The US State Department has scrapped a Biden-era directive that required American diplomats to promote diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) talking points with foreign governments, ending a policy that critics said subordinated national interests to progressive ideology.
According to documents obtained by Fox News, previous guidance instructed Foreign Service officers to “routinely raise social inclusion, racial/gender equity, disability, and LGBTQI+ issues with high-level host country interlocutors”.
The wording is taken from an internal checklist addressed to embassy “front offices”, the senior leadership suites that run State Department bureaus and missions worldwide.
Compliance was factored into performance reviews and promotion decisions. Fox News Digital reported on August 13, 2026 that those criteria no longer apply when assessing job performance.
Under the prior system, DEI-related efforts accounted for as much as 20 per cent of diplomats’ evaluations, according to material published in April 2025 by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and endorsed at the time by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Officers were assessed on whether they avoided “gendered adjectives”, pressed local organisations to run DEIA trainings and awards ceremonies, and set race or gender quotas on embassy speaking panels and events.
A presidential memorandum in March 2025 ordered the removal of the DEIA “core precept” from Foreign Service tenure and promotion criteria, one of five categories scored by promotion panels.
The State Department said in November 2025 that an internal study had found 295 Foreign Service officers were denied promotion opportunities in 2024, and that it would provide restitution to them.
The same period saw US taxpayer funds channelled into programmes that included drag performances in Ecuador, transgender advocacy in India, gender-and-sexuality libraries in Lebanon, and DEI training for police forces in Latin America.
The Ecuadorean award, granted in September 2022, was worth $20,600 (€17,850) and paid a cultural centre in Cuenca, southern Ecuador, for 12 drag theatre performances, three workshops and a two-minute documentary.
Under Biden’s State Department, there were also efforts at “queering the map“. A department official acknowledged under congressional questioning that the aim had been to make maps “more gay”.
There were also DEI efforts in Europe under the Biden administration. Documented examples include funding for Sofia Pride in Bulgaria and related LGBTQ events and film festivals in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.
An LGBTQ film festival organised in Portugal in 2022 and funded by the US State Department screened films depicting incest and paedophilia, according to the Daily Caller.
A DEIA workshop hosted by the US embassy in Berlin brought in German foreign ministry officials to exchange “best practices”, according to a post published by one of the participants.
The Biden administration also installed a special envoy to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons, Jessica Stern, who engaged German and British officials on transgender issues and “inclusive democracy”.
Critics argued these initiatives often clashed with the cultural and legal norms of host countries, generated resentment and distracted from core diplomatic priorities such as security, trade and countering strategic rivals.
European governments raised little public objection at the time. The US embassy in London made that point in August 2026, noting that the Liberal Democrats had not pushed back against Biden-era grants that could be viewed as political.
The reception is different now. Liberal Democrat MP Lisa Smart described a $500,000 (€433,000) embassy grant scheme promoting freedom of speech, due process and limited government in Britain as “Trump’s Maga money meddling in our democracy”, in comments to The Guardian.
Brussels has responded in similar terms to a draft United Nations declaration on freedom of expression circulated by Washington and first reported by Politico, which condemns new laws and regulatory frameworks in “historically democratic countries”.
EU officials read that as a reference to the Digital Services Act (DSA), which they condemn as foreign interference and meddling. Vice-President JD Vance told the Munich Security Conference in February 2025 that the main threat to Europe came from within, in what he described as a retreat from free speech.
The dispute has already produced sanctions. In December 2025 the administration barred five Europeans, among them former European commissioner Thierry Breton, from entering the United States over what Rubio called extraterritorial censorship.
“Under the Trump Administration, America’s diplomats are tasked with advocating for our national interests on the world stage — not demonstrating adherence to woke political dogmas,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott told Fox News Digital.
Pigott said the department was implementing sweeping reforms to the Foreign Service to prioritise merit, refocus training on diplomatic skills and prepare American diplomats for the country’s most pressing challenges.
Wokeness and the Secret Service’s failure: DEI can cost lives, writes @bogdanosk.
Read the full article 👉🏼 https://t.co/1Smx9apabG pic.twitter.com/Q3BmspQLmU
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 19, 2024
