(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - Since returning to office, the Trump administration has gutted the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) - which has long ensured employers conducting business with the Federal Government comply with Equal Employment Opportunity (EOO) Laws - which has made EEO Laws effectively unenforceable for the entire Civilian Federal Contracting Workforce.

In January, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order (EO) 14173 that drastically cut OFCCP’s enforcement oversight and ended affirmative action requirements for Federal contractors established by President Lyndon B. Johnson back in 1965.

In a total about-face from six decades of leveraging the purchasing power of the Federal Government to encourage Private Sector employers to adopt more equitable employment practices and establish written affirmative action programs for Women and Minorities, Trump’s Executive Order explicitly discourages any efforts to remedy racialized or gendered patterns of discrimination in employment or pay.

Instead, it derisively and inaccurately labels such efforts as DEI-based discrimination, implying they result in Workers of Color and Women unfairly displacing more qualified (assumptively White male) candidates.

Recently, the Agency proposed regulations to further unwind its own work and authority.

One of the proposed rules would formally rescind the regulations implementing President Johnson’s original EO to establish the Agency’s existence and authority.

Another would risk weakening data collection on whether federal contractors are meeting “utilization goals” - benchmarks for evaluating the representation of people with disabilities in the Federal Contracting Workforce.

These actions showcase the Trump Administration’s embrace of Project 2025’s Anti-Worker and Anti-Equity agenda, which included a policy proposal to eliminate the OFCCP.

Trump’s 2026 budget formally requests Congress to defund the OFCCP’s operations. 

If Congress were to agree to zero out OFCCP’s budget - and if the regulatory unwinding of the Agency’s primary mandate proceeds without obstacles, there would no longer be any Federal Agency dedicated to ensuring Federal contractors operate fair, non-discriminatory workplaces.

In other words, taxpayer dollars could essentially subsidize persistent discrimination.

Under the Trump Administration’s plans, OFCCP’s remaining legal responsibilities to enforce EEO for certain Veterans and for workers with disabilities would shift over to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Veterans Employment and Training Service (VETS) or to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) - Agencies with different mandates and areas of expertise than the Federal Contracting Workforce.

In one promising sign, fortunately, the Senate Appropriations Committee recently voted to advance a bipartisan funding proposal that rejected the Trump Administration’s request to zero out the OFCCP’s budget.

It remains to be seen how appropriators in the House or the Trump Administration will respond.

To Continue Reading This Labor News Report, Go To: Trump is making it easier for federal contractors to discriminate—and it will be underwritten by your tax dollars | Economic Policy Institute