The Stop WOKE at State Act is part of a wider GOP push to roll back Foggy Bottom’s focus on ‘equity.’
The Stop WOKE at State Act is part of a wider GOP push to roll back Foggy Bottom’s focus on ‘equity.’
A new bill would roll back the State Department’s emphasis on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility — the federal government’s self-stylized version of DEI — taking aim at internal guidelines that require diplomats to advance “equity” throughout their work.
Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Brian Mast introduced the Stop Wasteful, Odious, and Kooky Exercises (WOKE) at State Act earlier this month, as one of the first legislative salvos in the congressional GOP’s effort to eliminate equity-centered initiatives at Foggy Bottom. While political battles surrounding left-wing ideological initiatives have attracted attention at the Pentagon, State’s wholesale effort to instill a progressive conception of equity in the department has otherwise gone overlooked until recently.
“The top priority for the State Department must be accomplishing the mission: strengthening the United States’ position around the globe,” Mast told National Review. “But it’s clear that, under President Biden and Secretary Blinken, the top priority is box-checking. State continually fails to see the negative consequences of these policies globally, so Congress needs to act.”
That the department’s definition of equity is distinct from equality has been a point of criticism leveled by congressional Republicans. Mast led a contentious hearing focusing on those efforts earlier this month, featuring testimony by the department’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer, Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley. For its part, the department maintains that “the only way to ensure our foreign policy delivers for the American people is to recruit and retain a workforce that truly reflects the American people,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it in a statement announcing Abercrombie-Winstanley’s retirement this month.
Officials have implemented a series of executive orders issued by President Biden that mandate bureaucratic changes intended to promote key tenets of DEI doctrine. Executive-branch departments, for instance, have all tapped chief diversity and inclusion officers, and each department is required to implement an “equity action plan” whose creation was mandated by the orders. “While equity is not an entirely new concept for either, distinguishing it from equality is,” said a 2022 Government Accountability Office report on the equity focus taken by State and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
In addition to appointing a chief diversity and inclusion officer, Blinken last June appointed the first-ever U.S. special representative for racial equity and justice, Desirée Cormier-Smith, as part of the implemention of State’s action plan. Reflecting the bureaucratic heft of this effort, in its annual budget request this year, the State Department sought over $83 million to support its equity-related initiatives, and a requested appropriation for combating disinformation from China and Russia emphasized the role that DEI will play in that effort.
Another noteworthy step also came last year, when the department issued a new set of “core precepts” — or skills — that foreign-service officers must demonstrate to receive promotion, lasting from 2022 through 2026. According to a copy of the document obtained and first reported by National Review last year, one precept for mid-level foreign-service officers and onward is: “Advances diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion in words and actions.” The precept includes other competencies, including: “Supports equity in staff opportunities, roles, and recognition.”
The Stop WOKE at State Act would eliminate DEIA principles from the core precepts by barring the department from evaluating an individual’s promotion of DEIA when considering any foreign-service officer’s performance. It would also replace all references to DEIA principles in the Foreign Affairs Manual, Foreign Service Precepts, and the Foreign Service Employee Evaluation Report with references to merit principles already enshrined in law.
The bill’s introduction on June 21 was accompanied by the release of a brief report issued by Rubio and Mast castigating DEIA principles as “the advancement of partisan, divisive ideology.” They also noted a series of media reports about State Department grants that supported programs along those lines, including drag performances in Ecuador, a Colombian group supportive of prostitution, and a film festival that featured movies involving themes of incest and pedophilia in Portugal.
Among other things, the report also alleged that a “State Department-funded Democratic political consultant met with Vietnamese officials in November 2022 to discuss strategies for changing ‘Confucian-based gender roles’ in Vietnamese society.”
The lawmakers also introduced a bill that would bar the U.S. from providing funds to international organizations that advocate the decriminalization of sexual conduct between minors and adults. That legislation was inspired by a recent report presented by a non-governmental organization before the U.N. asserting that underage minors can consent to sex with adults. “At a time when woke initiatives endanger our youth, Congress must ensure that the hard-earned money of the American people is not aiding international organizations that advocate for the decriminalization of sexual relations with minors,” Rubio said in a statement this month.
In response to questions from National Review about the legislation from Rubio and Mast, the State Department said it does not comment on pending legislation.