counterparty does not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate Federal anti-discrimination law. Executive Order 14151 separately required termination of all DEI performance requirements for contractors and grantees.
- Executive Order 14173 - Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity
  Primary Executive branch Jan 21, 2025
- Executive Order 14151 - Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
  Primary Executive branch Jan 20, 2025

Research log

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

Research notes

The Quote’s object - DEI requirements in USAID tenders and awards - no longer exists in either direction: USAID’s own solicitations ended with the agency on 2025-07-01, and the successor’s standard award terms now forbid what they used to require.
EO 14332 grant-process sweep (2026-09-29). Executive Order 14332 (2025-08-07) puts every agency’s funding announcements and discretionary awards under senior-appointee review and a test of the President’s priorities. Under the rule we settled on 2026-09-29, it counts only where an ask’s object is review, clearance or priority-alignment of an agency’s awards. This Quote’s object is DEI requirements in USAID’s tenders and awards, not review of awards, and the item is already done on State’s own award terms (2026-01-27). Status unchanged.

Action: eliminate
Object: DEI clauses in USAID contracts and grants
ID: 654