The ATF tries to save DEI and gets caught

I’ll not take any credit for predicting federal agencies would do anything to retain their DEI bureaucracies. And why wouldn’t they? Even if their administrators weren’t DEI true believers, and most probably were, DEI gave them unprecedented and totalitarian control over the lives of their employees--more power than they imagined--and unrestrained virtue signaling opportunities. By claiming DEI was essential to their missions, they would be invited to DC cocktail parties and praised by equally dimwitted bureaucrats. The ego boosting was incalculable. Recently, in Bye, bye DEI, I wrote:

We’ve learned merely mandating the decommissioning of DEI bureaucracies isn’t enough. DEI bureaucrats, true believers all, usually with the help of dim-witted and even malicious administrators, have adopted the subterfuge of rebranding. Giving new titles to their DEI offices and functionaries, they’re trying to keep their racist, hate-filled policies and Marxist thugs in place while pretending to obey the law.

It will be no surprise to learn the ATF, an agency sane Americans have been trying to abolish for decades, leads the pack:

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The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives appeared to try and avoid Donald Trump's anti-DEI executive order by switching the job title of its Chief Diversity Officer. 

On Tuesday, Trump's administration ordered federal agencies to place all Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) hires on paid leave pending review and warned authorities not to use 'coded or imprecise language' to circumvent the move. 

But within a day of the order being announced, eagle-eyed online sleuths noticed the ATF's Chief Diversity Officer Lisa T. Boykin had a new job title, appearing to have been updated to 'Senior Executive.' 

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Trump’s executive order mandated providing the names of all DEI and related personnel, and placed them all on immediate, paid administrative leave pending review. On 01-20-25, Lisa T. Boykin was the ATF’s “Chief Diversity Officer.” By 01-22-25, she transmogrified into a “Senior Executive,” which title provides no suggestion of what services to the public her seniority provides.

Americans can be sure, since in either guise she is near the top of the ATF hierarchy, she is being very well paid for diversity officering and for senior executiving. What remains to be explained is what those changes in title entail as far as actual work she might be performing for a salary surely far in excess of what most Americans make? Normally, government moves at a glacial pace in reclassifying executive jobs, but when stealthing a DEI bureaucracy, it’s warp nine, Scotty.

One wonders just how deeply DEI is entrenched in an agency charged with bedeviling honest gun dealers and Americans? Boykin is—oops, was, or still is—the Chief Diversity Officer. She must have innumerable DEI functionaries and enforcers to unleash on Americans. Did the ATF obey President Trump? Did they provide a complete list of names of DEIcrats? Were they all, unlike Boykin, put on paid administrative leave? Or like Boykin, have their job titles been rebranded? Have they been hidden in the ATF’s vast bureaucracy? Are they still DEIing, or are they hiding, biding their time until their masters think it’s safe for them to once again go full DEI—never go full DEI—when Trump is distracted trying to fix worse Biden debacles?

Did they really think the Trump Administration, which obviously has people actively looking for this kind of subterfuge, wouldn’t notice?

Now it’s time to see just how serious about erasing every vestige of the DEI monster Trump is. The ATF, which is rumored to be among the agencies on the DOGE chopping block, might serve as a useful example for the rest. Fire every administrator, everyone involved in trying to hide Boykin and anyone else involved in DEI at the ATF. It appears to be a clear case of institutional and individual insubordination and firing a bunch would be a fitting example to other members of the revitalized “resistance.”

After all, the ATF has been bounced around between federal agencies--a red-headed stepchild no one wanted--beginning in 1886, until it was rebranded an independent agency in 1972. America somehow managed without an independent ATF for nearly 200 years. 

What’s absolutely clear is the Trump Administration is going to have to be relentlessly ruthless in ferreting out every DEI true believer, every DEI mechanism and every DEI boobytrap laid by Biden’s handlers. It’s not going to be fast or easy to eliminate a cancer that has not only been allowed, but encouraged, to spread in the federal government. However, eliminating it will not only remove innumerable functionaries who did no useful, but highly paid, work to the detriment of Americans, it will remove at least some of their tumorous agencies as well.

We did without even a vestigial ATF for more than 100 years. I suspect Americans are anxious to see how well we’ll do without it in the future.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor. 

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