DEI News Has Broken Through to the Public, and Is Impacting Support

Nearly two months since President Trump has taken office, his administration has moved fast and furious against diversity, equity and inclusion, which in turn has led to corporations doing the same. New Morning Consult data shows that headlines made by actions taken by both the private and public sector are breaking through to the U.S. public, and shows signs to be moving public opinion on the effectiveness of DEI, with levels of support for decreasing DEI funding and influence growing.

Federal DEI pullbacks are breaking through more than corporate ones

Overall, the U.S. public has seen, read or heard about several initiatives taken by the federal government and corporations to pull back on diversity efforts, but higher shares are aware of news as it relates to the Trump administration.

U.S. adults are most likely to have said they heard a lot or some about executive orders that seek to end diversity initiatives within the U.S. government (61%), followed by President Trump’s implication that DEI policies could be to blame for the fatal airplane crash that took place at Reagan Washington National Airport (51%). Ranked lower after federal actions are headlines about Target, Meta and McDonald’s diversity pullbacks.

Our data also shows that while Gen Z adults and millennials generally tend to underindex on hearing about federal pullbacks compared to their older counterparts, they slightly overindex on hearing about DEI headlines tied to corporations. By now, it’s fairly standard for company news of this kind to break through online — when brands take positions that seemingly run counter to progressivism, it tends to stir heated debate particularly among young people.

Overall support for DEI remains high, but support for pullbacks is shifting

According to our tracking, a majority of U.S. adults (57%) think that DEI programs are important to the success of businesses, while 48% believe that companies are genuine in their efforts to help minority groups. Both those sentiments have not shifted much compared to when we last surveyed about this in November, right after Trump was re-elected.

But the verbiage surrounding many of the pullbacks has been negative and consistently so, with the Trump administration on Inauguration Day calling DEI programs "radical" and "wasteful,” a messaging framework that no doubt seeps into the broader public given the power and reach of the bully pulpit. Thus the biggest swings we’ve seen in our data since we began tracking are exhibited in the growing support for DEI program pullbacks.

Between last July and November, support for pullbacks briefly fell, but is now at even higher levels. All three tested stances in our survey saw almost 10-point increases among the general public. 

And while Democrats and Republicans are usually not in lockstep with each other on this topic — consistently higher shares of the latter support decreasing or ending DEI influence — there was small growth in support even among Democrats on all three stances: 25% of Democrats support decreasing DEI’s funding, up from 20% in November. Just under one-third (27%) support both decreasing DEI’s influence and ending DEI programs entirely, up from 22% for both. 

The Trump administration has not given any indication in slowing down their efforts to reign in DEI, and if anything may double down given its messaging war is moving the needle among the American public in a way that it wants. And with that, support for pullbacks may continue to grow, making it the case where people may have multiple conflicting sentiments at once: They can believe that DEI programs are good in a broad sense, while still being accepting of companies pulling back in the short-term thanks to an onslaught of negative narratives. 

DEI news that hits closer to home spurs action

When asked specifically about whether they’ve heard about DEI pullbacks from stores where they shop, 37% of U.S. adults said yes, with younger generations once again more likely to say the same compared to older generations. (In an open-ended follow-up, the top-mentioned brands written in were Target, Walmart, and Amazon.)

Among those who have heard about pullbacks, nearly half (47%) said they’ve either purchased less or stopped purchasing entirely from a company, or they’ve told others not to shop there.

More than half of the younger generations have taken actions that could potentially negatively impact companies’ businesses, and even larger shares of Democrats said the same. Republicans, who generally oppose DEI measures, were most likely to report taking actions that could bolster those companies, with 43% saying they’ve either purchased more from the company, or told others to shop there.

While it remains to be seen if these behaviors are one-off actions taken in response to attention-grabbing moves, certain headlines have been stickier than others. For example, there was a one-day “economic blackout” that was broadly geared towards all major corporations, but others have inspired more sustained backlash.