DEI Might Be Dead But There’s A New Phrase The Media Is Already Using To Replace It

Leftists have a long track record of speaking in unison and changing their collective language — particularly when addressing the many issues on which the majority of Americans disagree with them.

Now that President Donald Trump is back in the White House and waging a battle against the impact of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies across America, it seems clear that the public sentiment is on his side.

That means, as MSNBC host Chris Hayes recently admitted, it’s once again time for some rhetorical obfuscation.

According to Breitbart:

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, a leading voice among Democrats, is one of the first to deploy the updated political wording. “There is a message of what I would call like common sense, patriotic pluralism,” Hayes told Bill Maher. “Pluralism is another word for diversity.”

“I think there is this sense in which there was this sort of backlash politics,” continued Hayes, acknowledging how conservatives exposed “diversity” as a buzzword for the woke agenda. “If we’re not going to use that one [diversity], let’s use pluralism.”

Hayes argued the shift in wording for the same woke ideology can help Democrats win elections. “That’s the thing that I think Democrats can win back a majority of message [with],” he explained.

From the left’s perspective, it probably makes sense to ditch the word “diversity” along with the other two words represented in the increasingly unpopular “DEI” designation:

This lovely & hilarious lady points out the irony & truth about DEl.

"If DEl is all that,…why is it when someone calls someone a DEl hire, they get offended? Like it's an abomination, like 'don't call me no DEl hire.' Even Kamala got mad ………because Trump called her a DEI… pic.twitter.com/NDYMYpB8cL

— 👉M-Û-R-Č-H👈 (@TheEXECUTlONER_) February 8, 2025

🚨ELON MUSK: "DEI is simply racism rebranded. I'm against racism and sexism no matter who it's directed against. We should really accept no racism or sexism in any form." pic.twitter.com/kUsxTreK04

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) February 8, 2025

Teacher @PasadenaUnified discusses how he injects DEI into his classroom. This same teacher also boasted about bashing Trump to his students.

Strip this district of their funding immediately. pic.twitter.com/YPcIzuRRQC

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 9, 2025

This green haired UC Berkeley researcher studying "environmental surveillances of parasites in India" is panicking over her government DEI grant being reviewed pic.twitter.com/dgSJQYF2Kd

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 9, 2025

Way back in 2021, the Washington Times detailed how leftists contort language to advance otherwise unpopular ideas:

There’s a “challenge” at the southern border, not a “crisis.” Migrant children are being held in “reception centers” not “cages.” Instead of “border security,” it’s “border safety.” Deleted are the phrases “legal and illegal,” replaced with “authorized and unauthorized.”

Democrats are using their political power to change the English language — to blur the meaning of what’s right versus wrong of what’s politically correct versus incorrect. Living in a world of cancel culture it all becomes perilous to the average American — what words can be used to describe what, without offending?

And it’s intentional. The left has long tried to redefine the meaning of words to their political advantage and in many cases have succeeded. Remember last fall, when then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett was criticized for using the term “sexual preference,” in responding to a question about legal protections for the LGBT community during her confirmation hearing?

“Sexual preference” was weaponized by the left for being a homophobic slur. The correct term is “sexual orientation,” PBS News’ Yamiche Alcindor quickly pointed out at the time. The Advocate called Justice Barrett’s comment “a revealing moment,” and CNN political commentator David Axelrod mused, “I wonder if [Barrett] views heterosexuality as a ‘preference.’”

Never mind, Democrats have been using the term “sexual preference” for ages — then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden used it on the campaign trail in May. Most alarming in Justice Barrett’s case is after she uttered the term, Merriam-Webster updated its definition of “preference” to include the word’s usage in certain contexts may be “offensive.”

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This vocabulary manipulation is dangerous — it’s meant to deceive, persuade and divide the republic. In some cases, Democrats disregard words with very specific meanings in favor of those which are more nebulous — in an effort to brand their political enemy with the broadest brush possible.

No matter what they call it, however, Trump put leftists on notice that the DEI agenda is on the chopping block at the federal level: