EXCLUSIVE: Some lawmakers and state-owned companies will prepare to roll back key diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies found in nearly every major U.S. industry, including the military, experts and experts say. a republican Attorney General.

The topic of DEI was back in the news last week due to an intense exchange among lawmakers during a review of the “Dismantle DEI” bill in the House. Progressive Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Tex., blasted a Republican congresswoman who called DEI policies “oppression.”

“There has been no oppression for the white man in this country,” Crockett said. “You tell me which white men were taken from their homes. You tell me which one of them was dragged across an ocean and told that you are going to work, that we are going to steal your women, that we are going to rape your women. This did not happen. This is oppression.

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The new Trump administration will likely target many people DEI initiatives. In 2020, then-President Trump issued an executive order banning “divisive” training for federal contractors. And the House Oversight Committee held a hearing this week on dismantling DEI policies.

“It’s a multi-billion dollar industry that promotes left-wing, far-left ideological orthodoxy in virtually every area of ​​American life, which is why I started calling it the DEI enterprise , instead of just DEI, so people have an idea of ​​what I’m talking about,” constitutional and civil rights attorney Devon Westhill told Fox News Digital in an interview.

The Department of Education has also released reports encouraging DEI on public college campuses. (Getty Images/istock/Dzmitry Dzemidovitch)

Westhill, who studies DEI policies at the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., said DEI is not interested in “diversity of thought, true diversity,” but rather “racial quotas”. “

Over the past four years, the Biden-Harris administration has encouraged DEI initiatives across several industry sectors. federal government.

In 2021, Biden expanded an executive order directing agencies to assess and “remove barriers” to equal opportunity through DEI policies. Another executive order signed that year was a government-wide initiative to integrate DEI principles into federal recruiting.

THE Ministry of Education also released reports encouraging DEI on public college campuses. The Biden-Harris administration has also invested in DEI programs within the U.S. military.

Large companies in the United States have also adopted DEI workplace policies, including Accenture, Johnson & Johnson, Mastercard, Marriott International, Kaiser Permanente, EY (Ernst & Young), Target, Google, Bank of America, and American Express.

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Some American universities that claimed to eliminate DEI ideology have instead chosen to rebrand the polarizing practice, according to CriticalRace.org.

“It wasn’t so much a financial motivation (for the companies),” Will Hild, executive director of Consumer’s Research, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “It was coming from the federal government, where if you didn’t accept under the Biden administration, the DEI regime, they were threatening to sue you or claim that you were violating the civil rights of minorities. So it was more about a combination of threat of bad press or government action against these companies. »

Hild said he expects to see over the next year many attorneys general in red states “start going after these companies” for hiring based on racial quotas. Consumers have also suffered from DEI policies, he said, arguing that they have distracted companies from product quality.

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Over the past four years, the Biden-Harris administration has encouraged DEI initiatives across several sectors of the federal government. (Fox News Digital-Hannah Grossman)

The integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) and DEI criteria has also influenced pension fund investment decisions and strategies. Pension funds are increasingly integrating ESG and DEI considerations into their their investment process over the past four years.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said that would be an area of ​​focus her office would look into.

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“We want to make sure we’re protecting people’s retirements, because no one’s retirement and savings should be on the line for these woke ESG and DEI goals,” Bird said. “So that means that our work on this issue is going to continue, whether it’s the investment managers or the proxy advisors, you know, making sure that these pensions are invested, so that they are there for people when they need it, not for any sort of social engineering or other types of woke political goals.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.