Gavin Newsom Snipes At Idaho After State Bans Diversity Requirements For Colleges

In a trend that’s growing quickly among red states, Governor Brad Little recently announced that Idaho is officially banning DEI requirements and “statements” used by public educational institutions as a metric for hiring employees or as an entry model for student candidates applying to colleges and universities.  

Senate Bill 1274, now signed into law, will “prohibit the requirement of statements regarding diversity as a condition of employment in postsecondary education” in the state of Idaho. Statements will also be banned as a requirement of “an admissions process” to any public college. 

Such DEI related processes have long been used by progressives infiltrating various institutions as a means to filter incoming candidates for employment and for college admissions.  The goal?  To remove conservative applicants from the fold and pack these institutions with even more woke adherents.

Many people assume that universities are far-left because only far-leftists are interested in teaching jobs or attentding college.  This is not the case.  DEI vetting specifically rewards people that share the progressive ideology, while also giving far more opportunities to women and minorities regardless of their qualifications.  

Basing government employment and college applications on merit rather than skin color or sexual orientation might make perfect sense to the majority of Americans, but Governor of California Gavin Newsom is not happy about it.  He (or his hired assistants) took to social media to snipe at Idaho’s announcement, apparently trying to assert that the “whiteness” of the political leaders in Idaho was the motivator for the passage of the law.

Really nailed it with the photo, here. https://t.co/gRAlLgw0Hf

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 27, 2024

How does one respond to this passive aggressive judgement?  Maybe it’s best to ask: Why is diversity relevant?

Is Newsom suggesting he’s opposed to merit based hiring and college admissions?  If so, does that mean he thinks minorities are not able to succeed based on their qualifications or intelligence alone and require a bureaucratic crutch like DEI in order to get anywhere in life? 

He won’t say this, at least not out loud.  Leftists are more likely to argue from an affirmative action-like position.  They will insinuate that “racists” are conspiring to keep minorities out of state jobs and colleges and that DEI is designed to force whites to allow minorities in.  In reality, equity requirements are created to motivate a different kind of prejudice: Ideological prejudice.  For the woke, diversity of skin color is fine as long as there’s no diversity of thought.

The effects are obvious.  Public universities in the US have become far-left indoctrination centers and a vital part of this agenda includes pervasive peer pressure.  If independently minded students or professors are surrounded daily by a mob that’s hostile to them, they’re more likely to keep quiet or adapt in order to survive.  Diversity requirements and statements are a powerful tool for progressives to continue controlling higher education systems.  They are also a strategy for pushing state politics further and further left over time by churning out an army of brainwashed kids with college degrees ready to enter the professional world.

It should be noted that Gavin Newsom’s militant pursuit of DEI is one of the reasons why conservative residents of California are leaving in droves to live in states like Idaho.  In fact, census data shows that around 31% of Idaho’s population growth from 2017 to 2023 were all transplants from California. 

Studies also show that almost all of these relocating families are conservative, debunking a longtime narrative that “liberals” from California are moving to red states to “take over.”  Voting records show this is false at least in terms of the past several years, with red states like Idaho growing even more red after the covid lockdowns.  It’s possible that this claim was conjured in order to frighten red state citizens into hostility against newcomers.    

The population shift of the past decade in the US has run along distinctly political lines, with conservatives and independents seeking to escape the bureaucracy, high taxes and authoritarian legislation of blue states.  Above all of this, however, is the proliferation of woke cultism and the invasion of DEI into every facet of life wherever progressives are the majority.  Leftists demand that people submit to this new religion or they risk losing access to basic opportunities such as employment and higher education.  This is what states like California want to normalize, and this is what states like Idaho are fighting against.