I just did a livestream with Bryan Caplan on Trump’s executive orders on DEI and my role in making them happen. For context, see my post from yesterday. We discuss the history of EO 11246 and Bryan talks about the pressure his dad got from the government to hire more minorities in the airline industry in the 1980s. One point to emphasize is that even people who think a lot about policy have been completely in the dark about the reach of the affirmative action in government contracting regime, on both the right and left. Bryan asks me to give an estimate of the probability I made the marginal difference in us getting Trump’s new executive order.

Bryan leaves about halfway through, and I then provide further thoughts on the topic, along with sharing some ideas on the general “vibe shift” everyone is talking about. While this is a victory over DEI, I worry about the pendulum swing involving a backlash to immigration. To me, the fight against DEI and for more open borders is the same struggle: merit, treating people as individuals rather than members of groups, and economic progress. Yet most who are passionate about DEI are motivated by their place on a racist-antiracist axis, so a vibe shift against woke means more restrictive immigration policies. It is important to push back against this. I close by taking a few questions from the audience, including on how to think about the issue of nationalism versus globalism.