Trump's First 100 Days: Wading Into The Culture Wars
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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. This week on the pod, we're doing something a little different, taking a look at some of the policies and decisions President Trump has made in the first 100 days of his second term. Today, how the president has used cultural issues to advance his agenda, promising to reshape American society in the process.

On the campaign trail, Trump railed against efforts in the federal government to promote diversity. We will terminate every diversity, equity and inclusion program across the entire federal government. Argued that schools were promoting, in his words, gender ideology. Can you imagine that your child leaves for school and comes home and they're

Gender has been changed. And that the federal government and military were too focused on what he called a woke agenda. Desecrating our Constitution and perverting our military. Our military is becoming woke. We defeated ISIS.

And now it's becoming woke. After coming back into office, Trump has made a number of moves to keep those promises through executive actions and changes in policy. So today, let's talk about the Trump administration's focus on cultural issues. Joining me is political correspondent Sarah McCammon and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Hello. Hey there. Hey, Tim. Sarah, I will start with you. Trump

took executive action in the first few hours of his presidency related to some of these issues.

What did he do with regards to DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion? Right. Well, he's signed several executive actions since taking office focused on this issue. Among them, you know, ending DEI programs in federal employment and contracting, as well as training programs focused on diversity, ending environmental justice initiatives in the federal government, so efforts to address human

you know, pollution and other environmental problems that disproportionately affect low income communities and communities of color. One of the actions revoked several previous executive actions under multiple previous administrations, among them Clinton and Obama, and even one dating back to 1965 under Lyndon B. Johnson. That one was designed to prohibit discrimination in federal contracting and

He also ordered the Department of Labor to stop promoting diversity and directed federal officials to identify what the action describes as the most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners in the private sector. So even trying to push into the private sector a bit as well. Yeah, I mean, certainly this has moved beyond the federal government. It has been a significant shift in the federal government, but it's way beyond the federal

government to universities, hiring practices at universities. Even private businesses have changed the

the way they address DEI in their workplaces. Right. I mean, we've seen the administration, as you said, put pressure on K-12 education and also on higher education institutions, particularly those that receive federal funding, as so many do, to do away with these diversity programs. And, you know, that's prompted some universities like the University of Michigan to do away with its DEI office.

Whereas others like Cornell University have seen their federal funds frozen as a result of these kinds of policies. So, yes, you know, the administration obviously has the greatest ability to affect what happens within the federal government. But these actions have ripple effects far beyond just the federal government.

As Sarah said, some of the measures that the president has signed have gone after precedent that's been in place since the civil rights era. But Domenico, on a practical level, he's signed a lot of things. What has changed as a result of that?

Yeah. I mean, there's been a ton of things that the White House has done with this and, you know, through executive orders and executive actions, you know, that can be the kind of thing that doesn't have as long lasting effects as something like congressional legislation. But in this case, it has broad action across the federal government, the kinds of people who are being hired, the kinds of people who are being promoted or thought to be promoted. Yeah.

But also when it comes to the Justice Department, and you think about what the Justice Department is able to do in its civil rights division, there's a conservative activist who's now in charge of that civil rights division. And they're no longer looking at what has been traditionally thought to be the role of the civil rights division. And there's been this

whole thing from Trump for a long time about anti-white feeling. And he's talked about it during the campaign, about how he feels there is an anti-white feeling out there and that many laws are biased. So

If that's the case, what's that going to mean? And we're already seeing that pushed in place. Yeah, we saw websites across the government scrubbed of various terms or of highlighting the accomplishments of African-Americans, books removed from military educational institutions, from the libraries that highlighted people of color.

A lot has happened, in fact. Yeah, definitely. And we're seeing the administration also now take on the Smithsonian and the museums that exist, which a lot of people who come to Washington, D.C. see because they just don't want to have this sort of negative what they see history as opposed to what has been this sort of 21st century belief that

Yeah. And Sarah, you've been talking to voters. How are they responding to changes in DEI policy? You know, Trump really has been

really sort of, as we just alluded to, they're tapped into a feeling among, you know, not just a lot of white voters and particularly, you know, white Christian voters who've made up his base, but also some voters of other demographics who, you know, have told me things like they're sort of tired of what they see as the divisiveness of the rhetoric on the left around race and

They they feel, you know, for those who feel that DEI is maybe detrimental to them, they feel like it's the wrong focus. The Pew Research poll from last year showed, you know, maybe unsurprisingly, support for DEI programs slipping among not just white voters, but also Asian-Americans alike.

And I was in Nevada recently talking to some Asian American Trump supporters there. Domenico, you've reported in the past on really the shift toward Trump among that group in Nevada in particular. I met Pauline Lee. She's a retired attorney there with four grown children. And

You know, she told me she was really surprised by the advice she got when her kids were getting ready to apply to college. These are professional paid college counselors telling me, don't apply to these schools. You're not going to get in because you're an Asian male playing violin who also plays tennis. It's too stereotypical.

oh, you shouldn't apply to this school, whether it's Ivy League or not, because, you know, they're not going to get in. They're Asian. And she said, you know, she's a longtime Republican, but she's talked to others in her community. And she said there's a sense of resentment and a feeling that their kids have to jump a higher bar because of some of these DEI policies. And you may remember this was sort of the focus of a Supreme Court case in 2023, in which the court invalidated the race conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Yeah.

Domenico, voters consistently said that economic issues were the top factor that was driving them to vote for change in 2024. So does this focus on cultural issues make political sense?

Well, it does, because for Republicans, this has been an animating issue to be able to talk about the liberal lurch in the country and how they want us to try to reel it back in, whether that's on issues of, quote, DEI and who gets promoted at work and affirmative action, which is sort of what

This is kind of code for a little bit. That's like the old word. That's the word from the 90s. I know. I know. We're showing our age here. But that's the idea. And I think that there are legitimate concerns from some groups. I mean, you think about when you're somebody in the Asian-American community, like we've been hearing from them and they've taken it to the Supreme Court that they feel like it should be merit-based.

And they feel like they're immigrant groups who have, you know, worked hard and then they feel that they're discriminated against. And there are all kinds of other groups of people who feel they have these grievances. And Trump and the right are certainly happy to play those up. And we've seen that, of course, with Trump.

the sort of anti-transgender agenda as well, including one advertisement, for example, that ran during the campaign that they spent about $17 million on. 30,000 times that same ad was played across the seven battleground states and really did seem to affect Kamala Harris's number. In fact, more than $200 million was spent from Republicans, according to Ad Impact, which tracks ads on transgender rights and using that against Democrats.

Wow.

I call them. Yeah. And I guess we should also just point out that the economy is in a very volatile state right now. But executive actions and public statements and events at the White House related to gender and race and some of these other cultural issues, these are easy wins for Trump. This is the kind of thing that he can celebrate at the White House, surrounded by supporters and the people who voted for him.

are going to be really excited about this, even as some of the other stuff that's harder, like ending wars and putting the economy on solid footing, is not something that can happen quickly in 100 days. We are going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a moment.

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And we're back. Another big issue on the campaign trail had to do with gender, specifically the rights of transgender people and even more specifically, the issue of trans women and girls playing in women's sports. Sarah, how has Trump addressed these topics since entering the White House for his second term?

Right. I mean, as we mentioned, going back to the campaign, this was a big focus among Republicans, not just Trump, but the party as a whole, even going back to the primary. It was fascinating to hear the specific issue got so much attention. And I think part of it is because public opinion is really on Republican side here. If you look at multiple polls from pollsters like Gallup and others, they really honed in on this issue, sort of the subset of the transgender rights debate here.

where they knew there was a lot of public support. So, you know, since taking office, Trump has signed several executive actions. On day one, he signed one attacking what's described as gender ideology, saying the federal government will recognize only two sexes as unchangeable, male and female. It also does away with language and federal documents recognizing transgender people. A couple weeks later, he signed a related order focused on the sports issue called Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports.

And essentially what it does is it calls on officials with the administration to take steps to prevent people assigned male at birth from participating in women's sports. This calls for convening leaders of athletic organizations and state attorneys general and putting pressure on groups like the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee to implement these goals. And Sarah, also now the Trump administration has gone after the state of Maine for not complying.

Right. Um, the administration recently filed a lawsuit to that end, uh,

trying to put a stop to this. So they're really trying, you know, I think a multi-pronged approach. Again, they recognize that this is a salient issue with a lot of voters and they've made it a priority. So much of this, though, has to do with messaging and how that message gets out because, you know, there's a group, Data for Progress, that's a progressive polling outfit that was looking at kind of how to make the message for Democrats work. And I find the main thing interesting because

There was a real split among people when they said whether or not they wanted the federal government to have control over whether or not trans athletes would participate in sports or whether there would be local control. So I think that that's one gamble that Maine's governor, Janet Mills, is taking to try to say that she's keeping the federal government out of Maine's

business. And we'll see if that winds up working out because this has been one of those issues where Americans have really grown more in favor of restrictions of trans people in the last few years. You know, there was a Pew Research poll from this past February that said that two thirds of people

would want to require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth. That's up eight points from 2022 when asked about whether or not they wanted to ban health care professionals from providing health care related to gender transitions for

For minors, 56 percent said that they would want that. That's up 10 points from 2022. And guess what? It's across all party lines. So Republicans have clearly, at least in the last few years, won on the messaging when it comes to a couple of these issues. Yeah. And what's fascinating about this is that

The issue of trans athletes affects a very small population. The NCAA, the body that governs much of collegiate athletics, said in December that fewer than 10 trans athletes were known to compete in college sports out of over half a million total athletes. But

Trump and his allies, as you said, spent millions of dollars on ads about this issue, have made it a significant focus of the first 100 days of his administration. They've elevated, including in his address to a joint session of Congress, women who were affected by competing against trans athletes. So this is

such a big thing for President Trump. Absolutely. And you see it across all of conservative media. You know, this is something that's played up. It's used as a cultural touchstone that doesn't just reflect how people feel about transgender rights, but a whole slew of other things as well, like diversity, equity and inclusion. And I think it's really interesting when it comes to transgender rights that it's so different from how things moved on same-sex marriage, for example, and

And I think, again, pointing to this data for progress research, very few people know someone who is transgender. Only 29% said that they know someone who's transgender as compared to 62% who said they know someone who's gay. Well,

Well, that makes a big difference if you don't have that connection to people. And then when they asked about some of the more specifics on the kinds of rights that they think people should have, the people who knew someone who was trans, for example, were twice as likely to say families and physicians should make decisions about medical care for trans youth.

And including think about independence, 46 percent of independents who said they didn't know someone were against this. Seventy percent of them who did know someone who's trans said that they were in favor of it. So I think that that's where the gap is here. And it's something that Republicans and conservatives have certainly moved to exploit. You know, with the transgender issue, I think it's important to remember that.

Yes, when it comes to something like transgender people in sports, that affects a tiny percentage of people. But I think it's something that average Americans can understand and

I think it's really important to stress the Republicans have been pretty laser focused on this issue, I think pretty clearly for strategic reasons because of the polling we've talked about. There's a whole suite of issues when it comes to transgender rights, right? Like everything from changing someone's sex on their birth certificate or their passport to workplace protections. And it's a fairly nuanced issue. And I think people have a range of perspectives about each of these issues. And so when it comes to women's sports, though...

Again, there's pretty overwhelming public sentiment on the side of Republicans here. You know, it's interesting because I thought there was a really key question in AP VoteCast's survey of those who voted in the presidential election. They asked, do you think that support for transgender rights in government society has gone too far, not far enough, or been about right? 55% said that it's gone too far. So I think that that's one reason for why we continue to see Republicans vote.

Yeah. And I do think that as we are hearing voices who are excited about the actions that the Trump administration is taking, we also have to note that there are people who are not.

are filled with dread by what has happened. People who have children or have a connection to people who are trans who point to the very high suicide rate among transgender individuals. So, you know, it is, again, one of these issues where it's easy politics on the right and it's difficult politics on the left.

Yeah, definitely. I think that it's the kind of thing that – you lose the humanity in this sometimes in politics. Politics doesn't really do nuance very well. And when you find something that works where it hits people viscerally, you're going to see millions of dollars spent to be able to use it because I have to say just like Sarah is talking about, even with some Democrats, the very first thing I would hear from them about why they –

thought they might not vote for Biden or might not vote for Harris. It was because they just felt like Biden was taken over by the left, they would say. And I say, well, what in particular did you think? All this trans stuff and DEI stuff is just too much. It just gone too far. And, you know, they can't really give you a lot of specifics on some of this. It just seemed to be a feeling and also where their information is coming from.

All right. Well, we are going to leave it there for today. Tomorrow on the pod, a look at how the president has expanded the use of executive powers. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Mucinara, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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